Dynamics of the Contemporary University. Neil J. Smelser

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СКАЧАТЬ erased earlier forms of political life and established new principles of authority and political participation. Secularization eroded traditional religious cultures and ushered in new legitimizing cultural ideologies. This principle, while general, is usually not an all-or-none matter. Residues of past cultures and structures survive, and in some cases changes involve accretions—superimposing new arrangements on old ones. In all events, it seems inevitable from this double aspect that circumstantial change is greeted with ambivalence—both welcomed and resented. In addition, the human mind is sufficiently agile—or unruly, if you will—that one consequence of circumstantial change is that those affected by it select one side of this double aspect, generalize and extrapolate from it, and create runaway scenarios that result in predictions of both positive utopias (Pangloss) or negative ones (Cassandra).

      To choose some general examples: film, radio, telephone, and television were hailed by some as world-shaking revolutions that would create a whole new world of efficiency in communication. Thomas Edison said in 1913 that with the invention of film “our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years” (quoted in Stokes 2011: 201). Others bemoaned their destruction of interpersonal intimacy and the end of confidentiality. Neither consequence was realized. The advent of radio and television brought predictions of the end of attendance at athletic events, and television promised the end of attendance at the movies. Early reactions to the computer crystallized into idealized views of the magic of the information society and predictions about the disappearance of meaningful social life (Streeter 2004). The e-mail and the Web have been proclaimed as both liberating and addictive. To choose more cosmic examples: Malthusian predictions of starvation and disaster accompanied the rosy glow of the idea of progress during the Industrial Revolution; Marxian predictions combined both a negative utopia (the excesses of capitalism) and a positive one (the perfection of communism) into one ideology. The darkness of environmental predictions of spoliation, destruction, and exhaustion are countered by scientific and economic arguments that new technologies will overcome the negative effects of old technologies. The lesson to be learned is that humans’ assessments of their own histories and situations include not only realism but also galloping extensions of absolutes to create imaginary worlds of both utopian bliss and Chicken Little disaster. This lesson should impart a note of caution if not distrust in those extreme predictions.

      The social sciences themselves reveal a long history of the Panglossian-Cassandrian syndrome. Anyone familiar with the literatures of industrial and economic development, urbanization, and community life will find these dual tendencies—the one extreme basking in the effects of prosperity, urbanity, and human betterment, the other bemoaning the impoverishment, depersonalization, and injustices. Sensible scholars of these phenomena find mixtures of all those effects in complex patterns of change.

      I submit that the history of higher education—perhaps education in general—has been especially productive of the Panglossian-Cassandrian syndrome. Clark Kerr made a partial reference to this phenomenon when he observed, from his own experience at celebratory occasions, “What I have come to experience are references to a glorious past and to a fearsome future” (Kerr 1963: 211). His remark caught a part of my analysis. What I want to do is to give a more complex account and to argue that it is inextricably mixed with the phenomenon of accretion I am stressing. Let me produce a few historical illustrations:

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