Doomed ideas (I)

We present something that almost certainly won’t happen.

During our graduate school days we were fortunate to have close contact with students in other disciplines, far from the “hard science” that we were studying.  There was a linguist, some Medievalists, students of English modern and otherwise, as well as lawyers and historians.  One thing that impressed us was the amount of learning and skill required of a PhD in any subject; another, how much the learning and skills varied (though not as much as one might guess) from one field to another.  That suggested to our astronomer a plan he called the Synthesis Project.

Collect, say, a half-dozen to eight or so recent PhDs in a variety of fields.  There would be a physicist or a chemist, a biologist, an historian, a doctor of literature and one of law; probably not a specialist in teaching or learning, for reasons that will become clear.  Place them in a distinct but not too isolated spot (we are imagining an English country manor), and have them teach each other.  The object would nominally be for each to reach, say, an undergraduate major level of understanding in each subject.  The product would be a book with the chapter on Chemistry written by the historian, that on poetry by the cellular biologist, etc., however it might work out.

The project is driven by the conviction that a set of undoubtedly intelligent and receptive people can learn something well outside their own fields.  How this would happen might be the main result of the project; we confess we have no idea what would work (though we have several ideas about what would not).  We would include new PhDs and not established professors, as being more intellectually flexible and having fewer fixed ideas about teaching and learning.  And while it might be fascinating in some ways to gather a half-dozen Nobel prizewinners for the exercise, we’re more interested in how the general run of scientists and scholars operates.

At this point reality starts to seep in.  New doctorates badly need to establish themselves in academia within their own disciplines.  A year or two off (it might take that long) could be career death.  It would certainly mean the project would attract those most interested in, and knowledgeable about, outside fields; not what a scientist would call a representative sample.  And we haven’t even begun to discuss sources of funding and administrative details.

In spite of those factors, we’d still like to see it tried out.  Our gut feeling is that the Synthesis Project would fail, but in an interesting way.