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Dawkin's Law: Why Most Academic Writing Sucks

Aug 24, 2010
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» Dawkin's Law: Why Most Academic Writing Sucks

From Richard Dawkins’ introduction to A Devil’s Chaplain:

Dawkin’s Law of the Conservation of Difficulty states that obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity. Physics is a genuinely difficult and profound subject, so physicists need to —and do— work hard to make their language as simple as possible (‘but no simpler,’ rightly insisted Einstein.) Other academics —some would point the finger at continental schools of literary criticism and social science— suffer from what Peter Medawar called Physics Envy. They want to be thought profound, but their subject is actually rather easy and shallow, so they have to language it up to redress the balance.

From “Postmodernism Disrobed”:

Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.

Or as David Byrne sings in “Psycho Killer”:

You’re talking a lot
but you’re not saying anything
When I have nothing to say
my lips are sealed

But let’s be clear: there is plenty of shitty writing going on in the sciences, too.

Via “Deep Simplicity: A Personal Graphics Manifesto (Part 2)” by Alberto Cairo, a piece in which he’s pointing out the needless jumble of a lot of infographics floating around out there.

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28 notes

  1. artlistpro reblogged this from notational
  2. start-anywhere said: i guess this is a thing, but i think it’s only fair to allow that some complex thoughts—especially new ones—are so far outside of what’s familiar that complex (and yes even bad) writing is the only possible place to start.
  3. hureya reblogged this from austinkleon
  4. newsdrip reblogged this from notational
  5. jennider reblogged this from notational
  6. notational reblogged this from austinkleon
  7. silver-age said: This is the main reason that translating the playwright’s monologues has driven me nuts: talking loud and saying NOTHING. And he seems to think he’s deep and intellectual, and taking aim at pretentiousness…oh the irony.
  8. austinkleon posted this