25 September

For me, one of the most destructive oppositions people use is the one between thinking and doing. As if those were opposites. As the famous line says, 'nothing is as practical as a good theory'. You can't do, without thinking, and you can't think, without doing. And as Keynes once said, those who say they're practical people and don't over-think things are always actually using some set of fixed ideas they picked up somewhere in their past. Working in a university is a good example of this. You get all the cheap shots about ivory towers and 'philosophising'. Universities are in the top 3 export earners for the country. There's no difference between thinking and doing.