A Tribute to Alan Saunders

 "To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die."
Cicero (cited in Michel de Montaigne, 1575: Book 1, Chapter 19)

I am rarely impressed by entertainers, journalists, media personals. But Alan Saunders impressed me greatly. For me, he was not merely a journalist, or a radio presenter, but a philosopher, a teacher, an artist. We never met, but he is one of my great teachers.

I cherish, treasure, and collect his programme (Philosopher’s Zone podcast). I love and adore his discussions. I study and listen regularly repeatedly reverently.

I am never scared of death. And I am rarely moved by death of anyone. But his unexpected sudden death made me felt sad, lost, unhappy, a bit angry. He could easily produced many great, valuable works on philosophers and philsophy.

Dr Alan Saunders fell ill, while working on his program The Philosopher's Zone on Thursday afternoon (14th June 2012), and was taken to hospital where his condition deteriorated overnight. He died of pneumonia in hospital on Friday morning (15th June 2012) surrounded by colleagues and friends (ABC Radio, 2012). He was only 58.

There is a tribute program (Tribute to the Philosophical Alan Saunders) made for him. At this programme, philosopher Martha Nussbaum, from the University of Chicago, who was interviewed by Alan a number of times for the program said

"Alan Saunders was a prince among broadcasters. Of all the journalists I've ever met, he had the deepest love of, and also understanding of, philosophy, and his passion for ideas made doing a program with him a highlight of one's year -- even long distance by phone, and even more in person in the studio. What he brought to public discussion was priceless."

Alan Saunders attending the Food for Thought forum, National Portrait Gallery,

Canberra, 5 March 2005 (Loui Seselja; courtesy).

Image from http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/tribute-to-the-philosophical-alan-saunders/4080066

In A picture of Alan Saunders (in memoriam), W H Chong wrote
I can’t recall that he was ever pompous, or self-regarding — how rare! In that way he was a kind of bodhisattva, an already enlightened being who elected to stay on this plane to help others find their way. To make a weekly offering of possible meanings in our shattering, uncentred and materialistic time seems to me an act of faith, a work of unusual generosity of energy.

In In memoriam: Dr Alan Saunders, Amanda Armstrong, an acting station manager of ABC Radio National program, says Dr Saunders had an extraordinary mind.
“He was equally at home talking about Plato, the role of vampires in popular culture or the history of the restaurant. He wrote like an angel, and had a deep knowledge of music, among many other areas, including philosophy, gastronomy, architecture, design and film."

Andrewk, Inexhaustibly Curious, beautifully wrote "Death of Alan Saunders" at Philosopher Forums
"He had an open mind, a calm, genial demeanour, a pleasant voice and a keen curiosity about all things philosophical and scientific, as well as a number of other topics - he also broadcast shows on architecture, design and food. He was very good at explaining complex concepts in simple terms and he had an endearing habit of always interjecting when one of his guest philosophers mentioned a name in passing, such as "Ayer disagreed with this", to say "you mean the 20th century British philosopher AJ Ayer", for the benefit of his listeners. He was always focused on keeping the discussion intelligbile to his listeners."

I will take time and make efforts to write a proper blog about him.


Reference

ABC Radio (2012) ABC Radio philosopher Alan Saunders dies. ABC Radio online, Jun 16, 2012. Retrieved on August 24, 2012 from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-15/abc-radio-philosopher-alan-saunders-dies/4073618

Montaigne, M. D. (1575) Essays (translated by Charles Cotton, 1877). Retrieved on August 27, 2012 http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/montaigne/montaigne-essays--5.html#XVII.


Links on Alan Saunders

Alan Saunders's Keynote Speech "Dare to Know"

His keynote address “Dare to Think” delivered at the VAPS (Victorian Association for Philosophy in Schools) Conference in June 2011.

ABC Radio philosopher Alan Saunders dies
In memoriam: Dr Alan Saunders, FAPSA 
Alan Saunders (broadcaster) (Wikipedia)
A picture of Alan Saunders (in memoriam)
A tale of two journalists: of Alan Saunders, Andrew Bolt and the contempt News Ltd publications has for people “like me”

On Researchal Significancy

Have you ever got a thought, at least fortuitously, that one day findings from your research, which is boring, demanding, exacting that you have been doing for ages, all alone, through being broke so often, unnoticed and unimpressed by people around you perhaps those include your spouse or your girl-friend or boy-friend, even your parents, brothers or sisters, or your comrades, or your pastors or monks or boring Pope, or your government, your opposition, will, forever, for once and for all, change the way we understand about our lives or the nature, or improve our living standards exponentially or the way our government perform its task that actually serve our interest, or provide the better ways to treat or cure the diseases? (I know, I know, my sentence is too long. But remember Keynes’ General Theory is also badly organised and difficult to read. In fact, according to one of his greatest admirers, Paul Samuelson, who was also an author of very famous economic text book, Keynes' General Theory is "badly written, poorly organised .... it is arrogant, bad-tempered, polemical and not overly generous in its acknowledgements. It abounds in mare's nests and confusions". However, he continues, "in short, it is a work of genius" (cited in Moggridge, 1992, cited again in Strathern, 2002: 281. I am going to write a lot of posts on Keynes.).

Image from Barnes & Noble,

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/general-theory-of-employment-interest-and-money-john-maynard-keynes/1100156669?ean=9780230004764

Trust me, never, ever, forever underestimate the significant of your research that you love dearly, you are so passionate about, you live with it, sleep with it, and have been giving up everything just for it.

It might not happen suddenly, but it will really have invaluable impact in one way or another as long as you believe in yourselves and in what you are researching correctly, professionally, diligently.

With that belief, single-mindedness, and gigantic crazy dream, with a little bit of arroganceness, I stick to my research and my writings, no matter what.

Let’s see one example to support my argument.

It was happened about 80 years ago: to be precise, it was on February 13, 1929.

The place was at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.

It was just a normal research paper reading at the Medical Research Club.

The paper was read by (oh!, no, I will not tell the name of the researcher, but I will do it later.)

The audience at the club was apathetic. No one showed any enthusiasm for the paper.  As Leedy and Ormrod (2001: 43) rightly observe, “great research has frequently been presented to those who are imaginatively both blind and deaf.” (Now, I understand why research grant organizations are not so keen about my research. They are just imaginatively blind and deaf. All of them will be greatly regretful for being uninterested to grant research grants for my research project.)

Although his colleague and audience at the club were indifferent, unimpressed, and apathetic, he knew the value of what he had done, what he had found from his research.  He knew how significant his research outcome really is.

It was actually one of the greatest moments in 20^th-century medical research (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001: 43).

Fifteen years later from that day the researcher read his paper to imaginatively blind and deaf audience, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine, together with two other researchers. It was in 1945.

His name is Alexander Fleming, or Dr Alexander Fleming, or Sir Alexander Fleming.

Fleming (centre) receiving the Nobel prize from King Gustaf V of Sweden (right) in 1945.

Image from the Wikimedia Commons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nobelpristagare_Fleming_Midi.jpg

The paper he read at the club was about his research on penicillin. It was in fact presentation of one of the most significant research reports of the early 20th century.

Fleming was named by Time magazine, in 1999, as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century for his discovery of penicillin, by stating that “it was a discovery that would change the course of history. … the most efficacious life-saving drug in the world, penicillin would alter forever the treatment of bacterial infections” (Time, 29 March 1999).

The procedures of great research (Nobel research, in my term) are exactly the same as those of what we, students, follow in doing our dissertation, thesis, research report. “All research begins with a problem, an observation, a question. Curiosity is the germinal seed.

     Hypotheses are formulated.

     Data are gathered.

     Conclusions are reached” (Leedy & Ormrod, 2001: 44).

(I did try to paraphrase, but the original composition is so beautiful and so perfect. So I gave up. It’s better to quote directly, faithfully :-)

(I am going to tell about Charles Goodyear soon, who lived his whole life, and gave up everything just for a single purpose.)

References

Moggridge, D. (1992) Maynard Keynes: An Economist’s Biography. London: Routledge. According to Strathern (2002), it is the best single-volume biography of Keynes’ life, times and ideas.

Leedy, P. D. and Ormrod, J. E. (2001) Practical Research: Planning and Design (7^th Ed). Upper Saddle River (New Jersey): Merrill Prentice Hall.

Strathern, P. (2002) Dr Strangelove’s Game: A Brief History of Economic Genius. London: Penguin.

Note: The previous title was given as “Significance of Research”, but I felt that it was so boring and then tried to be creative and got that new title; it sounds like so Latin. I am also so pleased with my coincency: I again got that new term deriving from ‘coin’.

Harold Dwight Lasswell

 

Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902-1978)

Image from Yale Library 
http://images.library.yale.edu/madid_size3/22593/010635.jpg

Various intellectual methodological approaches such as interviewing techniques, content analysis, para-experimental techniques, and statistical measurement were originated, developed and applied by Lasswell long before these methodologies become standards, and famous across a variety of intellectual traditions that all of us, students and researchers are taken for granted.

Harold Dwight Lasswell is seen by many as the father of policy sciences. He was a prolific author, and authored over 30 books and 250 articles. "He was the most original and productive political scientist of his time" (Almond, 1987: 249).

Marvlck (1980: 219) states that “throughout the half century of his career, Harold D. Lasswell remained an intellectual iconoclast.” In a biographical memorial written by Gabriel Almond at the time of Lasswell's death (1978), Lasswell "ranked among the half dozen creative innovators in the social sciences in the twentieth century." (Almond, 1987: 249).

It was Lasswell who coined the term “the policy sciences,” (Farr, Hacker & Kazee, 2006: 1) now this phrase is all over the world of academic and research. In his book, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, Lasswell (1938) states that politics is the resolution of conflict over “who gets what, when, how?”

Image from Amazon 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/1258035707/ref=dp_image_text_0/177-4538592-9248563?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

According to Lasswell (1942), the liberal, democratic state did not succeed in harmonizing professed ideal and effective policy, partly because in the policy process, the democratic elements in the ideal were left undeveloped. Some shortcomings of liberal, democratic states have been failures of policy and intelligence. The paper stresses the important and critical role of intelligence (which has been neglected) in the policy process and analysis.

Marvlck (1980: 229) beautifully states that “Lasswell's approach was substantive; his concerns were humane; his influence has been cumulative. In his lifetime, he did a great deal. He did it all in a style that was inimitable and memorable”.

Lasswell (1971: 3) affirmed of his intellectual credo as follow:

Surely the qualified scientist is a participant observer of events who tries to see things as they are. He demands of himself, and of anyone who purports to be a scientist, that he suppresses no relevant fact and that he holds all explanations tentatively, and therefore open to revision if more adequate explanations are proposed . . . . Anyone worthy of the name of scientist must be able to struggle with considerable success against jealousy, envy, bigotry, and any other attitude that interferes with clarity of perception and judgment.

According to Encyclopedia of World Biography (2004), there is no biographical study of Lasswell. Perhaps one of us should do it.

(There are many things to talk about Lasswell, I will continue it later. I have to do other things :-))

References

Almond, G. A. (1987) Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902-1978):  A Biographical Memoir. Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved May 4, 2012, from http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/hlasswell.pdf

Encyclopedia of World Biography (2004), Harold Dwight Lasswell. Retrieved May 04, 2012 from http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404703735.html

Farr, J. S., Hacker, J. S. & Kazee, N. (2006) The Policy Scientist of Democracy: The Discipline of Harold D. Lasswell. In American Political Science Review, Vol. 100, No. 4 November. 2006. Retrieved May 4, 2012, from http://www2.lse.ac.uk/CPNSS/events/Abstracts/HIstoryofPoswarScience/Farr%20et%20al%20final%20proof.pdf

Lasswell, H. D. (1938) Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Lasswell, H. D. (1942) The Relation of Ideological Intelligence to Public Policy. In Ethics, Vol. 53, No. 1, Oct., 1942. pp. 25-34. Retrieved March 10, 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2988844.

Lasswell, Harold D. (1971). A Pre-View of the Policy Sciences. New York: American Elsevier.

Marvlck, D. (1980) The Work of Harold D. Lasswell: His Approach, Concerns, and Influence. In Political Behavior. Vol. 2, No. 3, 1980. New York: Agathon Press (pp. 219-229). Retrieved May 4, 2012, from www.springerlink.com/index/x0424l58h207167m.pdf

Edith M. Stokey

Edith M. Stokey (1923-2012),

Photo credit: Tom Fitzsimmons.

Image from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/articles/stokey-tribute

Edith Stokey is considered one of the founders of Harvard Kennedy (Harvard Kennedy School, 2012). She is an economist, teacher, administrator, and a true believer in the Kennedy School’s mission, i.e., “to train enlightened public leaders and to generate the ideas that provide the solutions to our most challenging public problems” (Harvard University, 2012; Harvard Kennedy School, 2012).

In 1971 she returned to Harvard to pursue a Ph.D. in economics, but she was asked by Richard J. Zeckhauser, a professor of political economy at the Kennedy School, to lecture in microeconomics and work as a secretary at the fledgling graduate school of government at Harvard. Then, she become too busy with the dual position as lecturer and secretary, and abandoned her PhD plan (Miraval, 2012).

Since then, she taught microeconomics as well as public sector operations research to many generations of Kennedy School students (Harvard University, 2012) and served as secretary of the school and associate academic dean for over 40 years. She worked with many deans, serving as a councilor on many subjects to each. Stokey helped shape many aspects of today’s curriculum (Harvard Kennedy School, 2012). She died on 16 January 2012. She was 88

In 1978, Stokey and Zeckhauser co-wrote a book entitled “A Primer for Policy Analysis” that is still taught in public policy courses around the world and is still widely influential in public administration.



Image from Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Primer-Policy-Analysis-Edith-Stokey/dp/images/0393090981



In their book, Stokey and Zeckhauser argue that policy-making decisions are economic decisions and economic theory is applicable to policy-making.

The book is divided into three parts: the foundations of an economic framework for policy analysis, models and methods of analysis, and the goals of policy-making. In the Part 2, it introduces a variety of tools of policy analysis such as queues, simulations, benefit-cost analysis.  The Part 3 discusses on the government's role when the market fails, addressing social welfare, and putting policy analysis to work.

However, the critics argue that it is grounded on the utilitarianism that has been subjected to fatal criticisms in the philosophical literature and market failure approach to public policy has severe limitations and can often be misleading (Brown, 1992: 1, 3).

It is a difficult but outstanding book. Even though it is three decades old now, it is still a major resource for the policy analyst.


References

Brown, P. G. (1992) The Failure of Market Failures. In The Journal of Socio-Economics, Vol. 21, No. 1. pp. 1-24. Retrieved March 15, 2012, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/105353579290022Y

Harvard Kennedy School (2012) Giving Society Profiles. (Online). Retrieved April 19, 2012, from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/giving/honor_roll_of_donors/profiles

Harvard University (2012) (Online). Edith Stokey, 1923-2012. In Harvard Gazette, 18 January 2012. Retrieved April 19, 2012, from http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/newsplus/edith-stokey-1923-2012/

Miraval, N. R. (2012) Kennedy School "Founding Mother" Dies at 88. In The Harvard Crimson, 27 January 2012. Retrieved March 10, 2012, from http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/1/27/Stokey-HKS-Obituary/

Stokey, E. & Zeckhauser, R. (1978) A Primer for Policy Analysis. New York: WW Norton & Company Inc.