Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 10, No. 10. July 16, 1947
[Unattributed letter to Salient]
Dear Sir.— If the primary aim of Mr. Sutton-Smith was provocation, he has succeeded, it is reassuring to believe that the main theme of his article, namely, the abolition of the Philosophy Department, was not really his first consideration but merely incidental to his purpose. A moment's reflection on Mr. Sutton-Smith's proposals and the reasons he gives in support of them will show that he has failed to convince even himself of their validity.
In order to overcome the lack of general orientation in our various university courses he would reject any idea of an integrating organisation, and rely on the co-operative efforts of specialists who, by some mysterious means, come to realise that they have a common body of problems, and accordingly widen the scope of their specialist areas so that all the gaps between the disciplines will be automatically closed, and the patchwork quilt completed. Perhaps Mr. Sutton-Smith does not realise that the student cannot take all these specialist subjects; hence his knowledge of philosophy will be confined to the philosophy of those subjects which he studies. This will lead to a bias in the attempt to solve the contemporary problems, for the specialist cannot avoid losing sight of the whole in his detailed study and subsequent knowledge of the parts as covered by his particular science. The aim of any science, as Mr. Sutton-Smith should know if he has made even a cursory study of philosophy, is to achieve as great a generalisation as possible of the phenomena that fall within its sphere of reference. If we have a philosophy for each department of knowledge, this generalisation will certainly not be achieved, for each department will be interested only in those aspects of philosophy that apply to its own interests and there will cease to be any integration. True philosophy will incorporate all the sciences, being not so much concerned with their details as with their fundamental bases, and its practical task will be to relate these bases to the real world and its contemporary problems. This would never accrue if each discipline were left to pursue its own self-guided, self-centred way, but would result in a body of those beings, so obnoxious to the nostrils of Mr. Sutton-Smith, the "learned ignoramus"—the specialists.
The "little dash of psychological insight" to be added to the pottage prepared by the historian or economist will certainly flavour the final product. But if each department looks after its own psychology there will he a great tendency to adopt easy explanations of phenomena which would break down if applied to allied phenomena observable in other departments. Tills tendency can be seen in the way educationalists have seized upon, and still often uphold, simple but outmoded psychological theories, of Adler. Because these theories seem to fit educational problems well enough they are clung to tenaciously and one finds them being advanced in all seriousness by educationalists long after psychologists have found them to be generally inadequate.
Mr. Sutton-Smith obviously underestimates the amount of data that modern psychology has made available. In recent years a new field of study has arisen—a combination of psychology with cultural anthropology which invariably necessitates the co-operation of two specialists, because one man cannot hope to supply the breadth and depth of knowledge required in both fields. How Mr. Sutton-Smith proposes to deal with all this material we do not know.