6 - Contributing to the Advancement of Knowledge: Reminiscences on the Birth of an Article Fifteen Years After Its Conception, 1935–50

Summary

This is a simple account of how an article was born fifteen years after it was conceived, and of its relation to the implications of the expression “contributing to the advancement of knowledge”.

The term “contributing” here covers a fairly wide range of meanings from “writing theses by post-graduate students” to “producing learned articles, booklets or books by university teachers”. The expression “advancement of knowledge” has become a trite saying nowadays, but I use it here to mean “facilitating the theoretical or practical understanding of the subject” which a scholar or student is trying to attain.

There are various motives for these contributions. The post-graduate student's primary motive is often simple and pragmatic – to gain a degree. With the teachers, the matter is naturally more complicated. Nevertheless, their motives may be divided under two main headings: altruistic and personal.

Under the altruistic may be included the following: motives generated by the three Is – interest, inquisitiveness and investigation; and a genuine desire to discover the facts concerning certain important aspects of a subject and to share one's findings with colleagues working in the same field.

With regard to personal motives, these are often prompted by necessities, obligations and foibles. They may be classified as follows:

1. The necessity to learn more about the subject one professes to teach, and to justify one's position as a university teacher, which reminds me of the words of an American professor whom I met at the Oriental Congress in New Delhi in 1964 – “publish or perish”.

2. The obligation to contribute one's findings to a symposium, a memorial number or such like, and to be critical about someone else's contribution for the sake of scholarship; and

3. A hankering after publicity, primarily to make an impression on other scholars – the word “publicity” reminds me of a saying of Professor Simmonds or a “Simmondsian maxim”, which according to Mr J. Okell is “publication first, then publicity” – and after revenge, as a result of a personal vendetta.