[print_link] [email_link] “Academics are farmers. They have fields, and they cultivate their fields well,” Jack Miles writes in a superb 1999 essay on Three Differences between an Academic and an Intellectual. Miles, who is best known for his books GOD: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, proposes that, by contrast: Intellectuals are hunters. An intellectual does not have a field but a quarry which he pursues across as many fields as necessary, often losing sight of it altogether. . […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: academia, generalists, humanities, intellectuals, specialists, universities