He can fail to show up for an appointment, or forget he owes you money, and the world treats it as though it were cute “I work with a lot of very stereotypical absent-minded professors,” the University of Toronto philosopher Joseph Heath wrote a while back on the Canadian blog In Due Course. One former colleague, he remembered, “called me up once, on a Friday evening, wondering why I was not yet at his house. His wife had given him the task of inviting the guests to their dinner party, which he had promptly forgotten to do, and then forgotten that he had forgotten to do it.” Readers in academia will recognise the phenomenon, but then, so will everyone else, as the stereotype goes back millennia: the ancient Greek astronomer Thales supposedly once fell into a well because he was stargazing as he walked. There’s a lesson here for all thinkers with their head in the clouds, though also for anyone who texts as they walk. What makes this form of forgetfulness uniquely annoying is that you’re not even supposed to be annoyed by it: the absent-minded professor can fail to show up for an appointment, or forget he owes you money, and the world “treats it as though it were cute, and possibly a sign of genius”. He’s not just _allowed_ to neglect duties the rest of us feel obliged to observe, he’s also rewarded for it. Continue reading...
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