I’m thinking about new faculty beginning the adventure of university teaching and research. And, as I do, I remember back when I was just 14. I got up at four in the morning and bicycled out to the fairgrounds where the circus had come to town. They snatched me up — put me to work setting up bleachers. I finally limped home that afternoon with free passes for the evening show.
What I saw that day was magical, even before the performance. A tutorial on applied mechanics. First, seeing six men with sledgehammers, circling an anchor post — six men raining down blows with machine-gun rhythm. Sinking each post in seconds.
Then the erection of a two-hundred-foot-high tent with tensioned ropes. This could never’ve been done without delicately balancing huge forces. The synchronization. The cooperation. It was a ballet performance. And all that was just preamble. That night, tired and achy, I watched the show!
Again, it was discipline and applied physics. You know what I mean. You’ve all seen trapeze artists, high wire acts, stilt walkers, the athletic antics of clowns. All making the impossible seem easy. Their mathematical precision coupled discipline and danger. The penalty for error is severe.
Fast forward: No longer 14, I’m 25 and teaching machine design at a university. Each day I need to have complex ideas under control. Then I must make them understandable. If I fail, the students won’t overlook it. I need to stay on my own tightrope.There’s more: Teaching is where we hone our balance, but without ever shortchanging our students. Then, a serious high wire act comes when we put our own newly forged ideas before the most critical audience: The judgement of our new ideas by our peers. A lapse of logic or a lazy idea means a serious fall from our own trapeze.
Of course, there’s also the delight in having shared knowledge — whether it’s already known, or new knowledge that we’ve created. The delight in having done so and succeeded. Our students tell us when we’ve managed to ride that bicycle across the wire. Not by applause, but by understanding. Our peers tell us if we’ve really created new knowledge. Not by gasps of excitement, but by making use of our work.
I’m sure you’ll find your own metaphor for the academic life. But mine began taking shape during my labors that day, over 80 years ago. A time when a wildly varied group of focused people turned a dusty field into a lecture on our capacity for creating magic. It was a moment when I saw how expertise, and mutual trust, lets us achieve that which did not, at first, seem possible.
I’m John Lienhard, at the University of Houston, where we’re interested in the way inventive minds work.
John Lienhard