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DaVinci's Study of Distance from the Sun.  Courtesy of the DaVinci Gateway.

The Libraries

Of Interest~

Intellectual Development

Some words evoke such unpleasant associations we cringe when we hear them. The word "intellectual" or any of its euphemisms would be a prime example. What's really at the bottom of our discomfort? It's an interesting question since, on one level, most people profess to believe in the value of education.

It was once considered a rare and admirable thing to be a "man of letters," and such men were sought out for companionship, advice, and tutoring. As the skills of reading and writing were passed on to those who could afford the leisure time to learn them, the lines between the educated and uneducated were most often drawn along class divisions, and in some times and cultures those of race and gender. Despite such inequities, however, intellectual development was understood to be a worthy endeavor, and there was no reason to be ashamed of it.

Interestingly, it wasn’t always just wealthy, upper-class men who were educated. In almost every historical time and place there have been men who have worked hard to educate everyone in their sphere—whether sons, daughters, or servants. Thomas More did such an admirable job educating his daughter, Margaret, that even More's own contemporaries had difficulty distinguishing between their writings.¹

It’s true that there have also been men through the ages who believed their servants' minds were incapable of learning and that their daughters' minds were too delicate for it. As a result, a servant who wanted to educate himself was sometimes seen as "getting above his station" and a woman who wanted to educate herself was seen as being disrespectful to her femininity. Could this be partly to blame for the vague sense in our time that somehow it’s pretentious or egotistic to develop the mind?

A sense of disdain for intellectual pursuits is not new. For at least a quarter of a millennium, the derogatory term “bluestocking” has been applied to women with intellectual interests. While some trace the origins of the term as far back as Renaissance Venice and Paris, it seems the English version of the term turns up about 1750. At that time, Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu and a number of her London society friends decided it might be fun to imitate the well-known Paris salons and host a series of literary evenings in their own parlours. They invited the day’s foremost “men of letters” to discuss their works, hosting notables such as Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. As the story goes, they invited a minor poet named Benjamin Stillingfleet to join them one evening, and he protested that he didn’t have the proper evening clothes. The ladies hospitably insisted he come in his day clothes, which included a pair of bright blue stockings. These proved themselves in such contrast to the sea of black ones in the room that they were not forgotten and gradually attached themselves to the group as a nickname.

Although the nickname seems to have had a fond beginning amongst the members of the group, it was soon picked up by others in a derogatory fashion and came to denote any woman who had literary or intellectual pretensions. By Victorian times, the fear of being considered a “bluestocking” had become so pronounced that some young ladies would go to great lengths to avoid appearing the least bit “scholarly.”

Although the situation is no longer so extreme, words such as “intellectual” still have some vague negative associations. However, business and financial experts may be changing things. Thomas A. Stewart, editor of the Harvard Business Review, contended a decade ago that “intellectual capital” is indispensable to the global economy. Intellectual capital is considered to be a combination of assets that can be used to create wealth, that are difficult to measure. Chief among them is something called “human capital,” which has been defined as implicit knowledge contained within employees’ minds.

Stewart's ideas were taken up with enthusiasm and quickly snowballed into an entire industry known as "Knowledge Management," which concerns itself mainly with the intellectual assets available to businesses and organizations. However, in many cases, what is good for organisations can also be good for individuals.

Could we make ourselves more valuable to our employers by developing and educating our intellect? Could our minds become our own best assets for personal success and productivity? If so, this is an asset we already possess, and we can develop it further with the help of the internet libraries that are now very literally at our fingertips.

¹ Hitchcock, Elsie Vaughan (ed.). 1935 (for 1934). The lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, knighte, written by William Roper, esquire, whiche maried Margreat, daughter of the sayed Thomas Moore; and now edited from thirteen manuscripts, with collations, etc. EETS OS 197. London: Oxford University Press.

Speaking of online libraries, don't forget to visit the ones we've listed in our Articles and Links pages.

All articles copyright August 2006 by Lady DaVinci.com