Kaplan, Abraham

Weir, John R.

Name not available

A Philosopher Looks at Caltech

A PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT CALTECH 
ABRAHAM KAPLAN, professor of philosophy at the University of 
Michigan, visited Caltech this spring as a YMCA-sponsored 
Leader of America. During his four-day stay he met and talked 
with Caltech students (above) 14 hours a day. Before leaving 
campus he was interviewed by John Weir, associate professor of 
psychology at the Institute, regarding the impressions he gained 
here. This article contains excerpts of his comments. 
John Weir: How would you characterize the 
general nature of the student body at Caltech? 
Abraham Kaplan: They're the most intellectually 
mature undergraduates I've ever known. They are 
also by and large the brightest that I've known 
anywhere; but that's a different factor. What I mean 
by intellectually mature is: whereas I'm usually able 
to identify a student's class and even his semester 
fairly well, here I've constantly been off by several 
years and always with a systematic error in the 
same direction. Whenever I think someone is a 
senior, he's a freshman, and when I think he's a 
member of the faculty, he may be just a junior. 
They are most decidedly- not "hardnosed," if by 
that is meant what I call "scientistic-wanting to 
count, weigh, and measure. In fact, my impression 
has been rather the contrarj. I have a vision of an 
intense need for development of tlieir human side. 
What is the opposite of hardnosed? William James 
speaks of hardheacledness and tenderheartedness. 
It is their tenderheartedness-a great desire to 
feed their appetites for human warmth, aspiration 
for literary and dramatic sensitivity, and that whole 
spectrum of interest. For instance, whenever our 
discussions have gone in the direction of the nature 
of science, there has not been a particular response. 
But the minute I bring in God, or morals, or art or 
beauty, there are 20 people who want to say some- 
thing all at once. 
eir: \ o u  referred to this earlier as a hunger? 
Kaplan: Yes. and I want to speak to that as one 
of the respects in which this campus is barren. I've 
heen \cry struck by it in contrast to many other 
colleges that are not just inferior to Caltech but 
are so by several orders of magnitude. I have been 
on many such campuses and been aware that there 
is a showing of Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet"; that 
the local theater group is putting on a play of 
Ionesco's; there's a string quartet playing that 
evening; there's a retrospective show of the paint- 
ings of Lionel Feininger. Here I have not been 
aware, in a massive fashion, of the visual arts, of 
sculpture, of music, of theater, or poetry, or, for that 
matter, of even dance and beer parties. So it has 
been a sense of austerity. 
There was also a hunger of another kin 
which is not especially characteristic of Caltech, 
but it surprised me because you have less reason for 
it than any other place-namely for a direct en- 
counter with faculty. I have been told-and even 
those who didn't tell me conveyed it quite ac- 
curately-that they have never had a chance in all 
their time at Caltech to sit down side by side with 
a member of the faculty and just chat about sorne- 
thing without a formal course context between 
them. This is almost miiversill in American higher 
education. but in a school as small as Caltech and 
with your enviable faculty-student ratio it ought 
o f  ide for many such occasions. 
eir: But it is often said here tliat all the students 
to do is to knock on any professor's door and 
he's quite willing-even eager-to see them. 
Kaplan : But the fact is that they don't. As an edu- 
cator I cannot rest content with saying. "Okay, now 
it's up to you. All you have to do is knock on the 
door." The fact is that if the\ don't knock on the 
door I want to find out why, and I want to maybe 
re the door so that they don't have to knock. 
: Would you mention a few things that could 
be done to improve the situation? 
Kaplan: I would want to organize an important 
part of the educational process to have its locus in 
Engineering and Science 
the hoiises. The houses tire mm tipptuentl> ci plwe 
where students eat and sk-ep and where the) ha\ e 
their OM n likes, but not where the) ha\ e a part of 
university life. I would like to see each member of 
the faculty take it for granted that he's going to 
spend six to eight hour;) a week in a house sume way 
or other. And that he is going to be doing it not 
as something extracurricular and incidental but 
in very nearly the same spirit as in the classroom or 
in an office consultation-that iii, continuing the 
process of intellectual growth and education 
I would also see that graduate students and 
undergraduates are t l~oruiighl~ mixed in their 
housing. Students can le'im at least us iniich, per- 
haps more, from one another as from f i l ~ ~ l t v .  
eir: Do you think that our adiiiishioiih or selec- 
oC~diires could fie i n ~ p j w  ed? 
Ian: Not for you the) couldn't, > o u  have so 
many students that are so fine, I don't think you 
can impro\ e on what > on have. But maybe it would 
serve the national interest better if you didn't have 
so man) and let a few of the other places have a 
few. It  would do them some good. I 
I find wholly admirable in every way that your 
students represent such a rich diversity of national 
and social background. I cannot overstate how 
significant a contribution that seems to me to be 
making to our life as a nation, as a society. The num- 
ber of foreign students you have, the number of 
Americans of oriental descent, the Negroes, the 
number of Jewish students, the number of students 
that apparently come from lower economic strata- 
all of this creates an atmosphere in which certain 
basic values that are appropriate to a university are 
tacitly being reinforced every hour of the day. What 
is being said is that the one a3ue that is being 
shared by el eryone here is a dedication to the life 
of the mind, to the adventure of ideas, and that all 
these differentiations, which, alas, are so important 
elsewhere, have no place at Caltech. 
Weir: What about our educational facilities? 
Kaplan: I've had a little sense that books as a 
specific educational adjunct played rather less of 
a role here than they would even at quite inferior 
universities. But 1 hesitated to draw any conchi- 
sions, even if it is a fact, simply because the sciences 
play such a role here, and a laboratory is tinder- 
standably mole important than a library. Never- 
theless, I would have thought that there would be 
two or three bookstores at which used books would 
be bought and sold. It isn't that I have any fault to 
find with your bookstore, which is as extensive as 
it should be, but I'm surprised that there isn't a 
great deal more. Around many unh ersities there is 
to be found a little avant-garde bookshop where 
there m e  hooks hat h a  e nothing to do with classes 
-the kind of place' where coffee is sen ed, and once 
a week there's a poetry reading w it11 guitar pla) ing. 
Now it's ?as) for us to smile c~ndescendingi~, lint 
1 think they make an ~~normouslj important con- 
tribution. I'd a130 like tu impoit a little bit of 
Berkeley or a little bit of Antioch College, or Reed. 
Weir: A little offbeat? 
Kaplan: Yes. College is the age for intellectual 
exploration and experimentation. That's what off- 
beat means. It's entirely right and proper for a kid 
to see what he would look like if he wore a beard or 
a mustache. I t  doesn't mean that this is what he is 
going to do the rest of his life. But now is the time 
for him to try it on, to try on various ideas and 
tastes in the arts and the like-at any rate, to be 
made aware of these larger horizons. There's a kind 
of a grimness here at Cdltech. I would like to see 
more of joy, especially because these kids are so 
wonderful and capable of the joy of intellectual 
life. I feel as though I've come upon people who 
love to eat but who have never tried French cook- 
ing or Armenian cooking or Japanese cooking- 
only that wonderful rare roast beef. 
Weir: Do you have any comments about the ab- 
sence of girls on campus? 
Kaplan: I think if girls were admitted at the 
undergraduate level in considerable numbers it 
would make an enormous difference to the quality 
of the place. I'm not just talking about heeding 
emotions. I'm also talking about a contribution to 
intellectual creativity, to excitement with ideas. It  
is not a recommendation where I say, "Why don't 
we have some good-looking girls around?" But I 
certainly think that it makes a considerable differ- 
ence in the unfolding of the whole person and in 
making use of all the resources of the personality 
in an integrated fashion. 
Weir: We are about to enter a period of expan- 
sion in the humanities and the social sciences. Could 
you suggest some direction we might take? 
Kaplan: There are in the social sciences and the 
humanities two directions that can be distinguished, 
although the line between them is blurred. Let's 
call them hard and soft. In the hard social sciences 
there is much application of high-powered math- 
ematical methods-decision theory, linear program- 
ming, game theory and the like. The idea that I 
would like to put forward is that that is decidedly 
not a direction to go. What I would like to see done 
at Caltech is to have the social sciences and hu- 
inanities of the soft variety. I think it will contribute 
much more; it will be very much more of a ferment. 
If yon do the other, then all jou are doing is keep- 
ing everything here the same. 
June 1967 


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A Philosopher Looks at Caltech

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