Ideas: the Overlapping Categories of Old, New, and Good

Academics in general, but particularly historians, work with ideas. Indeed, ideas are the finished products. Of course, sources are (or should be) paramount, but sources of what? The sources of our ideas about the past, people's motivations, what effected change, human nature, etc... A good craftsmen will display to the market meticulously-designed tangible products, but a historian presents to the world ideas wrought from the raw materials of their sources with the tools of their analysis. Incidentally, this is why clarity is so important in scholarship: a salesman should not expect to move physical merchandise if consumers examine it and are not quite sure what it is or does, and likewise a scholar cannot reasonably expect much interest if readers are uncertain what ideas he is arguing that they accept, and/or what those ideas are made of, i.e., what sources he used. Good writing is not the concern here though, but good ideas, and their relationship to novelty.

(Quick disclaimer: if philosophically you think the idea of "good and bad" ideas is so subjective as to be devoid of meaning, I'm probably not going to have much for you here. I define good here as respecting truth and the sanctity of human life, and bad as the opposite.)

During my undergraduate studies I knew a philosophy professor who was fond of prefacing lectures with the wry remark, "May I not say anything new today." His logic was that the good life and the sound philosophy that makes it possible are not likely to be a cutting-edge developments--wisdom is gold, but foolishness is kudzu. There is enough insight there for the comment to stick with me, but of course it is not a truth universal to all contexts: while virtues may be the same at their essence across the ages, we have learned previously unknown, forgotten, suppressed or distorted details of the past. There are good new ideas in history. The idea that the people already living in the Americas upon the arrival of Europeans were not a monolith (the Savages/Indians/Natives/indigenous peoples), but separate peoples with innumerable* distinct cultures, actions, and interests was a good one: it restored human dignity to people who had previously been treated as little more than part of the scenery of the New World.

*Innumerable is often used just to mean "a lot," which applies to Native American tribes, but it literally means "unable to be numbered," and owing to inadequate surviving evidence, that sense is also true.

So ideas can be good and bad, new and old. This creates a matrix of four combinations (new and good, new and bad, old and good, old and bad), and failure to consider the characteristics of each is a bit like eyeballing measurements and not asking about common pitfalls in construction; it is the haste that writes much waste. Here are some preliminary reflections on each:

New and Good - It has to be acknowledged that this is the most valued because it is the most difficult. Every semester educators from high school teachers up to thesis advisers must break the news as tactfully as they can that no, that idea is far from new, or huh, that idea is utterly bizarre. It's also worth noting that throughout the ages many people have rejected ideas as bad because they are too counter-cultural, and they generally deem them "stupid" rather than "too counter-cultural." That said, pride can make an ignorant person declare, "They are not ready for my ideas," when really, the ideas are just bad.

New and Bad - Though there are many charlatans in the world, most who argue bad ideas are sincere: they think their ideas are good. You should give a LOT of thought to the various causes of poor judgment, e.g., (sleep-deprived) desperation on account of a publication or assignment deadline, pride making a person resist honest consideration of counter-arguments, bad ideological dogma, etc...Do you feel comfortable that you are not susceptible to any of those issues? Don't.

Old and Good - This category is sorely undervalued. Who really gets excited by the prospect of verifying the truth of an accepted fact? That is not actually a rhetorical question. The answer is the person who recognizes that many old "good" ideas turn out to be bad, and that even a good accepted idea does not animate positive action near as powerfully as a good idea fueled by a lot of compelling evidence. A lot of movements begin with someone passionate about proving more forcefully an old idea that is popularly-but-complacently accepted.

Old and Bad - These ideas persist for a reason (actually many reasons). Make sure and establish the grounds on which you reject the old idea as bad, and then theorize why it persisted so long (in that order, and make sure not to be too flippant on the second part). When doing scholarship on an old bad idea--phrenology, scientific racism, the Inquisition--a common mistake is to take for granted the obviousness that the idea is bad. This assumption can make readers think the author is undecided on the matter (or in some cases that he supports the idea), and/or can lead the historian to fail to fight a misconception he hates, because he fails to recognize the continued need to do so. While phrenology is a byword for bad pseudo-scientific ideas, many historians treat racial issues with a reckless false presupposition that readers hold no racist ideas, and while the Catholic Church has apologized for the Inquisition, the question of the relationship between coercion and orthodoxy is much murkier than most people naturally think.

Look back over the descriptions above--what prominent and/or important features of each am I missing?