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American culture has always had an anti-intellectual component. The country was initially settled by merchants and religious fanatics, two groups not exactly kn
by rdouble 15y ago
American culture has always had an anti-intellectual component. The country was initially settled by merchants and religious fanatics, two groups not exactly known for intellectual curiosity. What's more interesting is how successful intellectuals have been in this country, considering half the population has generally held them in contempt.
This book is a bit dated but is a pretty good history of American anti-intellectualism:
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170 http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Ric...
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago> What's more interesting is how successful intellectuals have been in this country They've been successful at delivering concrete, immediate results. Fundamental science at the highest levels is usually done elsewhere.
- sidww2 15y agoThat used to be the case in the past. However with the increased government expenditure on basic science in the wake of the cold war, more of the fundamental science did happen in the US (foundations of CS, foundations of Crypto, lot of AI & ML, string theory, lot of work in Math, etc.). Now with the decreasing focus on the funding of science, fundamental research (especially in high energy physics but in other areas too) is again shifting to other places like Canada, Europe, Israel, China and Australia.
- ckg 15y agoI wonder if this has anything to do with the shifting of industrial jobs to other countries as well? Maybe when more tangible goods were being produced in the US there was a higher respect for science/engineering, which is in large part a study of the tangible (or physical). Now that many jobs in the US are financial, legal, etc. there's more of a disconnect between what people see as the basis of the economy and what scientists are studying.
- eli_gottlieb 15y agoI can say for a fact that Israel has very little heavy industry of its own, but its tech sector competes with agriculture for #1 sector in the economy and its R&D spending as a percentage of GDP is (IIRC) first in the world.