"Neighbourly"

D. G. Myers asked what a secular institution might learn from Newman.  Now, I think it bears repeating that much of what Newman says about the best university education positively requires a Roman Catholic context, and that any attempt to straightforwardly "apply" Newman to a secular university will produce some uncomfortable bumping and banging.  That being said, the following passage has always resonated with me:

[...] I say that, as we admit, because we are Catholics, that the Divine Unity contains in it attributes, which, to our finite minds, appear in partial contrariety with each other; as we admit that, in His revealed Nature are things, which, though not opposed to Reason, are infinitely strange to the Imagination; as in His works we can neither reject nor admit the ideas of space, and of time, and the necessary properties of lines, without intellectual distress, or even torture; really, Gentlemen, I am making no outrageous request, when, in the name of a University, I ask religious writers, jurists, economists, physiologists, chemists, geologists, and historians, to go on quietly, and in a neighbourly way, in their own respective lines of speculation, research, and experiment, with full faith in the consistency of that multiform truth, which they share between them, in a generous confidence that they will be ultimately consistent, one and all, in their combined results, though there may be momentary collisions, awkward appearances, and many forebodings and prophecies of contrariety, and at all times things hard to the Imagination, though not, I repeat, to the Reason [....] ("Christianity and Scientific Investigation," from the Idea, 465)

Again, we have to bear in mind that Newman here assumes 1) a homogeneous faculty (everyone is Catholic) and 2) general agreement that there is an all-encompassing divine truth informing the workings of the world, albeit one which we cannot detect with any ease.  (Newman believes that it is possible for received scientific wisdom in the Church to turn out to be incorrect, citing Copernican heliocentrism as an example--but that merely means that geocentrism is not, after all, a revealed truth.   It says nothing about either the Church or the Bible. For Newman's position on inspiration, see here.) Even in a secular institution in which everyone was motivated, say, by a pure devotion to knowledge for its own sake, we would still not have conditions #1 and #2.  But Newman's request for "neighbourly" behavior among the disciplines remains a valuable one, especially in a highly-politicized intellectual climate.  This neighborliness does not exclude controversy, but the controversy is to be conducted with patience and scholarship, not rapid-fire wrangling (as in, er, blog posts): if something appears to contradict revelation, Newman suggests, the idea is to "give it rope enough" while "commit[ting] the matter to reason, reflection, sober judgment, common sense; to Time, the great interpreter of so many secrets" (467).   In other words, there is fighting, and then there is arguing.   

But this is, I think, a utopian position, as is any position that assumes "the pure devotion to knowledge for its own sake."  (Isn't such non-utilitarian knowledge exactly the sort of thing we tend to mock?)  For starters, it requires everyone in the university to assume that everyone else is arguing in good faith; and then, it also requires everyone to acknowledge that they might turn out to be wrong.  Moreover, in practice, some lines of investigation may be nearly impossible to argue with, as opposed to fight (although one can always try). 

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[Josh]

And the diverse parties should dwell side by side, not with the tolerance of indifference, but embattled and cherishing each other: each should know that in its quest the contest with those who disagree will bring faster progress than would an unobstructed route.