The Guerrilla Scholar’s Manifesto

The pursuit of knowledge and discovery is one of the most characteristic of all essential human activities. It is far too important and way too much fun to be left to academics and professional scientists.

One of the greatest things anyone can do for humanity is to add to the common store of ideas. Many “ordinary” people do this outside the usual venues of learning. They piece together local histories, explore nature in home-built laboratories, participate in artistic and cultural events, or track planet-killer asteroids through backyard telescopes. I call these people Guerrilla Scholars.

Guerrilla Scholarship is my name for a philosophy, a frame of mind that is compelled to seek out new ideas through science, scholarship, or art, and use those ideas to make the world better. I am especially interested in those who do so outside of the college campus or corporate laboratory.

The purpose of this blog is to support and promote a community of independent scholars, amateur scientists, artists, etc. from widely varying fields. The Internet makes it possible for the narrowest specialists to exchange ideas with the generalist, the amateur with the professional. I hope to use it for a complementary purpose: to bring widely disparate bodies of knowledge together and promote the cross-pollenization of ideas.

Guerrilla Scholars use unconventional means to pursue the life of the mind. By the same token, they use intellectual tools to accomplish unusual or unconventional objectives. But Guerrilla Scholarship is more than invention in the face of necessity. It is a manifestation of our most basic freedoms: to speak, to think, to associate, to exchange ideas. It informs the essence of our Great Experiment in democracy; that the ordinary citizenry can be trusted with the great ideas that guide our political course. It acknowledges that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary ingenuity, the likes of which regularly incites revolutions in science, art, literature, social reform, and many other fields.

In today’s world the need for dedicated, feisty, dogged citizen scholars and scientists is keener than ever. We now live in a world where legitimate scientists finds themselves lumped together with nutjobs, where careful research is dismissed as inconvenient, and where politics trump facts in deciding what informs everything from our school curricula to national and foreign policy.

The act of learning is a pleasure that does not fade with age. It is the ultimate rebellion, the grandest subversion. It is enrichment that no creditor or recession can take away, and it is one thing that no sane individual can ever, ever come to regret.

I look forward to getting to know you, my fellow Guerrilla Scholars, wherever you are.