Phil. Lite: Cruft as Style
This week’s readings and assignments for my Philosophy Lite course are on the topic: “Does God Exist”. Because this is Phil. Lite, we get to cut to the chase: Anselm’s Ontological Argument in eight easy steps; E.O. Wilson’s genetic explanations of religious impulses distilled into a quarter page. Can’t beat that - in my (limited) previous experience with readings in philosophy, the problem is not understanding the arguments, it’s ferreting the damn things out of the massive wodges of tortuous prose in which they’re buried.
The fondness for massive wodges of tortuous prose starts early. In Philosophy Lite, we have to write Term Paper Lite - five double-spaced pages (minimum) arguing a philosophical point. Five pages minimum. What if I am able to refute Liebniz in three-and-a-half pages? What if I can demolish Kant in a paragraph? It doesn’t matter - the paper will not be good enough unless it is five pages or longer, regardless of its contents.
Obviously, I will have no difficulty producing five pages - I’m a writer. But I’m a technical writer, which means that I know to the very depths of my soul that if something can be said in 250 words, it shouldn’t be said in 251 - in fact, it probably hasn’t been edited hard enough and should actually be said in 229. (Except if it’s a blog, in which case one is allowed to babble on as volubly as one likes - a valuable escape vent for repressed technical writers.)
But on the subject of academic papers (even the “Lite” variety), a minimum paper length means that a bunch of people are going to be pulling out their thesaurii to lard in adjectives. (shudder) A bunch of statements will be phrased, then re-phrased, then re-interated. People will pad their footnotes beyond the relevant quotes. And a bunch of non-essential, distracting material will be added, with a word count being run after every addition.
It’s sad to see universities encourage people to write badly. My refutation of Liebniz should be judged on its merits, not its length. If I fail to make my case in three-and-a-half pages, I should be graded on my failure to make my case; it doesn’t matter how many words I used. In fact, I should be encouraged to do it in as few words as possible.
And so it goes; verbosity becomes an aspect of quality. (”War is Peace!”) Who would hand in a ten page doctoral thesis? If it’s ten pages, surely it can’t be any good; there’s just not enough stuff in there.