Response to ‘Getting Square in a Jerking Circle’

With the permission of the author we have published in full John Tranter’s email to the editor in response to the recently published ‘Getting Square in a Jerking Circle’ by Luke Carman. 

To: The Editor, 

Dear sir/madam, 

I was pleased to read Luke Carman’s oddly-titled and adjective- and cliche-ridden (‘blissfully unaware’, ‘devious characters’, ‘breath-taking fervour’) essay on arts bureaucrats ‘Getting square in a jerking circle’  in Meanjin. Especially pleased as I recognised a sentence I first published over thirty years ago, and have often since quoted, from the American sociologist, founder of behavioral sociology and the exchange theory, George Homans: ‘To overcome the inertia of the intellect, a new statement must be an overstatement, and sometimes it is more important that the statement be interesting than that it be true’. In a note widely published decades ago, I added information that anyone with access to the Internet could well have added, that George Casper Homans (August 11, 1910–May 29, 1989) was best known for his research in social behavior and his works including The Human Group, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, his exchange theory and the many different propositions he enforced to better explain social behavior.

Let me be pedantic, as you insist Mr Carman should not be: first used in The American Model: Influence & independence in Australian poetry, paperback, Joan (ed) Kirkby (Author), Southwood Press, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney: 1982. Also published in Poetry Magazine (New Poetry), 1980. 

Unfortunately Mr Carman credits the statement to an ‘Alfred Whitehead’, though which one of many famous Alfred Whiteheads he fails to tell us: ‘As Alfred Whitehead recognised, it is more important that an idea be interesting than that it be true.’ He perhaps refers to the most famous Alfred Whitehead, who (as Wikipedia tells us) ‘Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS (15 February 1861–30 December 1947) was an English mathematician and philosopher. He is best known as the defining figure of the philosophical school known as process philosophy, which today has found application to a wide variety of disciplines, including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology, among other areas. In his early career Whitehead wrote primarily on mathematics, logic, and physics. His most notable work in these fields is the three-volume Principia Mathematica (1910–13), which he co-wrote with former student Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica is considered one of the twentieth century’s most important works in mathematical logic, and placed 23rd in a list of the top 100 English-language nonfiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library.’

Though perhaps Mr Carman refers to this man’s father, Alfred Whitehead, who was a minister and schoolmaster of Chatham House Academy, a successful school for boys established by Thomas Whitehead, Alfred North’s grandfather.

On the other hand, Mr Carman could well mean the Canadian ‘Alfred Ernest Whitehead (10 July 1887 – 1 April 1974)’, who, Wikipedia tells us, was a stamp collector,  ‘an English-born Canadian composer, organist, choirmaster, music educator, painter, whose works are held in a number of important private collections, and an internationally recognized authority in the field of philately. His The Squared-Circle Cancellations of Canada received its third edition shortly after his death.’  

The latter, perhaps, as the similarity of the odd title might indicate. Sadly we are never to know which of these three Alfred Whiteheads Mr Carman refers to, though we can be fairly sure that none of these men are responsible for the peculiar and persuasive statement I attributed, long ago, to George Homans. 

Sincerely, 

John Tranter