Join us in Scholar Square, our online community where we put our ethos into practice - and get access to all editions of The Scholarly Letter for free.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to receive weekly letters rooted in curiosity and connection.

Know someone who will enjoy The Scholarly Letter? Forward it to them.

All previous editions of The Letter are available on our website.

Online Thumbnail: Don Quixote Reading to Rosemante; Credits: National Gallery of Art

Hi Scholar,

Happy holidays. This is the final edition of The Scholarly Letter for 2025, delivered to your inbox on Christmas Day. If nothing else, perhaps this Letter might offer a small respite amid the occasional tensions that tend to gather around the holiday table.

We’ll keep the intro short this week: if this publication is or was something you valued in 2025, please support it by becoming a premium subscriber. The Scholarly Letter can only continue if it is sustained by those who care about receiving it.

Thanks for coming along, it’s been a year to remember.

In today’s Digest, we have: 

One of the core principles of The Scholarly Letter is a commitment to advancing a view of scholarship and inquiry as something scholars pursue for its own sake: because it satisfies their curiosity, brings them aesthetic pleasure, and because they find it impossible not to do it. Matters of usefulness are seen as secondary in cultivating a relationship with scholarship and knowledge.

Such a view of knowing, learning, and inquiry has perhaps become familiar to many of you regular readers of The Scholarly Letter. But we wondered whether you might like to know more about its philosophical underpinnings – that is, the assumptions about the world and about life that guide such a view.

/payFor this year’s final edition of the Digest, we therefore want to share a distinction between two philosophies shaping contemporary academia, and what academia could be – or perhaps what we want it to be – drawn from a short yet sharp essay by James G. March, titled “A Scholar’s Quest.”

March suggests that modern approaches to thinking about human action are dominated by a calculative and consequentialist philosophy. This way of thinking emphasises action as choice, and choice as driven by anticipations, incentives, and desires. From this perspective, humans evaluate alternatives in terms of expected consequences, keeping attractive outcomes firmly in view and implementing strategies accordingly. Action, then, becomes externally directed – toward achieving something, an outcome – through calculation.

Perhaps it is not hard to see how modern academia, and academics themselves, have come to inherit this philosophy in the way the institution conducts its inner workings. Academics are trained to select co-authors who are “big names” so their work gains recognition; to work strategically toward publishing more papers rather than more meaningful research in order to climb the career ladder; to pursue “trendy” topics to attract funding. These practices – among others – are emblematic of a consequentialist approach to playing the academic game. Research, scholarship, learning, and thinking become activities directed toward getting something: promotions, grants, prestige, recognition. And this does not happen in a vacuum. The academy itself actively incentivises these calculative, consequentialist modes of action.

Quoting John Stuart Mill, March tells us that such consequentialist thought has “the completeness of a limited man.” That is, it encourages us to see human beings only as creatures who calculate consequences, respond to incentives, and act based on anticipated outcomes – and to mistake this limited picture for a complete account of human action. In doing so, we fail to recognise that other ways of acting exist, ways that do not fit neatly into consequentialist logic. Yet this failure is not merely individual; it is a consequence of adopting consequentialist thinking itself. As March puts it:

To illuminate this second tradition – one that has become obscured in contemporary life and particularly in academia – March introduces the literary figure of Don Quixote. When challenged to explain his behaviour, Quixote does not justify his actions in terms of their expected consequences. He simply says, “I know who I am.” His actions are guided not by the external environment but by fidelity to an inner sense of self. What matters to him is self-respect rather than self-interest.

What March suggests is that this alternative way of understanding human action is grounded in fulfilling obligations tied to personal and social identities – obligations shaped by the ethos and practices of enduring human institutions. Rather than being driven by expectations, incentives, and desires, action is guided by self-conceptions, identities, and ideas of proper conduct. In this nonconsequentialist view of humanity, a logic of appropriateness matters more than a logic of consequences. One does not act because of anticipated rewards, but because it is an essential feature of our humanness to act in accordance with a conception of ourselves, regardless of outcomes.

It is this nonconsequentialist philosophy that guides the ethos of The Scholarly Letter, and perhaps one we hope the academy might begin to reclaim in order to rescue itself from increasingly calculative, consequentialist modes of operation. In recognising this alternative way of thinking about human action – and, by extension, about scholarly life – we urge you, scholar, to pursue learning and inquiry because they constitute a proper life rather than because they meet external metrics of value. To read, write, and think not because we must publish, but because we honour scholarship; to sustain institutions of learning not as instruments of productivity, but as objects of beauty and affirmations of our shared humanity.

In this, we reject the idea that scholarship must constantly justify itself through outcomes, metrics, or utility. Learning, inquiry, and thought matter not because they produce something, but because they express a way of being. If the academy is to be rescued from its increasingly calculative logic, it will not be through better incentives or more sophisticated metrics but through a renewed fidelity to who scholars are meant to be – and to what scholarship is for.

When addressing the possibility of a revival in independent scholarship, one of the most pressing questions hangs over those research disciplines which rely on extensive equipment. How are physicists, chemists, biologists, materials scientists, robotics engineers etc. supposed to conduct their work independent from traditional institutions? In the case of these scholars, traditional institutions provide the – often very expensive – tools and laboratories that makes their inquiry possible. 

A recently published article argues for the construction of a network of LABraries - community laboratories staffed by LABriarians possessing the necessary expertise to safely steward the use of the LABrary by those who wish to work within it. 

The authors present the concept of LABraries specifically in the context of biotechnology, citing the potential economic benefits of developing the bioeconomy; that is, economic growth derived from biological research. We read this and find ourselves wondering if this justification – while valid – is accidentally obscuring a better reason to advocate for community laboratories: to facilitate work done by scholars outside of universities. Putting the economic argument to one side opens up the possibility of LABraries designed to support disciplines beyond those driving the latest economic boom. Biotechnology may be trendy, but couldn’t we also have community chemistry, materials science, robotics, and mechanical engineering labs?

Projects at BioCurious (a community biotechnology lab that's been running for more than 10 years) have already shown what is possible. They’ve built a functional bioprinter on a shoestring budget (like a 3D printer but for living cells) and are collaborators on The Open Insulin Project which is developing a process whereby insulin could be manufactured locally by communities who need it. Of course, such community laboratories would not be able to completely replicate the research environments of established universities: they will almost certainly have to operate on smaller budgets and house less extensive equipment. However, this need not be a reason for concern. Rather, it presents an exciting opportunity to re-imagine what kind of scholarship might thrive at a smaller scale, independent from the support, pressures and neoliberal logics of the modern academe. 

[Special thanks to Regina, a member of Scholar Square for sharing this resource with us]

We hardly ever share a resource that itself contains multiple resources – although when we share papers (which we often do), the cited literature within them may serendipitously turn out to be resourceful for some of you.

This week, however, we’re sharing a resource that is itself a curated collection.

It brings together recordings from a writing workshop series hosted by The Behavioural Scientist, alongside links to books, websites, worksheets, articles, and other writing-related materials. There’s a lot in it, and of course not all of it will be relevant to your specific needs or circumstances. But chances are there will be something in there that speaks to your purposes, nudges your practice, or invites a new way of thinking about writing.

Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. A few days later, he wrote the following letter to his school teacher:

This publication often pays more attention to scholarly pursuits that begin long after we have left school. Yet, as Camus’s letter shows, for some of us, the seeds of our future selves are sown by our school teachers. 

For The Tatler, this teacher was Mr Jabulani Walasi who taught him mathematics in high school. Mr Walasi is an extraordinary mathematician with an infectious appreciation for his subject, who would begin every lesson by declaring: “Good morning class, it’s a beautiful day for maths”. As well as maths (which The Tatler did not enjoy or properly engage with), Mr Walasi taught him something more important: that scholarship could be a source of beauty, joy and personal fulfilment. Even though The Tatler left maths behind as soon as he could, Mr Walasi’s genuine love for his scholarship – the beauty and wonder he found in it – left a lasting impression. He is a true scholar, in every sense of the word that this publication stands for, that continues to inspire the scholar who wrote these words to this day.

We care about what you think and would love to hear from you. Hit reply or drop a comment and tell us what you like (or don't) about The Scholarly Letter.