How to Write a Thesis
by Umberto Eco.
This book was written in 1977 in Italian but the English translation came out only this year. A must read for students and non-students; tons of wisdom even if you don't plan to do a thesis.Here's a brilliant excerpt which would make any neuroscientist smile:
I show the page to Placido, and then I read him the excerpt that helped me so much. I read it, I read it again, and I am astonished. The abbot Vallet had never formulated the idea that I attributed to him; that is to say he had never made the connection that seemed so brilliant to me, a connection between theory of judgement and theory of beauty.
Vallet wrote of something else. Stimulated in some mysterious way by what he was saying, I made the connection myself and, and as I identified the idea with the text I was underlining, I attributed it to Vallet. And for more than twenty years I have been grateful to the old abbot for something he had never given me. I had produced the magic key on my own.
But is this really how it is? Is the merit of that idea truly mine? Had I never read Vallet, I would never have had that idea. He may not have been the father of the idea, but he certainly was, so to speak, its obstetrician. He did not gift me with anything, but he kept my mind in shape, and he somehow stimulated my thinking. Is this not also what we ask from a teacher, to provoke us to invent ideas?
[---]
I am not sure what the moral of this story is, but I know there is at least one, and it is very beautiful. I wish my readers to find many abbot Vallet over the course of their lives, and I aspire to become someone else's abbot Vallet.
by Umberto Eco.This book was written in 1977 in Italian but the English translation came out only this year. A must read for students and non-students; tons of wisdom even if you don't plan to do a thesis.Here's a brilliant excerpt which would make any neuroscientist smile:
I show the page to Placido, and then I read him the excerpt that helped me so much. I read it, I read it again, and I am astonished. The abbot Vallet had never formulated the idea that I attributed to him; that is to say he had never made the connection that seemed so brilliant to me, a connection between theory of judgement and theory of beauty.
Vallet wrote of something else. Stimulated in some mysterious way by what he was saying, I made the connection myself and, and as I identified the idea with the text I was underlining, I attributed it to Vallet. And for more than twenty years I have been grateful to the old abbot for something he had never given me. I had produced the magic key on my own.
But is this really how it is? Is the merit of that idea truly mine? Had I never read Vallet, I would never have had that idea. He may not have been the father of the idea, but he certainly was, so to speak, its obstetrician. He did not gift me with anything, but he kept my mind in shape, and he somehow stimulated my thinking. Is this not also what we ask from a teacher, to provoke us to invent ideas?
[---]
I am not sure what the moral of this story is, but I know there is at least one, and it is very beautiful. I wish my readers to find many abbot Vallet over the course of their lives, and I aspire to become someone else's abbot Vallet.
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