{"id":48,"date":"2005-09-16T12:08:49","date_gmt":"2005-09-16T16:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2005\/09\/16\/what-harvard-is-really-about\/"},"modified":"2005-09-16T12:08:49","modified_gmt":"2005-09-16T16:08:49","slug":"what-harvard-is-really-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2005\/09\/16\/what-harvard-is-really-about\/","title":{"rendered":"What Harvard is really about."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a135'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday in the Science Center there was advising en masse for the<br \/>\nincoming students. Tables were lined up around the atrium personed by<br \/>\nfaculty, students, and staff. Mechanistic perhaps. Bureaucratic perhaps.<br \/>\nI certainly believe in ideas, models, and systems as useful tools. But<br \/>\nI am an empiricist, experimentalist &#8211; somewhat of a nominalist. I<br \/>\nbelieve that ideas, models, and systems must always be <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/2005\/02\/22#a15\">questioned<\/a>. Are<br \/>\nthey serving us well?<\/p>\n<p>I had to find the physics table. I found what Harvard is really about.<br \/>\nNot physics, or scholarship &#8211; scholarly relationships. An old scholar<br \/>\nwas talking to a young one. The old man was brimming over with<br \/>\nexcitement. The old man would have won the Nobel if protons were not so<br \/>\nstubborn. But the truly remarkable is the Nobel class attention he gave<br \/>\nto this most newly arrived young scholar.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve kept the books on the shelves for lo these many years.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;I did my best to get Matt to talk to his advisor, Professor<br \/>\nAndy.&nbsp; Matt went in another direction. It&#8217;s not mine to judge. But<br \/>\nam I allowed to have hopes?<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday in the Science Center there was advising en masse for the incoming students. Tables were lined up around the atrium personed by faculty, students, and staff. Mechanistic perhaps. Bureaucratic perhaps. I certainly believe in ideas, models, and systems as useful tools. But I am an empiricist, experimentalist &#8211; somewhat of a nominalist. I believe [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/168"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/fensterm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}