Foxes and hedgehogs

Being a fox in academia

In Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay, he takes a line from a fragment of a poem by the Ancient Greek poet Archilochus—“a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing”—and uses it to illustrate a deeper truth:

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 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 principles. 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 on 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…¹

Photo by Martin Arusalu on Unsplash

At times I feel like an outlier in academia. I don’t subscribe to a big theory, and I have no interest in doing so. Perhaps it’s not that I’m an outlier; it’s just that many successful academics are more on the hedgehog end of the spectrum, whereas I am very much on the fox end.

I first read Berlin’s essay after reading Philip E. Tetlock’s Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?² some years back. I wanted to know whether anyone had ever studied the success of academic grand theories, and a friend pointed me to that work. Tetlock looked at the predictions made by academics and pundits in the fields of politics and international relations over the time of the Cold War. He found that, often, academics touted as experts in the field think like hedgehogs. Hedgehogs tend to be confident and to be able to explain many things by fitting them into their theory. If you have an appealing theory and narrative, of course you will be preferred by media outlets. Foxes were less likely to be touted as experts or media pundits. An opinion built upon many conflicting points of view tends to come out as, “On the one hand, this, on the hand, that.” I am well aware that this can look like vacillation or fence-sitting.

Tetlock found, however, that hedgehogs tended to be far less successful in actually predicting what happened. Foxes tended to do better, particularly over a longer term. Why did foxes succeed more often? Tetlock hypothesised that the following factors were relevant:³

• Foxes are more sceptical about the usefulness of broad-brush laws to explain the past or predict the future;

• Foxes are wary of simple historical analogies;

• Foxes are less likely to get swept away in their own rhetoric;

• Foxes worry more about judging the past too harshly, and are not so concerned about being judged in the future for not being “on the right side of history”;

• Foxes see more value in being objective and keeping personal political passions away from scholarship; and

• Foxes make more self-conscious efforts to integrate conflicting lines of thought.

This summary of fox-behaviour reflects my own approach to scholarship and thought so well that I was startled. It explained to me why sometimes, in arguments with other scholars, it feels as though I am talking at cross-purposes with the other person… because I am. Hedgehogs are engaged in a fundamentally different exercise to foxes. There are people who are fox-hogs or hedge-foxes, of course. I’m just right up the fox end.

Tetlock concludes:

Foxes are not awe-inspiring forecasters: most of them should be happy to tie simple extrapolation models, and none of them can hold a candle to formal statistical models. But foxes to avoid many of the big mistakes that drive down the probability scores of hedgehogs to approximate parity with dart-throwing chimps. And this accomplishment is rooted in foxes’ more balanced style of thinking about the world—a style of thought that elevates no thought above criticism.

By contrast, hedgehogs dig themselves into intellectual holes. The deeper they dig, the harder it gets to climb out and see what is happening outside, and the more tempting it becomes to keep on doing what they know how to do: continue their metaphorical digging by uncovering their new reasons why their initial inclination, usually too optimistic or pessimistic, was right. Hedgehogs are thus at continual risk of becoming prisoners of their preconceptions, trapped in self-reinforcing cycles in which their initial ideological disposition stimulates thoughts that further justify that inclination which, in turn, stimulates further supportive thoughts.⁴

However, foxes did not always make better predictions. If there was a good deal of conflicting information, foxes could get overwhelmed, whereas hedgehogs could keep their heads clear.

Photo by Anton Sobotyak on Unsplash Oh my hedgghogs are CUTE!

Of course, one may very well object to Tetlock’s research by querying whether we should be judging academics for their skill in prediction, unless it’s an important part of their field.

My job as a legal academic is not to forecast the future, and if it were, I would approach it quite differently and use different information. My job is to teach students; to describe the law in approachable ways; to analyse the law in ways which might be helpful or make it easier to understand; and to criticise cases or legislation where I think a decision has been made wrongly or something has been overlooked. I dislike predicting the outcome of pending cases, even for areas of law I know well. I am more than happy to point out flaws in the drafting of statutes or reasoning of cases, and to predict problems which might arise.

Often, in grant applications, one is asked to predict the outcomes of one’s research, and naturally, one does better if one is confident and has a catchy theory and narrative. Because I am at one extreme of the hedgehog-fox spectrum, I tend to do badly at this. A hedgehog friend assisted me with totally rewriting my only grant application, an experience so traumatic I have never applied again. She put in all that work for me to make the application “sexy” and I still failed.

I don’t make grand claims about my research, simply because that’s not the way I think. My research makes some quite interesting points which might be helpful,⁵ and I’d be delighted if people thought about those things, but I’m also willing to concede that I might be wrong.

We need both hedgehogs and foxes in academia. Hedgehogs supply me with interesting ways to look at the world. Reading a particular theory is like putting on a pair of glasses and seeing the world in a different way. Then… I put on a new pair of theory glasses, and then another, because I’m a fox, and I like to see how things look from multiple perspectives. There may be something useful to learn.

Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash

I like theories. I just don’t believe one theory has the capacity to solve everything. Moreover, I become concerned when the theory takes over, and reality is criticised for not fitting in with the theory. Isn’t that the moment when one might have to revise the theory? Or perhaps you must accept that everyone else is not engaged in the same exercise as you? But then… that latter question is very foxy of me.

Current academic incentives are geared towards hedgehogs; towards those who have theories which seek to explain everything. You’re more likely to have a like-minded group, all of whom will cite you or judge your article positively in peer review. And, as mentioned earlier, hedgehogs tend to be more confident in their work or theory, which helps for grants or media engagement.

Foxes such as myself have a tendency to annoy hedgehogs, by reading wildly different points of view, and material from other areas, and coming in from left field. I have occasionally received peer reviews of my articles which indicate that the reviewers know or suspect who I am and dislike my approach: I once got a snarky peer review rejection, which criticised my “typically eclectic references”.

The most unhelpful peer review report I’ve ever I received said, “This is not consistent with x theory…” and went on to suggest how I could rewrite the paper to ensure it was consistent with x theory. I’m happy to accept substantive criticism of my work from followers of x theory, but if the criticism is simply, “You don’t think like me, and you don’t adopt my views,” there’s not much I can do about that. I suppose, if I were of a more instrumentalist frame of mind, I might respond by rewriting my work to fit in with the theory, just so it got through peer review and was more widely cited… but then it wouldn’t reflect what I wanted to say. I don’t like conforming to peer pressure.

I do sometimes wonder if life as an academic fox is lonelier and more difficult. But—mustn’t grumble—I have chosen to stick to my principles, even if it might sometimes disadvantage me. Academia needs both hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs should beware of being too tough on foxes for disagreeing with their theories. They need annoying people like me to dig them out of self-reinforcing intellectual holes. Preserving intellectual inquiry is essential to the academy.

1. Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (Henry Hardy (ed)) (2nd edn, Princeton University Press: 2013, originally published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1953 ) pg. 2.

2. (Princeton University Press, 2005).

3. Ibid, Ch 3.

4. Ibid, pg 118.

5. My mentor got really annoyed at my application for promotion from Senior Lecturer to Associate Professor. It started, “I am quite good at teaching and research.” I was confused as to why he was so upset. I said, “Well I am!” He said, “You are WORLD CLASS, okay?” then crossed half of it out and suggested alternative wording. I am lucky people look out for me.