Bowdoin students are sometimes criticized as lacking an intellectual fervor. Those critics suggest that, because the average Bowdoin student won't engage in impassioned intellectual debate over a cup of coffee at the Station, his attention rarely ascends into the more lofty realms of abstract thought. That position is complete tripe.
An intellectual is someone who derives pleasure from learning. By this definition, almost every Bowdoin student is an intellectual. Because we invest so much in learning, our professors demand of us critical thinking at the highest level. Those who suppose that Bowdoin students float through classes complacently are forgetting that our student body represents some of the most intelligent youth of the world. Bowdoin's worst student is by far and away much more astute than the vast majority of humans.
What's more, the fantasy of a Bowdoin campus populated with students sporting horn-rimmed glasses and toting cloth-bound tomes is rooted in sentimental nostalgia. I doubt that even the most intellectual academic institutions retain more than a handful of such eccentric characters, with fewer still in the student body. Students now study in computer labs humming with oversized Apple monitors, rather than in dimly-lit wood-paneled board rooms. (Speaking of which, the sentimental and nostalgic part of me would really like to study in the Bliss room at some point. Security?)
In this new age of instant and ubiquitous communication—I can check and respond to my e-mail on my walk from Quinby to Druckenmiller—intellectual debate has left the Station. The questions remains, should we be concerned about this monumental transition from the more personal intellectualism of pre-Internet communications to the more anonymous intellectualism of the present? Nostalgia and sentimentality would say yes, lamenting, for example, the marginalization of Classics. But in order for Bowdoin students to sustain their legacy of intellectualism in a quickly changing world, we must find room for critical thought in the crowded forums and response threads of newspaper Web sites and YouTube.
The challenge this community faces is the retention and cultivation of critical thinking in the face of free information. In the past, bookish intellectualism exalted the accumulation of knowledge; the association of books with intellectuals, for example, derives from the assumption that memorized facts supplement or foster intellect. In fact, the heart of intellectualism—and its most impressive aspect—lies more in the ability to deduce and infer connections among various fragments of information than in the ability to call forth a wealth of trivia from the recesses of one's mind. Old-school intellectuals still recognized and lauded original synthesis of old ideas—Hegel articulated the importance of original synthesis in the 1800s—but with the liberalization of information, and with the erosion of class barriers to intellectual institutions, the importance of accumulating knowledge has declined, accentuating, by contrast, the value of synthesis.
The advent of free information, exemplified by Wikipedia, should not be seen as antithetical to intellectualism. The modern capacity to dispatch with a review sheet, describing dates, characters, locations, and events using Internet resources, represents a tremendous improvement in academic efficiency. The Internet is a tool that allows students to bypass the tedious accumulation of knowledge, allowing more time for synthesis and assimilation.
Our community should strive to embrace this revolution in information technology, because it empowers, rather than undermines intellectualism. Recognizing the incredible accessibility of knowledge, students and professors can strive for new intellectual heights. With so much information so easily accessible, our capacity for critical thought has not decreased, but expanded immeasurably.
The trick now, is for academia to demand more of its students, who, equipped with tools more powerful than ever before, can elucidate increasingly original and impressive arguments. With the proliferation of wisdom has come a most profound opportunity for intellectual growth, one which the Bowdoin community is well-poised to pursue.
Jonathan Coravos is a member of the Class of 2011.