The Ph.D.: Are Doctoral Dissertations a Waste of Time? PhDs as Cheap Labor: The Economist Analyzes The Disposable Academic

A recent article at the Economist, Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic, alerts us to the fact that:

"PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour."

That knowledge was confirmed already 10 years ago by Chris M. Golde and Timothy M. Dore in At Cross Purposes: What the experiences of today's doctoral students reveal about doctoral education.

There is no doubt: the value of PhD programs and dissertations is questionable and greatly in need of reform.

What has happened to the academic doctorate in our day in age, and is "doctoral research" largely a waste of time?

After all, the more progressive professional doctorates dispensed with the need for research dissertations years ago. Is there any supportable value in terms of academic efficiency to superfluous doctorates copiously and subserviently footnoted to alleged authorities or are they merely drone theses that ultimately simply wind up in the archives, read only by exam referees? As James Frank Dobie (1888–1964) wrote:

"The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another."

One of the problems is that the historical development of "academic" university degrees is understood by few, and surely not by many Ph.Ds, some of whom ignorantly even tout the superiority of research doctorates to law degrees, showing that human stupidity may be infinite, ala Einstein, who quipped:

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."

We might as an academic "refreshment" consider that the word "doctor" is rooted historically in the Latin docere, meaning "to teach".

Indeed, doctorates as university degrees all started with the law:

"In Europe the first academic degrees were law degrees, and the law degrees were doctorates. The foundations of the first universities were the glossators of the 11th century, which were schools of law [in a specific sense]. The first university, that of Bologna, was founded as a school of law by four famous legal scholars in the 12th century who were students of the glossator school in that city [The Four Doctors of Bologna: Bulgarus, Martinus Gosia, Jacobus de Boragine and Hugo de Porta Ravennate -- see also Glossators, with a connection to ecclesiatical usages, such as Canon Law, the law of the Church].

Furthermore, as things progressed:

"The naming of degrees eventually became linked with the subjects studied. Scholars in the faculties of arts or grammar became known as "master", but those in theology, medicine, and law were known as "doctor". As study in the arts or in grammar was a necessary prerequisite to study in subjects such as theology, medicine and law, the degree of doctor assumed a higher status than the master degree. This led to the modern hierarchy in which the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), which in its present form as a degree based on research and dissertation is a development from 18th and 19th Century German universities, is a more advanced degree than the Master of Arts (M.A.). The practice of using the term doctor for Ph.Ds developed within German universities and spread across the academic world."

Law led, the rest followed. Nothing has changed.

African Megaliths, Canoes & Seafaring

Catherine Acholonu informed me about a canoe excavated in Nigeria dated to ca. 7700 years ago. See Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Cultural Sensitization and Exhibition on the 8000 Years Old Dufuna Canoe, at http://www.nigerianmuseums.org/dufuna.htm.

Nigeria is of course rightly proud of this archaeological discovery, showing a high level of culture in the Neolithic era.

However, I remain extremely skeptical about "seafaring" Africans (outside of Pharaonic Egyptian culture) in the megalithic era ca. 3000 BC.

Yes, dugout canoes of tree logs are surely an ancient basic water travel technology found throughout the world -- also in Nigeria, but dugouts are still quite an extended technological distance from the kind of boats found at Abydos in Egypt.

I have nothing personal against dugouts. Estonia was the last European country to continue to build them, and my ancestors come from the border region of Estonia and Latvia.

However, the Baltic peoples -- as opposed to the Scandinavians -- never seem to have gotten much beyond that stage, I think because it was not necessary for them economically. The only ancient peoples in the Baltic who continued to build primitive boats clear into the modern era were the Livs viz. Livonians (relatives of the Finns) and they used them for fishing.

Scandinavian seafaring on the other hand has culminated in the world's largest ferries traveling e.g. between Kiel, Germany and Oslo, Norway:

"Color Line's Kiel-Oslo ships (and the world's largest ferries) COLOR FANTASY and COLOR MAGIC...."
http://maritimematters.com/2011/06/poesia-of-the-north-atlantic-part-one/.

The megaliths in Senegambia, Nigeria and even Bouar to some degree are near a major river by which the subsequent megalithic area was accessed by the megalith makers, so my argument.

In Senegal and Gambia, this was the Gambia River.
In Nigeria it was the Cross River.
For the Central African Republic it was the Sanaga River, the next large river south of the Cross River.

"The Sanaga River is a river of South Province, Cameroon, Centre Province, Cameroon, and West Province, Cameroon.... The Sanaga River forms a boundary between two tropical moist forest ecoregions. The Cross-Sanaga-Bioko coastal forests lie to the north between the Sanaga River and the Cross River of Nigeria, and the Atlantic Equatorial coastal forests extend south of the river through southwestern Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Cabinda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo."

Jaap van der Waarde, Integrated River Basin Management of the Sanaga River, Cameroon writes at http://www.internationalrivers.org/files/IRBM Sanaga.pdf:

"The Sanaga River is the largest river in Cameroon.... It flows for 918 km from its source on the Adamawa Plateau.... The main tributaries in Adamawa are the Lom to the South and the Djerem to the North."

The Electricity Development Corporation, Republic of Cameroon, in Lom Pangar Hydroelectric Project: Environmental and social assessment (ESA), Executive summary, March 2011 writes:

"Lom originates at the foot of Ngaou Ndal [Ngaou "mountain" and Ndal "throne", Mont Ngaoui in Google - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Ngaoui] in the Central African Republic at the south-eastern boundary of the Adamaoua, around elevation 1,200 m, 70 km east of Meiganga...."

Mont Ngaoui is only ca. 100 km (60 miles) as the crow flies from Bouar, Central African Republic, where we find the megaliths marking the center of Africa in the ancient land survey system.

I do not know to what degree such rivers were anciently navigable by flat boats like those found at Abydos (as was the case for the more modern ancient Vikings, such boats were surely pulled along the shore in areas where not navigable). It remains a speculation that the ancient megalith makers navigated these rivers to get close to locations which they required for their land survey. However, it seems significant to me, as in the above quotation from the Wikipedia that the Sanaga River and Cross River are the major dividing rivers for these two tropical African ecoregions, and it is near these rivers that we find the Nigerian and Central African megaliths.

In any event, we are not going to resolve the issue of origins now, and surely much more research will be required until some element of certainty surfaces as to who the originators of megalithic culture actually were. If things were certain, there would be no need of discussion.

Africa, Ancient Megaliths and Seafaring Surveyors

I have been corresponding briefly with Professor Catherine Acholonu (see http://www.carcafriculture.org/), who nominated the Nigeria megaliths to the WMF [World Monuments Fund] and who suggested the corrected date of ca. 4500 BC for them based upon her finding of "two Pre-Cuneiform letters of Sumer on the monoliths, namely the letters KI and SHI."

I have not seen the megaliths in question so I must reserve judgment about them for the time being, but it is all very interesting in terms of megalithic origins.

Here is what I wrote about her important work on the Nigerian megaliths and their possible origin:

Africa, Ancient Megaliths and Seafaring Surveyors

I am in accord with the "out of Africa" hypothesis for initial human migration to other parts of the world -- see my posting at http://humanmigrations.blogspot.com/2009/03/human-migrations-and-principles-of.html but that was much earlier than the megaliths, as the initial human migration "out of Africa" appears to have started ca. 60000 BC or so, if I understand DNA studies correctly.

A megalithic origin in or near the heart of Africa, on the other hand, is unlikely because those peoples in the megalithic era lacked the seafaring technology necessary to transfer that technology across water to other countries. Evidence for ancient seaworthy boat-building is not found in regions such as Senegambia, Nigeria or the Central African Republic, where megaliths have been found. We do have such evidence in Africa, albeit in Egypt, as discussed below.

One group that is a candidate for being the ancient surveyor seafarers in question is mythical Jason and his Argonauts, who were so-called Minyans by origin -- more on this below.

In days before writing, people encompassed their history in oral accounts which later became myths and legends. Hence, it is possible that the legend of the Argonauts dates back to a true quite ancient event.

Legend also relates that the names of the Argonauts were subsequently inscribed in the stars of the heavens (e.g. Hercules), because the Argonauts used these stars for navigation, and, as I allege in Stars Stones and Scholars, also used those same stars to triangulate their land surveys of Earth (the full extent of such land survey(s) can be debated -- it may have been limited only to Europe and Africa originally).

The Book of Enoch relates as follows http://ftp.fortunaty.net/com/sacred-texts/bib/boe/boe064.htm:

"CHAPTER LXI of the Book of Enoch: Angels go off to measure Paradise:

1. And I saw in those days how long cords were given to those angels, and they took to themselves wings and flew, and they went towards the north.

2. And I asked the angel, saying unto him: 'Why have those (angels) taken these cords and gone off?' And he said unto me: 'They have gone to measure.'"

"Paradise" of course was the "heaven" of stars and Enoch gives us clear evidence that they were measuring land by cords (as in ancient Egypt) and "flew" , i.e. perhaps a bad translation for sailed by the wind and/or rowed on the waters.

In Hebrew the word Minyan means "counter", "numberer" so that the Minyans conceivably took their name as the "counting" viz. "numbering" surveyors.

A current mainstream theory is that the Minyans originally came from Greece (Boeotia), but it is not really clear to this day where the Proto-Greeks originally came from, what their relation to e.g. the seafaring Phoenicians was, and one could even suggest that the argonautic Minyans may have came from pre-dynastic viz. early dynastic Pharaonic Egypt and/or the far North (Scandinavia), or even from the Ancient Near East.

I am thinking here particularly of the ships, the so-called "royal boats" (14 thus far) found buried at Abydos and dated to ca. 3000 BC (See http://www.abc.se/~pa/mar/abydos.htm). Such a great number of boats buried royally -- as if in honor of a common event -- might indicate that the Abydos royal boats were the boats that returned from the Minyan survey expedition. See here for more about Egypt and ancient shipbuilding: http://www.bible-history.com/links.php?cat=24&sub=364&cat_name=Ancient+Egypt&subcat_name=Naval.

Even assuming that the ancient seafaring land surveyors came from predynastic or early dynastic Pharaonic Egypt, i.e. Africa, the culture to which these seafarers originally belonged is thereby not necessarily clear. Ancient seafaring keeps being pushed further and further back by the archaeologists -- see http://www.archaeology.org/9703/etc/specialreport.html.

One argument against the ancient seafaring surveyors coming from early dynastic Pharaonic Egypt is that there does not appear to be the presence of writing carved in stone on these megaliths, which one would expect from a literate culture or civilization. When writing is found today, it is painted on the stone, and that is surely a later development on original, older megaliths. Hence, if the ancient seafaring surveyors came from Egypt, then it could only have been in an era where ancient writing was not yet discovered or perhaps was only in its scribal infancy.