Research Like a Dog

🍏your Sunday read 16th March, 2025

A well-researched original piece to get you thinking.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.
Know someone who will enjoy The Scholarly Letter? Forward it to them.

Image Credits: General Research Division, The New York Public Library. (1826 - 1828). 1. Newfoundland Dog; 2. Eskimaux Dog.

Hi Scholar,

For the first time, the Sunday Read has been co-written from start to finish by both The Critic and The Tatler. Rather than the usual process of writing, editing, and providing feedback, this piece is a true collaboration: equal in effort and thought. It has taken significant time to put together, but it has also been one of the most enjoyable Sunday Reads we’ve worked on.

Kafka’s work invites endless interpretations, but as two people who see the world through the lens of knowledge and research, we couldn’t help but read one particular story - the focus of this essay - as a scathing critique of knowledge itself. It made us reflect on how easily researchers fall into the trap of being dogmatic (excuse the pun) within their intellectual frameworks among many other questions.

That said, rather than offering a clear-cut lesson, Kafka’s story serves as a provocation - an invitation to challenge the ways we think about research. And that, after all, is precisely why we write the Sunday Read.

Research Like a Dog

Written by The Critic & The Tatler

Can Franz Kafka’s ‘Investigations of a Dog’ teach us anything about research and knowledge production?

The story, at its core - at least from our reading of it, is about the pursuit of truth - an investigation into the nature of the world, albeit from a dog’s perspective. It follows an elderly dog reflecting on his lifelong quest to answer the question: where does the food that dogs eat come from? His search for answers, however, is constrained by the scientific traditions and assumptions of dogdom.

This Letter is for Paid Subscribers