Why all the writing, Bull?

After reading Blink’s post [see below], I started thinking about why political scientists and philosophers write everything down. In the fine field of math, you write everything down so when you’re wrong, you can go back and find where you went wrong so you don’t have to start over entirely fresh from the start. However, when you write a theorem, you have tailor those steps down to the simplest, most elegant path from beginning to end. Why does Bull take so many pages to tell us that yes, states are good and no, we can’t really see into the future?

Straying a bit from the point of the course, I see that there are two ways to pass on information from person to person and from generation to generation, when it is acknowledged that mortality is the simplest way for knowledge to cease to exist. One is by teaching and leading by example. Kings learned to be kings by shadowing their fathers. Cobblers took terms of apprenticeship to learn everything that had been taught to their master. However, this is not particularly effective if you are a) a closed society (establishment, non-transparent institution, etc), b) too busy being really good at what you do to train a youngster to follow in your steps with the completeness you feel necessary, c) don’t know if there is some youngster to whom you wish to impart your life’s work/don’t know where he(/she) is, or d) publication is the hip thing to do (and you think your thoughts warrant immortality). In these cases, publication is the way that your contribution to human knowledge is carried on and remembered with some amount of permanence.

In essence, the point of books that make one little point after 300 some pages are not so much there to convey the particular thought but to fill the gaps in knowledge that the author has considered. By writing them and publishing them (and them ending up in our course literature), anyone who cares to find out will know what these scholars(/philosophers/writers/political theorists) have considered and why. Though they may not be a direct contribution to the final ‘theorem,’ the thought process and record thereof provides materials for other thinkers to consider, discard, contest, or build upon.

It seems that many of the thinkers we have encountered in this course are looking for the finite answer, the elegant theorem that applies to human nature, social relations, and international structure and relations. Bull, by presenting investigations of new thoughts and ideas to be gleaned from history does not seem to be working on the theorem directly but rather, seems to be acknowledging that there are many things to be considered and weighed and thought about before such a theorem is really possible. It is almost humble of him to not put forth the final answer – he instead presents an exploration of his ideas and analyses as wisdom and insight, not a solution.