Rob Henderson: A Journey from Foster Care to the US Military to Elite Academia — #20
Manifold
Bordeaux - I'm a Big Fan of French Theory and I've Been a Huge Fan of His Work
I think most American intellectuals don't know who Bordeaux is are familiar with his work and I when I first read it quite a while ago it actually helped me understand the dynamics of academia because he analyzed French academia in great detail. He pointed out that the main thing academics are competing for is the power to consecrate so if you become a super influential academic in your field anything that you are interested in suddenly becomes consecrated as an important idea and worthy of effort by other people. When I was coming up as an academic string theory was very prominent in theoretical physics and I could see that Bordeaux model for how these things work perfectly describe how string theory became like the trendy hot thing for
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