John Nye: belief

Transcript context

…Now, as you know, we have many talented colleagues, but probably you would count as the best educated amongst the group — educated in the broad sense of the term — we all have PhDs. To what would you attribute that? It’s two things. One is, I was raised and educated in the Jesuit tradition. I went to an elite Jesuit school in the Philippines growing up. One of the things about that school was that there was a very big emphasis on the educated Catholic gentleman that it was supposed to produce. It was not enough to be good in the one subject. You were presumed to be good in all subjects at the very high level. Secondly, I felt, growing up, that the Philippines really was an intellectual backwater, and I had this mythic view in my mind of what the center would or should be like. And I thought to myself as wanting to learn things so that I would be prepared to play a role as a participant in world discussion. To that end, I studied many different things. As you know, my undergraduate background is in physics, but I also was, for a while, a double major in literature. I taught myself French, as well as, later, Mandarin, and now I’m trying to learn Russian. And all these things are part and parcel of my sense that it’s not enough to be good at . . . In some sense, the spirit of the age favors specialization, and my personal tastes favor generalization or being a polymath. Or as my advisor once to put it, I have too many hobbies. Let’s say a smart young person were to come to you and ask for advice. How do I self-educate myself in a broadly similar way?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.