It is about this time of year that I traditionally start to reflect on my life and where it’s going. It’s the beginning of July, and today is the holiday of “Birthday”, the time of year that we celebrate our coming into the world. The date for the holiday was chosen to logically break up the year, so that gift-giving holidays occur in the Winter and Summer, and consumption holidays occur in the Spring and Fall. This holiday was proposed some years ago by Isaac Schlueter, who coincidentally has his own birthday on the same day.

Isaac recently wrote a post reflecting on his experience as a programmer and the difficulty of becoming an expert. Apparently, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to master anything.

I don’t think I’ll ever have the patience or drive to become an expert at anything. Well, I’ve probably put in the requisite hours for Dungeons & Dragons, but (as in the case of Sickboy) that’s hardly a substitute. But I guess that’s why I’m in philosophy. Being a generalist (know-it-all) is something I’ve spent virtually my entire life practicing.

When I first decided to major in philosophy (some six years into my academic career) I would often apologize for my lack of experience. I would claim that I’ve never studied philosophy (sometimes with the qualifier “formally”). But that’s not true at all. I’ve always taken the philosophical approach - seeking truth, questioning everything, and trying to get into the heart of the matter, for starters. And I actually had studied philosophy, even in school! In past classes, I’d read the Allegory of the Cave, The Republic, bits of Locke and Mill, and some Nietzsche, just not in “philosophy” classes. I’d even read some Aquinas in Catholic grade school.

I guess that the reason why I never felt comfortable claiming I’d studied philosophy is I’m aware of how much it takes to be an expert. That’s the same problem I have with virtually any field I have something to say about. I expect that there’s someone in the back of the room waiting to say, “Sorry, but those of us who work in the field have already studied and solved this problem - if you knew what you were talking about, you’d know that already and wouldn’t have to make a fool of yourself.” (Is it an artifact of my attending an English institution that I imagine my detractors beginning with an apology?)

But that’s the beauty of being a generalist. Sure, if I justify something using modal logic then there will be a modal logic expert waiting to shoot it down. But if I can justify the move in modal logic based on Wiener’s metaphysics, and I can justify the metaphysical move based on pragmatism, and I can justify pragmatism based on epistemology or physics or Aristotle’s theory of human action… well, there aren’t many people who can keep up. (This of course is just a rough abstract thought experiment, and I don’t claim to have these particular justifications at hand.)

Of course, knowing this doesn’t ease my worries one bit. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder if I should know a lot more about quantum physics, computer hardware, software development, business, art, home repair, robotics, ethics, any of the many branches and sub-disciplines of philosophy, or anything else that I end up talking about or using on a daily basis. But as The Doctor said, when I know everything there won’t be any point to going on.

Happy Birthday, everyone.