Academic scholarship prides itself on rigour and objectivity. Science is considered the most reliable body of rational knowledge about the natural world, while the arts and humanities pursue unbiased investigation of social phenomena, penetrating what it is to be human. Let the life of the mind flourish, and truth will prevail!
Or is that all spin and nonsense? Let me come clean: I wrote that first paragraph tongue firmly in cheek! Does scholarship really have pride in itself? What’s all that impersonal drivel about “science is considered” and “the arts and humanities pursue”? In the whole paragraph no human being comes into view at all – as if academic work has a life of its own! What’s “the mind”, after all, and how can it have a life?