STANISLAV ANDRESKI

    There are not many subjects about which I know a lot so when I find one about which I know a little and it is covered in jargon I get irritated.  Rather than focus on the subject of my irritation I will introduce you to someone who was irritated about all of this 45 years ago. Since the wiki entry for him is short and given that he died 10 years ago this month I thought it worth calling him and his work to your attention.

   Stanislav Andreski wrote quite a bit about different subjects, but I have only read Social Sciences as Sorcery. You can judge the tenor of this tract from these sample chapter headings:

“Why Foul One’s Nest?”, “The Uses of Absurdity”, “Evasion in the Guise of Objectivity”, Hiding Behind Methodology”, “Quantification as Camouflage”, “Ideology Underneath Terminology” and “The Law of Lighter Weights Rising to the Top.”

  I had another look at it and these quotations are from Chapter 6: “The Smoke Screen of Jargon”.

“The attraction of jargon and obfuscating convolutions can be fully explained by the normal striving of humans for emoluments and prestige at the least cost to themselves, the cost in question consisting of the mental effort and the danger of ‘sticking one’s neck out’ or ‘putting one’s foot in it’. In addition to eliminating such risks, as well as the need to learn much, nebulous verbosity opens a road to the most prestigious academic posts to people of small intelligence whose limitations would stand naked if they had to state what they have to say clearly and succinctly. Actually, the relationship between the character of a jargon-mongerer and the amount of his verbiage can be expressed in the formula below, which I propose to call THE EQUATION OF JARGON-MONGERING.” [those interested in the equation should see pp.82-83.]

“The usage of mumbo-jumbo makes it very difficult for a beginner to find his way; because if he reads or hears famous professors from the most prestigious universities in the world without being able to understand them, then how can he know whether this is due to his lack of intelligence or preparation, or to their vacuity? The readiness to assume that everything that one does not understand must be nonsense cannot fail to condemn one to eternal ignorance; and consequently, the last thing I would wish to do is to give encouragement to lazy dim-wits who gravitate towards the humanistic and social studies as a soft option, and who are always on the lookout for an excuse for not working. So it is tragic that the professorial jargon-mongers have provided such loafers with good grounds for indulging in their proclivities. But how can a serious beginner find his way through the verbal smog and be able to assess the trustworthiness of high ranking academics?” [for you beginners he answers the question by offering a way to test your brain power, see pp.85-86].

He offers some consolation later in the book:

“The reason why human understanding has been able to advance in the past, and may do so in the future, is that true insights are cumulative and retain their value regardless of what happens to their discoverers; while fads and stunts may bring an immediate profit to the impresarios, but lead nowhere in the long run, cancel each other out, and are dropped as soon as their promoters are no longer there (or have lost the power) to direct the show. Anyway, let us not despair.”

Post Script

Stanislav Leonard Andreski (Andrzejewski) was born in 1919 and died Sept. 26, 2007. He wrote about several subjects. Here are some reviews of Social Sciences as Sorcery and a couple of obituaries:

Reviews:

“Social Sciences as Sorcery,” by Stanislav Andreski, Review by: John Woods

Source: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), p. 371

“For all its breadth, Social Sciences as Sorcery achieves a fine unity of treatment.

It is also an eminently readable and, above all, ingenious and amusing….

Much of the book concerns the postures we adopt. It debunks the fraudulent and

punctures the stuffy with skill and zest. As much concerned with manners and morals as with method, it derides social science "sorcerers" for passing comfortable and un-productive careers in airy word-castles of jargon, securely founded on the bedrock of the obvious. It is high-style coffee-table reading, as well as a book of considerable substance.”

[It should be noted that Wood does say some negative things]

“Social Sciences as Sorcery.” by Stanislav Andreski, Review by: Murray Hausknecht

Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 3, No. 3 (May, 1974), pp. 204-206

“Social Sciences as Sorcery,” by Stanislav Andreski, Review by: G. Duncan Mitchell

The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), p. 364

“The Social Sciences as Sorcery,” by S. Andreski, Review by: I. C. Jarvie, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1973), pp. 193-199.

“Muddledom and Mumbo-Jumbo in Sociological Jargon: Book World,” Reviewed by John Weightman. The Washington Post, Times Herald, July 13,  1973: B4.

“Clouting the Clerks, Peter Worsley, The Guardian, Sept. 14, 1972.

Obituaries:

“Stanislav Andreski: Forthright Founder of Reading University Sociology Department,”

Kazimierz Sowa, The Guardian, Nov. 20, 2007.

“Andreski's most popular book is Social Sciences as Sorcery (1972). This work brought Andreski international recognition but did not please many fellow sociologists due to his indictment of the "pretentious and nebulous verbosity" endemic in the modern social sciences.”

On women:

“Later, Andreski turned his attention to the role of women in the development of civilisation, his thesis being that the more access women have to public life within a society the greater the social and scientific development that society is likely to enjoy. Sadly, his book on this subject remains incomplete.”

“Professor Stanislav Andreski: Sociologist Whose Wartime Escape From Poland informed His Later Work on Military Organisation,” Christie Davies,  Independent, October 8, 2007.

Stanislav Andreski, Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Reading University, was an outstanding figure in the first generation of British sociologists.

“Andreski always wrote a clear, impeccable and attractive English that was a pleasure to read. He held in contempt those social scientists who were obscurantists and jargon-mongers, and in 1974 published an attack on them in his best-selling Social Sciences as Sorcery. It was very popular with the public but infuriated those of his colleagues whose careers were based on concealing behind verbiage the fact that they had nothing to say. Andreski was equally contemptuous of bureaucracy and when he received an absurd questionnaire from the Social Science Research Council asking him what method he used, he replied "thinking".”

“Andreski was a character, a man whose keen brain, encyclopaedic knowledge, fluency in five languages and ability to read others, enabled him to attain a commanding position in comparative sociology. Few British sociologists have matched him for originality or have had such a range of achievements.”

University Marketing

    It is unfortunate that so much effort has to be expended on marketing and ‘branding’ by those involved in higher education. One can understand why such efforts must be undertaken, however, since colleges and universities do constitute a market, one which is now highly competitive.

    One might assume that such endeavours would reflect a higher degree of clarity and honesty than is typically found in the commercials and advertisements displayed in the lower realms of commerce. Such is not the case. Most universities play in the rankings and ratings game, for example, and eagerly promote high rankings of dubious value while understandably ignoring the lower ones mentioned in ratings of higher quality that reflect measurable and meaningful data.

    I noticed recently on the website of a university I attended the following promotional puffs. I also worked at the same university which is, in fact, a good one that has plenty of accomplishments and people of which to be proud. In this instance, however, it receives a failing grade of 50%. The examples below are presented in descending order in terms of honesty and clarity and the last two could be easily replaced.

    

School Days and Labour Day

It is highly likely that there is considerable anxiety in those households containing small children since school is about to begin. Even in the houses without children there is likely to be some residual dread and, besides, Labour Day even for those of us who no longer work, makes us realize that we have to face the fall.

    This year, unfortunately, we can all remind ourselves that things could be worse and we could be in Houston. If you have children and that argument is not convincing and you are running low on new anecdotes about the hardships of your own school days when you had to walk miles to a school where you were certain to be bullied and also beaten by the teachers, here is some additional ammunition.

    I have been reading the works of John Muir who was beaten at school and thrashed thoroughly at home. You might as well benefit from my hard work. Dispense with all trigger warnings and simply read these excerpts to your kids to  toughen them up.

Muir on Well Digging (p.111)

     You can use this example to convince them that there are worse things than school - work, for example. Young Muir spent months in a hole and almost died from poisonous gas.

We called our second farm Hickory Hill, from its many fine hickory trees and the long gentle slope leading up to it. Compared with Fountain Lake farm it lay high and dry. The land was better, but it had no living water, no spring or stream or meadow or lake. A well ninety feet deep had to be dug, all except the first ten feet or so in fine-grained sandstone. When the sandstone was struck, my father, on the advice of a man who had worked in mines, tried to blast the rock; but from lack of skill the blasting went on very slowly, and father decided to have me do all the work with mason's chisels, a long, hard job, with a good deal of danger in it. I had to sit cramped in a space about three feet in diameter, and wearily chip, chip, with heavy hammer and chisels from early morning until dark, day after day, for weeks and months. In the morning, father and David lowered me in a wooden bucket by a windlass, hauled up what chips were left from the night before, then went away to the farm work and left me until noon, when they hoisted me out for dinner. After dinner I was promptly lowered again, the forenoon's accumulation of chips hoisted out of the way, and I was left until night.

One morning, after the dreary bore was about eighty feet deep, my life was all but lost in deadly choke-damp,--carbonic acid gas that had settled at the bottom during the night. Instead of clearing away the chips as usual when I was lowered to the bottom, I swayed back and forth and began to sink under the poison. Father, alarmed that I did not make any noise, shouted, "What's keeping you so still?" to which he got no reply. Just as I was settling down against the side of the wall, I happened to catch a glimpse of a branch of a bur-oak tree which leaned out over the mouth of the shaft. This suddenly awakened me, and to father's excited shouting I feebly murmured, "Take me out." But when he began to hoist he found I was not in the bucket and in wild alarm shouted, "Get in! Get in the bucket and hold on! Hold on!" Somehow I managed to get into the bucket, and that is all I remembered until I was dragged out, violently gasping for breath.

One of our near neighbors, a stone mason and miner by the name of William Duncan, came to see me, and after hearing the particulars of the accident he solemnly said: "Weel, Johnnie, it's God's mercy that you're alive. Many a companion of mine have I seen dead with choke-damp, but none that I ever saw or heard of was so near to death in it as you were and escaped without help." Mr. Duncan taught father to throw water down the shaft to absorb the gas, and also to drop a bundle of brush or hay attached to a light rope, dropping it again and again to carry down pure air and stir up the poison. When, after a day or two, I had recovered from the shock, father lowered me again to my work, after taking the precaution to test the air with a candle and stir it up well with a brush-and-hay bundle. The weary hammer-and-chisel-chipping went on as before, only more slowly, until ninety feet down, when at last I struck a fine, hearty gush of water. Constant dropping wears away stone. So does constant chipping, while at the same time wearing away the chipper. Father never spent an hour in that well. He trusted me to sink it straight and plumb, and I did, and built a fine covered top over it, and swung two iron-bound buckets in it from which we all drank for many a day.

Muir on Bathing (p.13)

     If the little buggers are reluctant to bathe, read them this.

It appears natural for children to be fond of water, although the Scotch method of making every duty dismal contrived to make necessary bathing for health terrible to us. I well remember among the awful experiences of childhood being taken by the servant to the seashore when I was between two and three years old, stripped at the side of a deep pool in the rocks, plunged into it among crawling crawfish and slippery wriggling snake-like eels, and drawn up gasping and shrieking only to be plunged down again and again. As the time approached for this terrible bathing, I used to hide in the darkest corners of the house, and oftentimes a long search was required to find me. But after we were a few years older, we enjoyed bathing with other boys as we wandered along the shore, careful, however, not to get into a pool that had an invisible boy-devouring monster at the bottom of it. Such pools, miniature maelstroms, were called "sookin-in-goats" and were well known to most of us. Nevertheless we never ventured into any pool on strange parts of the coast before we had thrust a stick into it. If the stick were not pulled out of our hands, we boldly entered and enjoyed plashing and ducking long ere we had learned to swim.

Muir on the Self Esteem Thing (p.130)

     If your child is still upset that he/she didn’t get the gold participation medal for almost running one lap around the track last year, then tell them that they shouldn’t expect one and that their room is being rented out, one week after they turn 18.

When I told father that I was about to leave home, and inquired whether, if I should happen to be in need of money, he would send me a little, he said, "No; depend entirely on yourself." Good advice, I suppose, but surely needlessly severe for a bashful, home-loving boy who had worked so hard. I had the gold sovereign that my grandfather had given me when I left Scotland, and a few dollars, perhaps ten, that I had made by raising a few bushels of grain on a little patch of sandy abandoned ground. So when I left home to try the world I had only about fifteen dollars in my pocket.

Strange to say, father carefully taught us to consider ourselves very poor worms of the dust, conceived in sin, etc., and devoutly believed that quenching every spark of pride and self-confidence was a sacred duty, without realizing that in so doing he might at the same time be quenching everything else. Praise he considered most venomous, and tried to assure me that when I was fairly out in the wicked world making my own way I would soon learn that although I might have thought him a hard taskmaster at times, strangers were far harder. On the contrary, I found no lack of kindness and sympathy.

Muir on Early Rising (p.120)

     If your child wants to stay up late playing video games don’t follow the example of Muir’s father. He told young John that he had to go to bed and that if he wanted to read (!!), he had to get up early to do it. He started getting up at 1 a.m.

Father's strict rule was, straight to bed immediately after family worship, which in winter was usually over by eight o'clock. I was in the habit of lingering in the kitchen with a book and candle after the rest of the family had retired, and considered myself fortunate if I got five minutes' reading before father noticed the light and ordered me to bed; an order that of course I immediately obeyed. But night after night I tried to steal minutes in the same lingering way, and how keenly precious those minutes were, few nowadays can know. Father failed perhaps two or three times in a whole winter to notice my light for nearly ten minutes, magnificent golden blocks of time, long to be remembered like holidays or geological periods. One evening when I was reading Church history father was particularly irritable, and called out with hope-killing emphasis, "John, go to bed! Must I give you a separate order every night to get you to go to bed? Now, I will have no irregularity in the family; you must go when the rest go, and without my having to tell you." Then, as an afterthought, as if judging that his words and tone of voice were too severe for so pardonable an offense as reading a religious book, he unwarily added: "If you will read, get up in the morning and read. You may get up in the morning as early as you like."

That night I went to bed wishing with all my heart and soul that somebody or something might call me out of sleep to avail myself of this wonderful indulgence; and next morning to my joyful surprise I awoke before father called me. A boy sleeps soundly after working all day in the snowy woods, but that frosty morning I sprang out of bed as if called by a trumpet blast, rushed downstairs, scarce feeling my chilblains, enormously eager to see how much time I had won; and when I held up my candle to a little clock that stood on a bracket in the kitchen I found that it was only one o'clock. I had gained five hours, almost half a day! "Five hours to myself!" I said, "five huge, solid hours!" I can hardly think of any other event in my life, any discovery I ever made that gave birth to joy so transportingly glorious as the possession of these five frosty hours.

Muir on Inventions (pp.136-137)

    In spite of all the beatings and rough times and the lack of any esteem-raising endeavours, Muir, as you know, turned out okay. He was even a school teacher for a while. He was also quite inventive, designing a machine to oust him from bed early for his reading. He also invented a remote control fire-starting device which would certainly contravene our current safety laws.

One winter I taught school ten miles north of Madison, earning much-needed money at the rate of twenty dollars a month, "boarding round," and keeping up my University work by studying at night. As I was not then well enough off to own a watch, I used one of my hickory clocks, not only for keeping time, but for starting the school fire in the cold mornings, and regulating class-times. I carried it out on my shoulder to the old log schoolhouse, and set it to work on a little shelf nailed to one of the knotty, bulging logs. The winter was very cold, and I had to go to the schoolhouse and start the fire about eight o'clock to warm it before the arrival of the scholars. This was a rather trying job, and one that my clock might easily be made to do. Therefore, after supper one evening I told the head of the family with whom I was boarding that if he would give me a candle I would go back to the schoolhouse and make arrangements for lighting the fire at eight o'clock, without my having to be present until time to open the school at nine. He said, "Oh, young man, you have some curious things in the school-room, but I don't think you can do that." I said, "Oh, yes! It's easy," and in hardly more than an hour the simple job was completed. I had only to place a teaspoonful of powdered chlorate of potash and sugar on the stove-hearth near a few shavings and kindling, and at the required time make the clock, through a simple arrangement, touch the inflammable mixture with a drop of sulphuric acid. Every evening after school was dismissed, I shoveled out what was left of the fire into the snow, put in a little kindling, filled up the big box stove with heavy oak wood, placed the lighting arrangement on the hearth, and set the clock to drop the acid at the hour of eight; all this requiring only a few minutes.

The first morning after I had made this simple arrangement I invited the doubting farmer to watch the old squat schoolhouse from a window that overlooked it, to see if a good smoke did not rise from the stovepipe. Sure enough, on the minute, he saw a tall column curling gracefully up through the frosty air, but instead of congratulating me on my success he solemnly shook his head and said in a hollow, lugubrious voice, "Young man, you will be setting fire to the schoolhouse." All winter long that faithful clock fire never failed, and by the time I got to the schoolhouse the stove was usually red-hot.

Source: The page numbers all refer to The Story of My Boyhood and Youth as found in the Library of America edition of John Muir: Nature Writings, ed. by William Cronon.