Scholarship versus research

One of the things about academia that most surprised and disappointed me was the low regard for scholarship. Exploration is tolerated as long as it results in a profusion of journal articles, and of course grant money, but is otherwise frowned upon. For example, I know someone who ruined his academic career by writing a massive scholarly book rather than cranking out papers.

I recently ran across an essay [1] in which C. S. Lewis expressed similar concerns sixty years ago, referring to "the incubus of Research." In the essay he describes a young academic in the humanities who

" far from being able or anxious " to add to the sum of human knowledge, wants to acquire a good deal more of the knowledge we already have. He has lately begun to discover how many things he needs to know in order to follow up his budding interests " To head him off from these studies, to pinfold him in some small inquiry whose chief claim is that no one has made it before is cruel and frustrating. It wastes such years as he will never have again "

My favorite part of the quote is describing research as "some small inquiry whose chief claim is that no one has made it before." As Lewis said elsewhere, striving for originality can thwart originality.

[1] "Interim Report." First published in The Cambridge Review in 1956 and reprinted as chapter 17 of Present Concerns.