Hello, this is Matthew Jernstead interviewing Professor Richard Crieff on
February 20, 2019 at 10:38 a.m. in Life Sciences C building. This
interview is part of the Barrett Oral History Project. Our goal was to
preserve a record of Barrett's history in honor of our 30th anniversary.
Professor Crieff, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with
us and share your experience. So we'll begin with some personal history.
Uh, what was your own experience as an undergraduate student like and how
did you become, uh, interested initially in the field of philosophy? Well
, I actually started out in an entirely different direction. I thought I
wanted to become a lawyer, uh, and I would major in political science and
, uh, actually I liked my American National government courses and all
that sort of stuff, but I became, I mean I took a philosophy course in my
freshman year and I was intrigued by I don't think it was particularly
well taught, uh, but I was interested in the topic. And I sort of moved
off in that direction. There was no point at which I said, OK, now today
I'm a a philossy major. I just moved more and more in that direction and
like it was a very gradual process. Uh, there was no date on which I made
a decision, uh, but it has proved to be a perfect choice for me. Wouldn't
be for other people, but it was for me. It's wonderful. And uh did either
of your schools have any programs that were, um, you know, similar to the
honors college, what is today?
Well, yes, I wrote an honors thesis as an undergraduate. Um, you have to
understand that it was a very small school, vastly smaller than Barrett
itself. The whole, the whole college was smaller. It was about 1200
students. Um, Knox College. This was Knox College. It's in western
Illinois. It's a small.
Coed liberal arts college. Um, it's uh fairly old and uh There you were
thought to to uh I mean you went off and you were sort of isolated there
uh cars were not allowed and students were not allowed to have cars um uh
but it was an excellent school and I could have gone elsewhere but this is
what appealed to me and I enjoyed my time there very much um and so I uh.
As I say, I wrote an honors thesis, um. In which I was able to do original
work, uh, and I didn't have as much guidance as one gets in Barrett these
days, um. In part because I started with one instructor um who got me
particularly interested in philosophy of science, and um for reasons
having to do with the degree he was working on, he suddenly had to leave
at the end of the that calendar year at that academic year. And uh so my
Thesis was officially overseen by someone else. Um, he couldn't offer much
guidance cause his field was very different, but he could offer me expert
commentary and feedback on it, which I, uh, very much enjoyed, and he
remained a friend for the rest of his life. Wonderful. And we'll revisit
that. Issue of mentorship in a moment, but I wanna capture a phrase you
used about a minute ago, which was I could have gone elsewhere, you know,
regarding your choice of college. So what made you choose to come here to
teach at Arizona State University when again you could have gone elsewhere
, um, and certainly now given your sta given your stature in your field,
uh, what made you choose to come here to continue your research into the
philosophy of science? Well, I came for the food. Um, that is to say, they
offered me a job and I like to eat. Um, jobs were scarce and um this, this
was a good job to have, um, I stayed and I have stayed for a very long
time, as you know, um, because ASU became a.
A very good place for me to do my research, not because uh it was a, you
know, highly ranked program, but because it gave me the freedom to do my
weird sort of work and, and had I gone to a more prestigious place at the
time. Uh, I would have been forced in a way to be more fashionable, uh,
and, um, this place gave me the freedom, uh, to do what I needed to do and
moreover, the, the department as a whole improved dramatically and uh
there have been a lot of changes. I was in the philosophy department for
34 years and sort of still am. Uh, though 100% of my time is over here at
the School of Life Sciences, where the program in History of Philosophy of
Science, which I direct, uh, has moved and so, uh, it's extraordinary in a
way to be able to do history and philosophy of science, uh, in the context
of a science unit. uh, I remain the same philosopher I always was in a way
, but context matters as any historian will tell you and uh the. And
connecting it to the lifeblood of science, whether it's biology or physics
or whatever else, is
Made is facilitated by uh being here uh in a science unit. Um. I think
most of the um administrative divisions that one has to have, especially
in a university of this size, but still one has um anywhere, um, are
somewhat artificial and so I uh don't. Well, philosophy is a profession,
it's a, it's a community of people who um have their professional
standards and so on and talk with one another. Uh it's important for me to
be able to talk with people outside of philosophy and and uh. This is an
opportunity that that we have here at ASU that we don't have or one
wouldn't have in most places. So, um, you know, as you just said, you have
been here for quite a long time, uh, meaning you've had a chance to
observe a lot of, you know, pivotal moments in the department's history,
um, you know, certainly under Professor President Crowe, um, there's been
an emphasis on more interdisciplinary departments, um, so could you talk
more about. Those pivotal moments, um, particularly one that you might
have had a, a strong role in here in the department.
Well, um, I'm not sure exactly what um.
Is most pivotal and so on, that's that's hardly uh.
Hardly hard for me to say but uh certainly the development of a history
and philosophy of science program and one that's in fact quite good, um, a
graduate program, PhD program, all the rest, um, and having around me a.
Set of colleagues that I very much admire um and we all have to work to
for that. I I'm not sure that my work is more pivotal than anyone else's
but certainly I have worked uh to make it uh a community um where uh. It's
not a question of, of what one personally gets out of it, but what one
contributes to it, and the community is, is. I mutually reinforcing in a
way that uh the sometimes highly competitive programs lack. So I'd like to
ask now about your relationship with Barrett the Honors College. And
because you've been here since 1974, of course, you were at the school
before it was Barrett the Honors College. It was simply the Honors College.
Um, so how did that relationship begin and how have you seen the honors
college evolve over your tenure? Actually, it wasn't even the honors
college at that point. There was no college. There was an honors program,
um, and I'm not sure when it began, um. But it certainly was um.
A minor part of campus life at best. Uh, yes, and fairly early on in my
tenure here, uh, Ted Humphrey, who later became the dean of the Honors
College, um, was chair of the philosophy department and asked me to
participate in the human event which hadn't been. Started yet um and uh so
the the. Going from Um, Very small beginnings, rather haphazard program, I
would say, um, um, but the The university was fairly young still and um as.
As the program developed, uh, it became a college, um, and it became a
superb college, uh, and so the, the. It couldn't have been more different
then. Um, it wasn't that there weren't good people, um, it was that it was
um the acorn instead of a mighty oak that it is today, uh, certainly after
the Barrett's made their very generous donation. Um, so going back to
philosophy for a moment. You've stated um that the study of philosophy
could help navigate differences in perspective among, you know, family,
friends, and more broadly among fellow citizens. Uh, with that in mind,
how do you think the principles of philosophy can be applied to create
better dialogue, particularly here on university campuses?
Well, One of the things that one has to begin with is the idea that there
are alternative perspectives. It's not simply that I'm right and other
people are wrong, um, that's true, of course, uh, but, um, um.
That there are other perspectives that sometimes can help to solve
problems that I might have difficulty solving or by looking at it in a
different way offers possibilities that I hadn't seen. Um, so the first
thing is to recognize that there are alternatives, and that's one of the
things that I tried to teach in my introductory philosophy courses is that
there are genuinely different perspectives, and that in a way philosophy
is the study of some of those. Um, where the perspectives differ in very
fundamental ways of approaching morality, knowledge, the world in general.
And second, those, those alternative perspectives can be understood. Um,
it's not as though when someone starts from different assumptions from
mine, uh, that, well, there's the only thing I can do is try to map what
He or she says into my own language and sure enough they turn out to be
thinking just like me um no we can understand them in their differences
and we can begin to evaluate them uh uh now these different perspectives
are in a way different.
Modes uh or methods or approaches to evaluation to be sure, but I can
understand what someone else's mode of evaluation is and why that person
says something rather different and sounds contradictory to what I might
be inclined to say and um and that's a skill we have to use in science
it's a skill we have to use in philosophy um because some of the apparent
disagreements. that we face are not real disagreements at all, but
differences in ways of speaking. No, but there are real differences and
Insofar as. Um, Our coordinated action depends on it. Uh, we need to uh
find out what other people are thinking, what, how they're going to
understand what I say. I think it can be done. Now this is a controversial
claim. Bizarrely to my way of thinking, but nonetheless, uh, that we can
understand alternative perspectives, um, And evaluate them and one of the
things that that tells us is that there are things that haven't been
thought of by my own thinking yet um it introduces a kind of humility into
the enterprise uh that uh.
is I think valuable for all sides. So it happens in when a student asks a
question, I have to figure out, well, what is that question? Where is that
student coming from, so to speak. Um, and sometimes it requires me to ask
another question of the student who's who's who's raising the articulate
their thought process in the classroom, yes, and, um.
And it's the same thing in speaking to a spouse or a neighbor or um.
In one's professional life. Um, that. Fact is that whether one is.
Going on in philosophy or not, one is going to have to be working with
other people who don't have exactly the same views that you do, who don't
think about the world in exactly the same way that you do, and you're
going to have to be able to understand them. You may be able to persuade
them that your approach is a better one. But if you can't recognize that
theirs is different, that is almost a hopeless cause. Um. And so these
kinds of skills which
I don't know whether they can be taught, but they can be learned. Um, that
is to say, we can help students who are inclined to do so, uh, Improve
their skills at understanding one another. And uh that doesn't solve all
the world's problems. Uh nothing by itself will, uh, but it is something
that philosophers think about and I think about as a professional matter,
um, that I think has enormous relevance for everyday life, for the academy
more broadly, uh, for science, for society, and the like. So, um. I don't
think of philosophy as an irrelevant discipline that being pursued in an
ivory tower. There are a lot of practical applications, there are, and um
this is not to say that every philosophy needs to work on only practical
applications, uh, but.
Has to understand that the work, however abstract and uh. Weird, it may
seem, um, nonetheless is connected with that larger world. And I want to
hold on to what you said about how students can be taught um if they have
the inclination to do so. Um, over your, you know, long tenure of teaching
, have you noticed that inclination has, um, Become more common or less
common, what trends have you observed as a professor? Well, um.
Fashions change uh the social. Situation changes, students come. Over the
decades, with different expectations and anticipations. Um. There have
been decades when students wanted to know, OK, how will this affect my net
earnings? I think that's a very unfortunate question, but still, um, it is
a practical one,
and, um.
And other students come with, they're interested in learning the material
, and they're not interested in that sort of thing at all. And that has
varied over the, the decades. Um. I hate to make generalizations, um,
including this one, about, um.
How the character of one class of students.
Differs from that of previous groups of students, um, but one notices the
change, um, some of that of course will be the vagaries of of who happens
to sign up for one's own classes. um, some of it is more nearly social
fashion of a sort, um, but it has not gone all in one direction, and so,
um, there may have been decades in which people wanted to know exactly how
much more money they would make by taking your course. Um, which, um,
Falsely
May or may not have that kind of Outcome
In fact, the, the I'm told that the uh the major that has the highest rate
of success of getting their students into medical school is philosophy um
that's what I'm told. um it's a bit. Misleading, of course, because you
have to take all of these organic chem and all these courses to to even to
apply. It provides a sound foundation. Well, it, it's not so much that it
provides a sound foundation, but if you could do all of that and major in
philosophy, which is often a different set of courses, uh, then, um.
Then you're, you've done something above and beyond what those who take
only those courses and try to choose a major that That that will largely
satisfy, um, could do. But I think also, um, philosophers, uh.
can step back, or at least they can be taught to step back and ask more.
Interesting questions about what they know as a physician or what they
don't know and what the evidence is and so on, um, in a way that um.
That benefits them in the long run. So I, I'm not suggesting that that
philosophy doesn't help in those regards. It does, um, but it's, I think
primarily a matter of, of being able to do all of that philosophy stuff in
addition to the required courses. Sure. And continuing along this um topic
of student interactions, whether they're positive or negative or somewhere
in between. Um, you've been a mentor to many students over your tenure
here, uh, many of whom have later attested to how, you know, you know,
formative that relationship was in the career they pursued, or, um, you
know, going on to study philosophy at a graduate level perhaps. Uh, one of
whom was actually my philosophy professor at Phoenix College, Eddie Jenna
, who, uh, taught me for about 2 years. Um, so what motivates you to
continue, um, you know, working in that capacity as mentor to students?
Undoubtedly there are a lot of different motivations, but, um, one of the
most Satisfied, um. Things is first to see the light bulb go off in the
first place. Um
When students bloom. Um, it is the most marvelous experience simply to be
present. Um They have a kind of Excitement and and uh warmth, that it's,
it's very difficult to duplicate.
But the second. Point is perhaps even more important. Um, And that is
What do they
What are, what are they thinking? What are they like, what are they
feeling, if you like, uh, 10 years down the road or 20. Um,
The real measure of an education is not whether it gets you your first job.
Um, excuse me, uh, there's a knock at the door. Pardon? I can just cut it
out of the audio. That's OK.
Yes, OK, thank you.
That'll be uh taken out, don't worry.
Or it'll be archived forever. Yes, OK, uh, the, the second point, which I
think is, is more important is, is how has your teaching affected the
student in 10 or 20 years? That's the sort of thing that no board of
regents wants to pay to study. I, if they want outcome measures and so on
, I think that's, it's, it's not practical. To go find out whether an
instructor has an impact 20 years later. So one gets only anecdotal
information like that from Eddie. Um, and, um, I've been fortunate to have
a number of students for whom. The questions I've raised. Um,
That they've annoyed the student for a very long time. Um, that's a mark
of success, but it's also a mark of the university in general. Um, is
there a broader perspective? Do you understand a wider variety of views?
Can you assess a wider variety of views? Can you apply those skills, uh,
in everyday life? And um, Sometimes the student doesn't know that he or
she's been changed in this way, but that's the real measure of, of success
um in this business. And uh I've, I've been fortunate to have some
wonderful students, um. Who at least said that they uh. Have have
benefited from the process, but I'm sure all of their other instructors
have left. Um, a mark as well on them, that it isn't one professor's doing
, and it's, it's uh. Just gratifying when it happens. Now, um, two
questions, but the first I'll ask is, looking back, um, during your time
at Knox College or later on, uh, was there a mentor who particularly
modeled Um, you know, mentorship that you now use, like how to be an
effective mentor, how to be an impactful mentor.
I've had lots of different mentors over the years. Um, In
Perhaps the first one that stands out is the person who got me excited by
lousy signs. Uh, remember, this is a college of 1200 students, he could.
Get 125 of them to sign up for a single course. That's more than 10% of
the entire student body. Um, in a single course, um. I found his seem very
exciting and I began to think about some of the topics that he was. I
suspect he was not a very good philosopher. Uh, but he made this. Um,
These ideas. Um, interesting and living for me. Um, he went back, uh,
before my honors thesis was finished, and it was taken over, uh, the
direction of it was taken over by a person in an entirely different field
, um, who was kind and gentle and, and an extremely good critic, and um. I
have tried to um follow some of that example as well. And finally my um.
The various members in my of my committee, especially in, in the graduate
school, but, uh, in particular, the director of my. Dissertation work. Uh
, Wilfred Sellers, um. Was
An extraordinary person, uh, an extraordinary philosopher. Um, I didn't
always agree with him, but, um, He had a kind of breadth of vision. And
Systematic approach where all of the issues of philosophy were tied
together, um, um, in ways that was almost breathtaking. Um, and. His Way
of
Lecturing, it's hardly the right word. It's a kind of dialogue that was
going on uh through the classes, um. I mean, the first course I had with
him, he showed up for class and said, OK, now what are we going to talk
about this semester? Um, he was prepared on everything. Um, and if you
wanted him to teach a specific course on a specific subject, you simply
conspired with other people who would take the course and all say the same
thing on the first day and the majority rule for the topic, yes, yes, um,
but it was a matter of.
Sparring back and forth at a very high level. And um. And I find this kind
of intellectual engagement.
Enormously bracing and uh. Uh, rewarding, so, uh, it's fun. So, um, going
back to this concept of education as an ongoing dialogue. Um, one of the
most striking things professor once said to me when I was still thinking
about going into teaching myself, and then wisely I changed my mind, is
that, uh, just as you're teaching students, you have to retain that
capacity to be taught by students, and I think that also goes back to what
you were saying about humility and what one knows and what one doesn't
know, even if you're in the role of teacher, the role of mentor, the role
of students. Um, so, what has been the most striking lesson a student has
taught you, whether about teaching or perhaps even about philosophy?
Well, uh, one tries to be clear. In teaching. And one learns every day at
every moment, how one is not clear. Um, And so I'm, I'm constantly
learning from students because they ask the questions in a different way.
They asked me to think about something that I hadn't. I guess I knew, but
I didn't think about in quite the way that they've asked the question. So
this is, this is more or less a constant. But there's something more that
I get from. Students and successive generations of them, um, in a way it's.
Their incredible optimism, especially Barrett. Um, that no problem is too
big to be tackled. Um, And their enormous goodwill, I'll get back to that
in a moment. Um, but also their unwillingness to believe, thank heaven. Um
, their unwillingness to believe that academic.
Departments And the administrative apparatus of dividing things into
colleges and schools and departments and so on. Um, well, that may be
necessary for a variety of reasons. Um, They don't see that that matters
much and it doesn't. Uh, it's true that the individual. Professions are
the bearers of standards within their profession of philosophy within
among philosophers and so on. And it's absolutely essential that it be so
, uh, without that community of criticism, philosophy would not advance.
On the other hand, uh, dividing off the humanities from the sciences or
dividing off, um, one science from another, that's at most at
administrative convenience and and students, especially the best of them,
understand this from the get-go. They see no reason why they should not
have a big sprawling honors thesis that covers everything uh from physics
to morality. uh, now it's sometimes a little bit unwieldy, but um it is
enormously refreshing that we are not born with the idea that profession
the the departments matter. Uh, that that's at For the best of students,
that is it merely administrative fact of life to which one pays as little
attention as possible. So I'm enormously grateful for that, um.
I talked about optimism. I've talked about their. Their refusal to.
Admit that there are departmental boundaries, which I'm, for which I'm
grateful. Um, but it's also the case that they, uh, Are willing to tackle.
Big problems rather than small ones. And they are Or at least in my
experience, have been enormously generous, both to me and to um one
another. I think that this is very important. Um, I taught the human event
very early on. And I then I taught it again many years later, uh, for, uh
, because certain issues had arisen and I was asked to come back and teach
it again. Or at least one of the semesters again. And uh. By that time,
there had been instituted in the Honors College, a program of peer review.
Um, I was not sure at all that it could work. Not merely that it would
work, but that it could work. And I was proved magnificently wrong by the
students, um, who Now granted, they were being judged on how helpful they
were to one another, but
They didn't need my coaching as to how to do that, and they were genuinely
trying to help one another improve. From The point of view of the
recipient of the commentary and review. Um, I found this also true in our
graduate program here, um, that's housed within biology and society. It's
a genuine community in which the students are not competitive. They were
when I was in graduate school, the students were fiercely competitive with
one another. Um, but. Here, the attitude is quite different. It's one of
mutually helping one another because they're, they're working on different
projects. Um, they're gonna be judged, you know, for what they've become,
not whether they're better or worse than than. on a 10 point scale or a
100 point scale or whatever else, um, they're, they're going to be judged
on, on what they're doing and whether they have learned to be helpful, uh
, since I think that's one of the important skills that professors can.
have. So, um, you know, all these respects, I've learned from the students
, um, that there is Far more willingness to tackle big projects. They are
far more optimistic. They are far more skeptical than one supposes about
administrative boundaries, and they're far naturally perhaps far more
cooperative than one has any right to expect. As a current student, I'm
glad to hear that assessment of our of our capabilities, um, but that is
also an excellent segue into my next question about the human event and
specifically its origins and the role you played. Um, so the human event
is very ambitious that it attempts to encapsulate so much of human
knowledge and human endeavor. Um, could you tell me more about, I guess,
the genesis of it? Like, how did you, um, you know, come to think about
designing a course like this, and what support did you receive in
designing a course this ambitious?
Well, the course began before uh there was a college.
And consequently before it was honors, uh, before it was Barrett, um.
I was asked by my chair. Ted Humphrey To teach this course because a new
person, I think it was a new person had taken over. Jacob had taken over
the leadership of the program. He was a physicist and he was worried that
Uh
The sciences and the humanities were pulling too far apart and there was
nothing.
That was pulling them together. And so he thought that that uh a history
of science program, a history of science course. Uh, built around, um.
Jacob Bronowski's book, The The Ascent of Man. Which was not a very good
title and not a very good. It has problems of its own, but. They called it
the human event because they thought that that title was copyrighted. Uh,
now you can't copyright titles of books, but that's another matter. Um, at
any rate, they, they thought there should be some, it was a, uh, the book
was um. The product of or became one of the other like around, um, a big
glossy PBS series of Things of which he would go various places and say.
On this spot, mathematics was invented, which of course is nonsense, um,
and, uh.
At any rate, I was said, OK, now just, I was told to do the history of
science from the beginning to today. Plato to NATO, as they say. Um,
And I was one of the few people on the campus who had any kind of graduate
training in history of science. But I have a master's besides my work in
philosophy, I have a master's in history, philosophy, science, and my
Doctoral work is very close to it, and it turns out that I do history for
a variety of reasons. My methods and philosophy are historical ones. Um,
at any rate, I was asked to do this, um, I, at the same time received a
grant to uh to go back to.
Graduate institution and do some archival work uh to get a big archive
that's still going on the, on the way. Um And so it's, it's entirely
possible that I was not the first person to teach the course, although I
was part of one of the first people I may even been the first person to be
asked to teach it, I had to delay for a year. Uh, well, I used the book
that I was told to use and discovered that it was not very useful, but no
matter, I just taught a course, you know, all this, um, trying to Um, Put
together just some sort of sequential narrative in which the episodes hang
together. Um, And the first. First semester up to or through Newton and
the um The second one.
Emphasizing much more of the chemical revolution and the Darwinian
revolution and so on, so I taught that for a couple of years and it was by
and large success um we had some outstanding students, um, one I remember
that seemed to have almost total recall, um, that is to say. Um, I ask a
question and the answer that would come back on the exam is almost
verbatim what I what you said. Could you clarify, when did you stop
teaching the human event? And I don't remember the answer. It was, I
taught it for several years, um, and so I must have.
I think I was here for. 3 years.
Before I, before I went away, and I was away for one year and and taught
at the next and for the next several years. Um, but the idea was, yes, I
would be willing to teach this course, and there still was not a honors
college, um, but, uh,
But I didn't want that to be all I did because I was interested primarily
in philosophy of science and my philossy work and um tenure requires work
in my department and so on. Um, We
Rather a lot when I first came, but, but, um. Nonetheless, my, my research
was. Related to this and uh I thoroughly enjoyed teaching that course. Now
, as the years passed. The nature of the course reflected more nearly
those who were teaching it. And they were by and large not trained in
philos uh in history of science that no longer became the central thread
of it. So it has deviated from that original goal. uh, yes, and for all I
know the other people who were teaching it from the outset were given a
different brief because they, they were not in the philosophy department,
um, and. I met them only very briefly.
Um,
At any rate, um. As things changed over the years, it was found that once
again, the human event. No longer met the needs of people who were in
science or engineering because there was no scientific content in it
anymore. It was more nearly Western siv or history of culture and a very
heavy emphasis on literature, um. And Uh, which is fine. I, I'm not
quarreling with that at all, but especially the second semester, uh.
From the Renaissance on, um, well, it's in a way dominated, intellectual
matters are dominated in a way by science, um. Uh, and that's not to take
away from the magnificent art and music and all that sort of stuff that
was going on at the same time. So I was asked to come back. Um, they had
very few people with scientific training on the the honors faculty at that
time. They had some, but, but not very many, and they began hiring more,
but in the interim they wanted. They were trying to construct 3 flavors of
the second semester, a humanities version, a natural science version, and
a social science version. I'm not sure, I was asked to do the natural
science version. Um, Odd in a way that The person, one of the people
chosen for the the natural science version is someone who's squarely in
the humanities, but it was never thought that in doing this I would be
giving just the Reader's Digest version of physics or or something of that
sort, but rather to connect it with the the wider culture and to see. The
broad threads that connect. The decades and centuries, uh, that make up
the scientific enterprise, um. And so I was given carte blanche, but it
was supposed to be a natural science version. And I made up something, um.
That still strikes me as as audacious. Um, I began with the Copernican
Revolution. And talked about physics and astronomy and how um that the,
the wrenching changes that happened in the Renaissance. Um, we're in part
a product of a great deal of prior work, um, But had to be understood in
the context of their time and. The development of perspective that I mean
this literally in the geometric sense of perspective um and how that's
done differently in Italy in painting than it is in Northern Europe in
painting um even. Questions about The non-Euclideanness of the spaces that
people were developing and so I tried to connect that with the broader
political religious.
Social artistic climate of that time, and that would be the 1st 3 of the
course. And the 2nd. Was on
A later period, uh, the Enlightenment. Um, we talked about. Music and art
and architecture, and politics, because the people, for example, who
founded the US thought that they were, they were engaged in an experiment.
Um. Uh, and that they were going to be governing rationally and that they
, the, the, the way they set up the government was not some romantic dream.
Romanticism hadn't started yet, um, except in a way. One moment.
Sorry to interrupt, I know you're busy doing important things. Do you,
Karen and I could go get lunch and bring it back to you? Would that work?
Um, sure, uh, I can, I can, we'll be through by 12, I assume. Oh, before
that, yeah, before that, yeah, OK, OK, I hear you're the crackerjack
excellent interviewers. Oh, I hope so. Thank you. OK, I'll bring you back
something. Um, so. I had them watching operas. I had them reading novels.
I had them. Thinking about how science, uh, and. The development of late
18th century democratic ideals, um. are interwoven, almost all of the
founders of the country started, not merely members, but started
scientific societies in their individual states. Um, Um, I had to look at
, at, um. Marriage of Figaro, Mozart. Um, the libretto was written by a
terrorist.
I was he a terrorist? He's sending guns to the US to fight the American
Revolution. The whole, the whole plot of the thing is about the clash
between the rising middle class and the their um the traditional um count
, um. Who thinks that he has rights that we don't think he should have, um
, at any rate, it's, it's, um, thinking about these things in a different
way, but I was also interested in the architecture and Jefferson's work
and all that sort of stuff and then I moved to. A 20th century reprise of
the. The Enlightenment. And I began a little bit earlier than that with
the rise of non-Euclidean geometries and how those Develop and how you
think about philosophy and its relation to politics and so on, but how the
changing scientific scheme of of relativity and so on, with its underlying
non-Euclidean geometry. Um, develops and so.
The theme in each of these is the relation between science and philosophy
and uh. And the wider community and it's one of the most exciting things
I've ever done is to teach that course. Um, now my guess is that the idea
, and you can tell me better than than I, um, my suspicion is that they're
no longer aiming at having three different flavors of the second semester
of the human event that's fine, um, but to have, have it rely on having a
. A body of instructors that come from different backgrounds, so that
there will be some who can meet the needs of those students who come from
science and engineering backgrounds. Um. Again, you might have noticed,
and undoubtedly you did, um, uh, that even in that course, I'm Trying to
break down the boundaries that that. have been put up by Of necessity by
well-meaning administrators, uh, dividing the world into humanities, the
sciences and the academic world from the political world and and so on, um
, and if nothing else I think the course has retained that wonderful, uh,
interdisciplinary quality, you know, trying to merge the the sciences and
the humanities and show the interrelations that exist between them as long
as it's under. As long as it's interdisciplinary rather than merely
undisciplined.
So as a transfer student, I actually took a a modified version
specifically for um upper division students. Uh, mine was taught by a
Doctor Michael Stanford, um, and as a former defense attorney, he taught
quite extensively on poetry and the law. So we read a measure for measure
by Shakespeare, we read a Snow falling on Cedars to understand more uh
comprehensively the Japanese American experience of the legal system. So
like you were saying, um, Each individual human event class is very much
molded by The I guess proclivities of the professor who's teaching it, um
, it could be about Japanese literature, the law, more poetry, more, you
know, physics, more science, and, um, that can be exciting because you
don't know exactly what you're gonna get, but it could lead to that lack
of discipline that you were talking about, um, so it's terrifying too is
the way, uh, both teaching it and or it should be taking it as well, um.
But it was among the most rewarding things that that I've done and I, uh,
very much value history. Thank you for sharing that. Um, so to briefly
move away towards something else, and this is more of a sweeping, I guess
, broader narrative of the honors college. Um, how have you seen honors
education at Barrett change from when you first came here, when it was a,
uh, Very much an afterthought, as we were saying to this very, uh, you
know, extensive program that is the model for honors colleges all
throughout America, you know, in Europe even, there are a lot of colleges
that look look at what we're doing here at Barrett. Um, so how have you
seen that, I guess, broader arc of the progress of honors college here?
It's bigger. It's better. The students are better Um, A program of
actively recruiting students and actively recruiting a wide variety of
students. Um, has enriched that program enormously. It's been well
supported by the senior administration. It's been, um. It's had the
advantage of wonderful administrators within. The, the college But um.
Somehow it has.
Caught on to what I think the students believed all along, that there's
nothing that couldn't be done if only we have the audacity to try it. um.
And so
The college itself. And to a certain extent the university as a whole, but
the college in particular.
Has the same kind of optimism. The willingness to tackle big things, the
willingness to disregard disciplinary boundaries, the, the willingness to
connect up what one does. Um,
In an intellectual way. With the broader needs of the society and the
community. We live Um,
I mean, it's, it's that that's that's made it a great institution. Um,
They say insanity is is hereditary, you get it from your children. Um, in
a way, these wonderful features are features that the college has, if
anything, gotten from its students. Um Um, one likes to think. That the
flow of information goes from us, the pro the professors to the student,
but in fact, um, the character of the place.
as encouraged as it may be by those of us who are teaching, um, but the
real character of the place comes from the character of the students that
are in. Um, and for that I will always be grateful.
So, um, 2 more questions, and the first question is continuing along this
idea of students at Barrett. Um, so can you tell me more specifically
about um honors feces that you have overseen and second to that, what is
the value of requiring undergraduate students in philosophy, or for that
matter, any field of study to complete such an undertaking because not all
honors colleges require students to put this much um effort into something
so, you know, rigorous and so challenging for its students.
Well,
I, I hate to generalize uh about the character of. Theseces and how that's
changed, but it has become a central feature and we've tried to have it
insofar as we can with the resources we've got over here even for
non-owners students, um, because it's, it is extraordinarily valuable. It
allows one to do something original. Which most classes don't. I mean, you
can have the stray original thought, but to do something original and and
to to to work on it with a depth is is is difficult under the best of
circumstances. And what the the thesis allows you to do. is to learn how
to take a big shaggy idea and. molded into a shape that you can address.
How do you turn, um,
A question or a worry into a researchable problem. And then how do you
organize, begin to organize that research and to carry it out, um.
One of the best things that ever happened to me was writing an honors
thesis, because when I went off to my. Graduate work I had already done.
Original work and what was the topic of your honor's thesis? It had to do
with meaning change in the sciences and I didn't realize it, but that
would become a a permanent thread of my work thereafter and the chair of
your thesis, their name was, uh, my, my, uh, undergraduate thesis, your
undergraduate, um, uh, officially it was Ken Pale. uh, Kenneth Pale was an
ethicist, um, who really didn't know much science. Uh, but I was helped by
people who were in the sciences. The dean of the college was a Rhodes
scholar in physics, and he said, Oh, you don't bother with the, the year
of philosophy. Don't bother with, uh, the, uh, the, the lab courses in
this. Come into my office and we'll talk about relativity. And so I would
come into this office and the dean of the whole college of the whole
institution, um. And we would talk about relativity physics and how you
could, you know, do various things, and I began to understand. In a way
that I probably wouldn't have if he hadn't taken me more or less by the
scruff of the neck and said, OK, come in here, we'll deal with it um so I
had access to faculty in a way that most. Well, most of the other people
who had gone to graduate school with me didn't, they had come from fancy
institutions. Uh, many of them. Um, and they had been allowed to talk
primarily with DAs. Um, And they had letters from impressive people
undoubtedly, but I had done some of them. Uh, I had worried a problem
through and it was, I'm sure quite idiosyncratic and very weird and very
strange and, uh, I'm not sure would have been recognized as professional
and all that sort of stuff, um, but I had worked it through. And in
philosophy, that's an enormous advantage. Uh, to have done this, it gives
you the sense that maybe I can do it again. Um, and so, um. My I had that
advantage. I was scared to death in graduate school, but I had that
advantage is that I had done something and carried it through. And the
depth and originality of an honors thesis at Barrett. Is more than enough
reason. Um, these don't have to be deathless works of literature. They
have to help the student grow. And to convince the student that, yeah, I
can do this. And uh I can do it again and I can do it better. Um, and if
the student learns nothing else in the process of writing a thesis, and
I'm talking about whether it's honors, uh, Barrett honors thesis or one of
the Capstow and papers, that's, that's more than just a term paper in any
other field. Um, it's an enormously valuable experience. Um, we have
graduate courses in How to develop a prospectus, how to think about
managing your research, and so on. There was no such thing for me in
graduate school. There was no such thing for me as an undergraduate. Uh, I
sort of had to pick it up on my own. Um,
And Having a set of willing able mentors. To guide that process. Um, And
they'll each bring different skills to bear on it, just as the student
will, but having a project that's ambitious, Um, is an enormous benefit.
Whether they go on in the field or not, whether they, they, and in many
cases, I know students are going on in entirely different fields than what
they're doing. But they're asking an interesting question. And they're
providing an interesting answer. And that answer is going to be
problematic in various ways, and they will have.
If properly mentored, had their feet held to the fire until they
recognized that there are problems, um, and.
Cope with them as best they can and that is an absolutely invaluable
experience, um, that is perhaps the most relevant thing. That happens in a
university.
Taking courses. Taking the exams, um. Looking at the answers in the back
of the book and then going and learning to to write proper answers that
answer the question and so that's those are all valuable skills and you
get a lot of information and so on but that's not what's gonna happen
later in life. I mean whether you're going in as an academic or not or
you're going on to business, um, whatever questions there are and there
are many, uh. Well, life does not come with answers at the back of the
book. Um, it requires you to say, OK.
How, what's the problem and how can we deal with it? And you're gonna have
to be able to see that there are alternatives. You're going to have to be
able to weigh them. And you're going to that then have to persuade people
with different perspectives that this way of weighing the alternatives is
the best we can do. And
That's called research. That's what you learn to do in an honors thesis.
You ask an interesting question to which You have at least not yet found
the answer. You try to see what some of the alternatives for answering
that question are. Um, in that case, looking at literature or what other
people have done is enormously valuable. But if it answers the question by
itself answers the question, then your question wasn't very interesting in
the first ones certainly wasn't very original, um. And so You begin to
weigh the evidence that you're given. Weigh the alternatives that are. And
then to persuade the reader that this is a good way of thinking about the
problem that's the most practical thing I can think of and that's what it
has to be profound, right? um, it doesn't have to answer all of the
questions of the universe, um, it has to answer one of them, preferably an
interesting question, um, but that's what life is going to demand of you.
That's what family life is going to demand of you. That's what living in
the community is gonna demand of you, and that's what being at work,
regardless of what your work is, is going to demand of you and. It's an
enormously valuable skill and you can't start too soon or practice too
often. That's applicable to all these different aspects of life. Yes,
that's a great way of looking at it. And that's why research, that's why
professors doing research themselves is absolutely essential for their
teaching, because you wouldn't want to hire a guide. Who's never Been
through the territory who's never tried to organize terra incognita into
some sort of intelligible something or other who hasn't learned to map the
territory and so that's the skill we want to communicate and that's the
skill that professors need to bring to bear. And that's what research is.
It's not the particular news of that research that's important. It's the
having. Organized or having mapped terra incognito, that's a valuable
skill that we need to teach. So for my final question, well, first of all
, you've been um enormously generous in sharing your, your knowledge of
Barrett and Arizona State University, so thank you for that. And for my
final question of you, I'd like to simply invite you to think toward the
future. And thinking toward the future, what do you hope that your legacy
will be, your legacy, uh, for students who come to bear it or come to ASU
, you know, 1020 years from now, you know, generations from now, and study
philosophy. You know, when they think of your contributions, what would
you like them to think, think about?
Some of the things we've talked talked on already, uh, but. I would like
them to.
Be able to see that.
There are different perspectives, different points of view, even at a very
basic level. Um,
And that it's, I think the assumptions that one brings to bear the
perspective and so on. This is not a matter of truth or falsity, it's a
matter of how well they work as a practical matter, how how they allow us
to navigate around the problems. I'd like to have students have a kind of.
Appropriate modesty.
About the ambitions of philosophy. Um, it may be that philosophers once
thought that they could answer all of the questions of the universe. I
don't think they can. Um, and so I would like to see them. Appropriately
modest, and that's not to say, uh, wringing their hands, but, um,
appropriately modest and appropriately ambitious as well. I want to see
them attack the Big questions and the questions that have tentacles that
go out all. Over the place.
I'd like to see them Be appropriately skeptical about the latest fashions.
Philosophical fashions, I mean, intellectual fashions more generally, uh
, uh, even old fashioned, um, I mean, I work on two characters from the
mid and late 20th century, um. But if I thought that they answered all the
questions. Of the universe, um.
I would, I think I would be making a dreadful mistake. Um, and to think
that some philosopher, however new or late, is the answer to all the
questions is, is, I think, a problem. We tend to have this problem. In
philosophy, in particular, perhaps, uh, about the latest fashions in
philosophy, in part because there isn't the kind of hard evidence that
we're forced to wrestle with, uh, in the way that physics or chemistry or
biology or psychology might be. So, I'd like to see a certain amount of
skepticism about Whatever it is that's popular these days, uh, maybe it's
just that I'm a contrarian, um, maybe I just, you know, tell me to do
something, I do the opposite. Um, maybe that goes with the territorial
philosophy, I don't know. But I'd also like to see flossers.
Rather than knowing more and more about less and less.
Be willing to connect what they. Do Um, with broad intellectual interests
and broad political, social, and.
Other community community interests. Um, That is to say, connect up with
science, um, and you don't, I don't think you have to be a philosopher of
science to think of it that way. What do we know? How do we know? Um, it
seems to me a pretty basic philosophical.
Question or collection of questions, um. What's knowledge in history? Like
, what's knowledge in. Art history or psychology, what's uh what's
knowledge in ordinary life? Um, How does that then connect up with the
other dimensions of our lives, um, the aesthetic ones, art. I've, over the
last few days I've had a chance to go to the National Gallery in
Washington and to several other art galleries. Uh, I find it. Ever a
source of enlightenment, um. And to try and think about. Connecting my
work with the broad
Themes of of human endeavor, um, that are. Um,
That are represented there. But there are so many aspects of life outside
of philosophy. I think it's important not only to try and integrate all of
the various philosophic issues, but to integrate them into a larger
picture of our place in the world.
So, um.
Those are a lot of ambitions that I'd like. Um, if I can make a small
contribution to that, um, move us. An inch Or perhaps more scientifically
a millimeter. Um, in that direction. Uh, I would figure that it's a career
well spent. Well, that is an excellent place to stop. Uh, thank you,
Professor Crieff, for your participation. If you have any more thoughts to
share later, please feel free to reach out. And if you have any questions
regarding this interview or the 30th anniversary oral history project,
please contact Vicetein Nifo. Thank you. Thank you.
Make sure I stop this correctly.