Doctorate of philosophy.
The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration.
The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration.
I'm sure that comes across as a dumb question, but, modernity - technology.
The irony of mathematics being naturally built in, reinforced into all of us, over and over. Computer science.
From wikipedia:
> From the ancient world, starting with Aristotle, to the 19th century, the term "natural philosophy" was the common term used to describe the practice of studying nature. It was in the 19th century that the concept of "science" received its modern shape with new titles emerging such as "biology" and "biologist", "physics" and "physicist" among other technical fields and titles; institutions and communities were founded, and unprecedented applications to and interactions with other aspects of society and culture occurred.[1] Isaac Newton's book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), whose title translates to "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", reflects the then-current use of the words "natural philosophy", akin to "systematic study of nature". Even in the 19th century, a treatise by Lord Kelvin and Peter Guthrie Tait, which helped define much of modern physics, was titled Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867).
> "systematic study of nature"
And what do we do? What is nature to study? What is life to study?
Our own puzzled face, staring back at us.
> The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration.
In Germany, the doctor's degrees are quite different. Typical ones for the HN audience are (for a long list cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liste_akademische... ):
- "Dr.-Ing." for engineering (typically including Computer Science)
- "Dr. rer. nat." (doctor rerum naturalium) for natural sciences (typically also including mathematics). Even though the university of Frankfurt am Main issues the "Dr. phil. nat." (doctor philosophiae naturalis) title instead, the "nat." ending for the latter one is very important to distinguish it from the "humanities doctor's degree" "Dr. phil." (doctor philosophiae)
TLDR: In Germany, the names of the doctor's degrees make it very clear that they have nothing to do with philosophy.
It literally looks like anyone can change knowledge, override it, mutate it, destroy it, falsify it.
I don't know why most people get PhDs these days, you are correct. But I know what it used to mean, and I hope it means that one day again, soon.
In the real world you have to jump through hoops no matter what you do. Ignorance to them is stupid.
We live in society, that doesn't make everyone a sociologist. It just means everyone who lives in society should at least devote some portion of their thinking to the contemplation of society, including institutions of education. People in academia are not omnipotently protected from the forces of society. If society doesn't value these institutions, they go away.
The Ph in PhD is important. It really is, and it's idiotic to let that distinction be viewed as something that's just, obsessed with a pedantic, tiny niche of no real consequence.
I've considered myself an autodidact for much of my life. I've also had a great education (MSc, only worked on PhD for one year and left school due to health complications). Comparing these two worlds is hard, but teaching yourself when you can be taught by others is the hard, long, and painful way to learn stuff. And you never know what you know when you only have your own knowledge to trust, checking against everything else, with no real stable, structured, foundational, 'stand on the shoulders of giants' mechanic for the discovery, pursuit, and application of truth / knowledge.
You can have some idea that the individual mind independently can be related to the entire body of academia like it's some metaphor for their functioning as an organizational entity, a super colony of minds that function like one - tested against the rest of the world - but that's oversimplified. Our own puzzled face, staring back at us. We are all part of one big system, but some stuff, distinction really does matter. I don't talk to many people who have PhDs that I know of in real life, just one. He's the only person who seems to really understand the absolute delicate fragility of, and the consequential burden - that comes with the discovery, creation, pursuit, and retention of knowledge, at least that I know of, in real life.
How does that relate to having an extra understanding of sociology, or philosophy? I honestly think my point is built into the experience I am relating, or at least I have to hope I can still convey that much, correctly.
Philosophy should be important to society, and it's a shame when it's not.
That's a little freaking ironic if you don't mind me saying. A PhD represents it's own authority by virtue of being awarded by the tiny fraction of people in the world who actually understand the problem space you might be studying enough to say "Research accepted. We trust you can take our place as educators and researchers in the future when we are dead."
Also, there's a good reason the Greeks had that archaic way of categorizing knowledge. Hyper-connectivity of all knowledge available at once is a total clusterfuck to deal with from an individual mind perspective. Just because it's old doesn't make it wrong. History repeats itself, etc.