Jorge Cham nails it again…
Melbourne-based, Sydney affiliated historian and philosopher of science, especially biology. Apple tragic. Pratchett fan. Curmudgeon. Punster. Fatso.
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Oh ghods, I rememeber that feeling (and only had a 100-page Master’s dissertation to get through).
That is why, if ever embark on my retirement dream of taking an MA in Philosophy, it will be by course-work….
In some European countries there is a further qualification called, from German, a habilitation. Basically, it is a PhD on steroids. The particularly problematic thing about it is that in many of the coutries that have this there is a tradition of not allowing people to do anything novel and inventive until the habilitation. Both the MA and the PhD are treated (at least in the humanitites) as extended literature reviews of sorts. By the time people get to the habilitation most have lost any capacity for independent thought. Faced with the requirement that they do something novel they have no idea where to start.
I should add that I am currently trying to write my habilitation. I have got past the first paragraph, thankfully.
In Anglo countries we call that a “postdoc”. All capacity for independent thought is eliminated at that stage. I just did two postdocs…
You’re right, there is some similarity. There are quite a few differences, though. For one thing, I have pretty much as long as I like to finish the habilitation whereas most post-docs are very time-limited. Also, while doing the habilitation, I have a normal teaching load. Finally, most post-docs spend most of their time wondering where they’ll work once they finish, whereas I know that I’ll be kept on at my current department.
As for the elimination of independent thought, a post-doc can do that by burning out all your neurons whereas with the habilitation, the applicants arrive with their brain matter pre-scooped out.
Well, we have to prepare for possible tenure in our own way …
Reminds me of Michael Dummett’s comparison between tenure and the sea organism that eats its brain once it finds a place to settle down.
That was my implication, yes.
I had to leave my institution in order to avoid having to heavily modify my research and interests.
But I don’t think you fully escape the sea organism problem by doing so.
FWIW, the German two-step (dissertation-habilitation) was something more like the pair M.A.+Ph.D. is nowadays, at least until WW1 or such. The dissertation from the 1880s I’m looking at right now is about 30 journal pages and contains mostly a taxonomy of historical musical genres (basically, a newly structured review of received knowledge), while the subsequent habilitation was about 70 pages, of which ten were the translation of a Latin source (this was more original interpretation of a source). In the “Anglish” system, this seems to have carried over to M.A. and Ph.D., with a slightly longer dissertation these days. In the German system (since when? 1950s?) the dissertation and habilitation both expanded to what you’d call a Ph.D. dissertation in the U.S. (if not longer).
OK, back to work on my “debilitation.” I’m past the first paragraph BUT I always keep coming back to it. Grrrmph!
Under the old Irish system in medical training you were expected to act as scribe and copy the whole of a text as payment for youre teaching.
Took some time to do it.