Barbara points out that I’m perhaps over-generalizing in my earlier rant on conformity in academia, and that also perhaps I’ve elided the actual point.

If I were to sum up my concern, it’s the paucity of varieties of work in academic and industrial research. Not a cry about the monotony of personae or approaches, nor any worry about social activism.

But the…well the fact of monopoly. You get right down to it, there is exactly one life-course for a scientist. Or a historian. Or an engineer. You’re either merely an Amateur, or you’re on The Track.

You can tell those in The Track. I see them on the street, in this college town, and I know immediately what they do from the way they dress. Nine times out of ten, I can pick the campus they’re from (artsy, engineery, undregraddy, &c). Barbara thinks this might be different in other parts of the country or world, and might be different in the West especially. I don’t know; that might be a dilution effect, merely caused by mingling with laymen in big cities, or the practical necessity of Not Wearing Black in the Desert that makes professionals in Albuquerque look a bit more like paleontologists.

At any rate, what worries me is that the social and cultural norms that dictate appearance must also dictate worldview, worklife, options. I’m worried about the heretics.

The Academy really is the sort of monopoly that ended badly, back in the days of the Reformation.

And my question is not whether it exists. My question is: What will happen when it starts to break down?

Which it will. And soon.