'Additionally, more diversity in the faculty ranks may offer a new range of innovative thinking and research. This notion is best summarized by astronomy professor John A. Johnson in a 2015 interview he did with Harvard University's Crimson Magazine, "I sincerely believe that there are problems I can solve differently because of my unique background." Johnson, an African-American in the physical sciences, became the first African-American to receive tenure from Harvard in the physical sciences in 2013.'
It's 2015. Where are all the black college faculty?
Ironically, Philip Emeagwali presented some rich insights on this subject in relation to his own experience in his interview with Reuben Abati, , insights that are valid in spite of his huge exaggeration of his achievements and the global scams he built on the back of those exaggerations, making it vital to highlight what is valid in Emeagwali's practical achievement and theoretical vision, as different from what is fraudulent.
What are these insights?
Emeagwali described the sources of his mathematical ability in terms that are relevant for the development of mathematical ability in general.
These insights are centred in the use of visualisation which he describes himself as having cultivated through exercises learnt from the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross, a Western esoteric order to which his father belonged.
In support of these ideas, he provide models demonstrating his use of visualisation in his scientific creations. To the best of my knowledge, those claims of scientific creation except the computations that won him the Gordon Bell Prize are false but the general principles he outlined are valid and their inspirational power remains consistent in spite of the fraudulent ends to which the claims are directed.
The story of Philip Emeagwali is a fascinating one that needs to be told in its fullness, embracing scientific creativity and fraudulent cunning building on the relatively limited global visibility of Black people in the stratospheric reaches represented by the highest levels of scientific achievement as well as the desperate need for Black people for such role models and the anxiety of some Caucasians to highlight stories that might represent such Black achievement.
Apart from the sociological significance of this story in terms of strategies of self fashioning on a global scale performed so effectively by Emeagwali, the story is relevant for the history and philosophy of science in relation to levels of understanding across the world of what science is and the implications of the contemporary institutionalisation of science, as well as for the variety of methods through which scientific creativity may be developed.
The ready access to global information enabled by the Information Revolution greatly reduces the possibility of, if not makes impossible a scam of the scope performed by Emeagwali who built his reputation on the ignorance and investigative failures of seasoned journalists working for prestigious organisations in Nigeria and the US, but his descriptions of his methods of scientific creativity, creativity represented by at least one genuine achievement, are of enduring value. They may be taken as a combination of science fact and science fiction. Fact in describing techniques he may have used in his one verified achievement, fiction in depicting fascinating creations of which there is no evidence of their existence, but which, in their compelling force, may prove enduringly inspiring.
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