Chapter Two: Rise of the Amateur, Continued

Excuse the extended pause. There was a little uncertainty about whether excerpting the book on Crowdsourcing.com, but that's been resolved and now we're back on track. The best argument for doing this is the quality of the comments I received on my first excerpt. So without further delay, I offer you another selection from my second chapter, after the jump.

The Reign of the Dilettante 

Although the technologies behind this latest surge in amateur activity are new, the impulse itself has a venerable history. Before the age of television or spectator sports, recreation took forms scarcely recognizable to us today. So it comes as some surprise to learn that botany—the collecting, identifying and classification of all manner of flora—ranked as one of the most popular pastimes of the 19th Century. Calling themselves “botanizers ,” legions of amateurs fanned out across the abundant American forests, marshes, prairies and deserts armed with guidebooks and specimen cases. Amateur botanists discovered a vast number of new species, and were duly encouraged and mentored by the few professional botanists working at the time.

All that changed in the twilight of the century, when botany filled with ranks of professionals increasingly jealous of their amateur counterpart’s contributions and dismissive of their abilities. In 1897 the professionals succeeded in having “nature study” removed from the academic curricula of American high schools, resulting in an immediate diminishing of interest in the field. Amateurs, it was felt, sullied an otherwise upstanding academic discipline. By the early years of the 20th Century botany along with the other sciences, had become professionalized.

More than a century of a professionalized academy has helped obscure the amateur roots of the arts and sciences, which evolved through the accomplishments of men and women who wore the mantle of amateur with great pride, and would have considered being called a professional an insult. Francis Bacon is one of the founding fathers of modern science, the inventor of the scientific method. But science was really something of a sideline for Bacon, who was better known in his time as a lawyer, writer, politician, courtier and rumored pederast.

He was also an aristocrat, and in England as throughout Europe, the aristocracy abhorred the pursuit of any profession, the acquisition of money through labor being seen as a strictly lower class endeavor. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake—not particular knowledge but knowledge in the broadest sense—was commended and admired. Naturally, the only people who could afford to indulge in such time-consuming, and unpaid, intellectual toil, were the wealthy. To the extent scientific collaboration, so crucial to the progress of understanding, existed at all, it was in the form of gentleman’s clubs. Academic journals were nonexistent.

The progenitor of Britain’s prestigious Royal Society was known as the Invisible College. Inspired by Bacon’s crowning work, Novum Organum, in 1646 a group of philosophers, doctors and amateur astronomers and mathematicians formed an “institution of learning” they called “the Invisible College.” Colloquies were conducted via the mail, without benefit or need of the academies, which at any rate were largely devoted to preparing well-heeled young men headed for the legal courts or the parsonage. The invisible college’s purpose was to “acquire knowledge through experimental investigation,” and its members included some of the leading intellectual lights of the era, including Robert Hooke (inventor of the microscope), Robert Boyle (the founder of modern chemistry) and Sir Christopher Wren (whose fame as an architect overshadows his contributions to geometry and astronomy.) These men were dilettantes, a word that carried a positive connotation in their day. Today we would consider them amateurs. This state of affairs was no less dominant in the arts. To cite but one example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is remembered for the philosophical tracts that helped inspire the French Revolution, but in his day he was as well known for his comic operas, verse and works of fiction.

By 1660 the invisible college had become institutionalized, and was renamed the Royal Society. For the next one hundred years Royal Society members—amateurs all, by our contemporary definition—were responsible for some of the greatest advances in human knowledge. But the amateur ideal, embodied in the form of the gentleman scholar, was not to last. The death knell was sounded as early as 1776 when Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a central thesis of which rested on the principle of specialization of the vocations. “The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable (sic) increase of the productive powers of labour,” wrote Smith. Increasing industrialization led, as Smith predicted it would, to the reduction of every man’s business to “some one simple operation.”

By the 19th Century universities were beginning to replace the aristocracy as the primary source of funding for research, and a class of professional academic emerged in the growing American and European university systems. This process of professionalization led to the spread of more rigorous methodologies, and an animus developed toward the tradition of dilettantism in the sciences as well as in the arts, which with the emergence of a commercial market were also becoming increasingly professionalized. In 1830 the mathematician and philosopher Charles Babbage wrote a polemic entitled Reflections on the Decline of Science in England and on Some of its Causes that accused the Royal Society of slipping into decrepitude and philistinism by catering to its richest and often most indifferent members. By contrast, Napoleon had given France a flourishing system of academies that promoted merit and specialization. Divorced from its traditional patrons, these academies owed their existence strictly to government funds.

Babbage’s essay had a lasting influence. In 1831 the British Association for the Advancement of Science was founded to counteract the stultifying influence of the gentlemanly culture of the Royal Society, which was administered by unpaid (and generally untrained) men whose only claim to accreditation was a purported interest in the subject. The experience of Charles Darwin is more typical than not. At a young age Darwin had already become fascinated with botany, and carried this interest into college. But his father—an eminent doctor—insisted his son pursue a career in either religion or law. But times had already changed by the mid-19th Century, and the younger Darwin was able to convince his father to let him go on his fateful journey on the HMS Beagle by pointing to the increasingly respectable community of scientific professionals.

As the 19th Century progressed Smith’s theories concerning the division of labor manifested as the industrial revolution, in which workers migrated to the cities to perform ever more specialized functions, finally reaching an elegant, and stunningly efficient apogee on the Dearborn, Michigan assembly lines of Henry Ford’s automobile plants. But by the first decades of the 1900s a division of labor had appeared in the academy as well, culminating in the establishment of the modern research university. Now a clear distinction took hold between undergraduate education and the scholarship professors were expected to undertake in a rapidly multiplying number of disciplines.

Yet even as the arts and sciences found themselves Balkanized, undergraduate curricula continued to emphasize the Renaissance ideal of an earlier, pre-industrial era. Tailored toward the education of the upper classes, universities were expected to produce “well-rounded” young men who would proceed to white-shoe law firms and corporate offices. Our universities are still essentially artifacts from the Renaissance period, representative of a time when the model citizen could wield the pen, the plough and the protractor with equal aptitude. And that’s a good thing. It makes for interesting, and interested, individuals. But such individuals will seek out rewarding lives full of meaningful labor. Which is where crowdsourcing comes in.

Comments

[Alan]

The new excerpt is very beautifully written Jeff!

I am resisting the strong urge to go on a long rant about educational principles and today’s educational policies and policy makers “Our universities are still essentially artifacts from the Renaissance period, representative of a time when the model citizen could wield the pen, the plough and the protractor with equal aptitude,” but will resist with all my will.

Suffice it to say that the ploughs are rusting away and the emphasis on knowledge, “not particular knowledge but knowledge in the broadest sense,” is dead in the water. Today’s focus is overly emphasized upon results rather than the journey we might embark upon to get there. We are all, almost trancelike, being shifted away from that which sustains us and should provide for future generations. Alas the earth no longer feels the bite of the plough or the hand and hoof that guided it. Ask your friends how many days of last year where spent with nature. Our relationship to the earth and nature has been greatly diminished.

The foundational thoughts you have laid in this second gift excerpt are manifold. It does appear clear to me that the unfolding movements from the 19th century to today’s almost fanatical regard for specialization is both frightening and dangerous. Therein might indeed lay the seeds that have given rise to amateurism.

The double edged sword of contemporary working conditions that are predominately shaped and fashioned by economic forces and of course recent technologies might have provided both the impediment and impetus for the shift of interests, interest in matters of the heart rather than the pull of materialism.

Some are able to combine both the love of their chosen profession and their livelihood but the numbers must be insignificant!

Amateurs are but just the tip of an iceberg, those who are willing to glance at a dream rather than at only material security. At least that’s my take!

Congratulations on the really great research and writing Jeff.

Regards, Alan

[Jeremy]

Very nice - the example of botanists is very apropos.

I think that you make a very valuable effort in placing this "new" crowdsourcing movement in the proper historical and sociological context. People have always had various interests, and diversity of activity has been the rule rather than the exception in our history.

I think that an examination of the "industrialization" of human effort is valuable, but to say that "Increasing industrialization led, as Smith predicted it would, to the reduction of every man’s business to 'some one simple operation'" is oversimplifying things. After all, there are many, many vocations that cannot be broken down in this manner.

Overall, it looks great.

[Matt Greeley]

Jeff,

Very interesting...the historical perspective on these 'new' themes and trends is very helpful.

Also -as expected- deftly articulated and erudite.

I wonder if ill you be delving into the economic fundamentals of the knowledge/information economy vs the industrial age later in the book.

Matt

[Steve Petersen]

Jeff,

As I read about the scientific amateurs you spotlight here, I was wondering about those involved in medicine. While I'm sure that not all shamen or witch doctors lacked "formal" training, did most of these people decide to take these roles upon themselves without any kind of training? Of course, would you consider the shaman or witch doctor an amateur? Was there any formal instruction for such individuals?

How about fortune tellers and psychics? I'm sure that we all enjoyed people who used their supposed intuition at parties and in conversations.

[Alan]

Hey Steve here is an interesting post, Andrew Taylor takes it on: http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/069272.php
http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/069498.php

And here is more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_amateurs

I do wonder if the shaman, witch doctor, fortune tellers and psychics really belong in the amateur or pro-am category, or if the shaman and witch doctor should even be lumped together with the fortune tellers and psychics? I had better get my Tarot Cards out and have a look!

Regards, Alan

[David Andersson]

Have you considered in any of the chapters the fact that the consumer has consumed the amateur?

My point is that in many crowded places in the world almost everything can be bought, hired or rented. People don't make their own t-shirts, they buy them from Threadless (which is often highlighted as THE community for amateur democracy); people don't make their sauce, they mix water and scented powder etc.

Once I do indulge in something, like painting rather than buying this awesome poster from k10k.net, I get uplifted and wonder how come this feeling is so strange for me. My conclusion is that I very seldom do craft with my own hands.

Designing web sites, making cool AI's I upload to Threadless, both me and my friends are very creative by the computer, but often lack not the skill as much as the time of doing practical/crafty stuff by our selves. Also the pure amount of ready-made really neat stuff in a random store where the price of the product actually is less than would I make it myself.

Another thought: Will there be references in the book? After reading The Wisdom of Crowds I was very content of being able to double check some facts as well as delving deeper to some of the covered topics.

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[Steve Petersen]

Hey Alan,

Thanks for those links. I agree that the standard definitions in this realm that deal with training, skills, and paid vs. unpaid status are far from perfect in differentiating between professionals and amateurs.

[Monica Hamburg]

Crowdsourcing are necessarily unfulfilled by their work.

However, I am inclined to agree with David (commenting above) that we rarely craft things on our own any longer and that there is a tremendous satisfaction in creating... Funding, and more critically, respect, for the arts (and artists) is rapidly declining (on both a government and societal level). As such, creativity and creative individuals often find themselves having to choose between passion and livelihood. In these instances, it is unsurprising that people with a creative bent are yearning to flex their muscles and are using Crowdsourcing as an outlet. Without going on a rant here (as I am often apt to do), I think it is essential that our society addresses the long-term implications of making “creativity” an afterthought and appraising it so low.

I theorize that Crowdsourcing is becoming the “above-ground” “underground”: people with talents (artistic, scientific etc.) are yearning to create and gain acceptance for their abilities. While the underground moment in many of these fields has been, and continues to produce staggeringly impressive work, Crowdsourcing, in some cases, is giving individuals and communities the option of being their talents into the light. Is this “mainstage” ideal? That remains to be seen. The accessibility is uniquely Web 2.0 - the propensity for exploitation of the populace isn’t.

- Monica Hamburg http://monicahamburg.wordpress.com/category/1/ and http://www.onedegree.ca/monica_hamburg/index.html

[Monica Hamburg]

Sorry, the above comment didn't post in its entirety. It should begin:

Hi Jeff,

Once again, wonderfully researched and written.

I wonder, however, about the way in which this section concludes: a fairly general (and possibility inaccurate) note, especially: “... It makes for interesting, and interested, individuals. But such individuals will seek out rewarding lives full of meaningful labor. Which is where crowdsourcing comes in.” This could be interpreted as implying that Crowdsourcing involves mainly those who have somehow been “left out of the fold”. While that is the case in some instances, is it not always true. (My guess is also that you are leading up to a section which will focus only on those who use their talents peripherally rather than as a vocation.)
It is important to reiterate here that a key motivation of Crowdsourcers is often to be recognized as an expert (with/without credentials) (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15817758, e.g. Cookshack)...
Additionally, not all the “amateurs” who participate in Crowdsourcing are necessarily unfulfilled by their work.
(And the rest continues above.)

[David Andersson]

Monica, would be great if you could repost that link, it turns up dead for me.

[Monica Hamburg]

Hi David - it's
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15817758

(If the template cuts part of this off, as it may, it's
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
(then)
story.php?storyId=15817758

or go to npr.org and Search for:
Collective Wisdom: 'We Are Smarter Than Me'

[Jeff Howe]

Belated response here gang: I'm still slogging through edits on the book (if it was up to me, I'd never let go of it!), but at any rate, yes, David, I'll be including a notes section. This last excerpt, for instance, depends heavily on other sources.