Your post today resonates deeply, for me, with something I've been thinking about for many years. There's a famous essay by Isaiah Berlin, "The Hedgehog and the Fox", whose point is that one of the most profound differences that divide human beings is between foxes and hedgehogs. It all starts with an obscure fragment by a Greek poet, Ar…
Your post today resonates deeply, for me, with something I've been thinking about for many years. There's a famous essay by Isaiah Berlin, "The Hedgehog and the Fox", whose point is that one of the most profound differences that divide human beings is between foxes and hedgehogs. It all starts with an obscure fragment by a Greek poet, Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing". The poet seems sympathetic with the hedgehog: imagine a fox meaning to kill and eat a hedgehog. She tries many different strategies, but every time the hedgehog rolls up in a ball of spikes, and the fox is frustrated.
Berlin doesn't take sides but classifies writers and thinkers according to this criterion. By instinct, I take sides with the foxes. I think I am a fox myself. Maybe not a very clever one, but a fox nevertheless.
It seems to me that from your angle, foxes have a significant advantage over hedgehogs. What's your opinion?
For completeness, below you find a lengthy quotation from Berlin's essay:
"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel – a single, universal, organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance – and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle. These last lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.
Of course, like all over-simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, scholastic and ultimately absurd. But if it is not an aid to serious criticism, neither should it be rejected as being merely superficial or frivolous: like all distinctions which embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting-point for genuine investigation."
Isaiah Berlin. The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History. Princeton University Press.
The Hedgehog and the Fox. Famous! Both Tetlock in Superforecasting and Epstein in Range talk about it.
Regarding your question: I think foxes are no better than hedgehogs, but the path of the fox is more fulfilling. They get to follow their curiosity even if it's not in just one area, and their likelihood of success and resilience are higher.
I also can tell you that Tetlock's research on superforecasters undoubtedly defends that foxes better at making predictions, and hedgehogs are no better than average people.
Your post today resonates deeply, for me, with something I've been thinking about for many years. There's a famous essay by Isaiah Berlin, "The Hedgehog and the Fox", whose point is that one of the most profound differences that divide human beings is between foxes and hedgehogs. It all starts with an obscure fragment by a Greek poet, Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing". The poet seems sympathetic with the hedgehog: imagine a fox meaning to kill and eat a hedgehog. She tries many different strategies, but every time the hedgehog rolls up in a ball of spikes, and the fox is frustrated.
Berlin doesn't take sides but classifies writers and thinkers according to this criterion. By instinct, I take sides with the foxes. I think I am a fox myself. Maybe not a very clever one, but a fox nevertheless.
It seems to me that from your angle, foxes have a significant advantage over hedgehogs. What's your opinion?
For completeness, below you find a lengthy quotation from Berlin's essay:
"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.’ Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog’s one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel – a single, universal, organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance – and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or aesthetic principle. These last lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classification, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second; Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ibsen, Proust are, in varying degrees, hedgehogs; Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Molière, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce are foxes.
Of course, like all over-simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, scholastic and ultimately absurd. But if it is not an aid to serious criticism, neither should it be rejected as being merely superficial or frivolous: like all distinctions which embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting-point for genuine investigation."
Isaiah Berlin. The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History. Princeton University Press.
The Hedgehog and the Fox. Famous! Both Tetlock in Superforecasting and Epstein in Range talk about it.
Regarding your question: I think foxes are no better than hedgehogs, but the path of the fox is more fulfilling. They get to follow their curiosity even if it's not in just one area, and their likelihood of success and resilience are higher.
I also can tell you that Tetlock's research on superforecasters undoubtedly defends that foxes better at making predictions, and hedgehogs are no better than average people.
Thanks for the quote, very relevant indeed!