Should Scholars Think?

Your Scholarly Digest 16th October, 2025

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BRAIN FOOD

Should Scholars Try To Think?

The essay Should Scholars Try To Think? by Delancey Ferguson is a commentary on many things pertinent to the work of a scholar. It was written from Ferguson's perspective as a literary scholar, however this should not dissuade one from engaging with it. For buried amongst copious references to Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling and Walt Whitman is a thought-provoking discussion on the role that imagination, perhaps over-imagination, plays in scholarship.  

Ferguson proposes that a scholar's imagination is central to their work: how we arrange, report and interpret the facts we concern ourselves with is to some extent, beholden to our imagination. 

It is all well and good for a Scholar to generate/discover/construct facts (choose the appropriate verb according to your own particular epistemological leaning). To understand what these facts mean and then to communicate them to our peers is another thing entirely. 

After his reminder that one's imagination is essential to bring meaning forth from data, observations or facts, Ferguson also shares a warning we would do well to heed: 

Ferguson is irked by what he sees as the tendency of literature scholars to extend their analyses or criticism beyond what can be supported by the facts presented to them. Scholars, in their zeal for their work, may indulge in letting their imaginations get away from them. Is this tendency only to be found in literary criticism? Perhaps you too have noticed, in others or yourself, the temptation to over-extend one's analysis on occasion, rooted in nothing more than a well-meaning desire to be scholarly and advance the field we concern ourselves with studying. 

To this author's mind at least, Ferguson's discussion has implications for both the practitioner of critique and the seeker of rigor. When examining the work of others critically, one of our first instincts should be to examine whether the evidence provided supports the claims made. To seek that delicate balance between what we expect from an argument and what we accept from it. Similarly, when our scholarship is in preparation, not yet ready to be seen by others, we should be careful to mix in our imagination without causing the facts it rests on to buckle under its weight. 

Or perhaps that is my imagination running away from me? 

NEWS

The Prize for Looking Again

The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to three researchers for their work showing how economic growth is driven by scientific and technological innovation. The work which won the Economics Prize this year drew heavily on the concept of “creative destruction” made popular by Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. This caught our eye, for “creative destruction" is not a novel concept, first appearing as early as 1913. In other fields such as Chemistry, Physics, Medicine or Literature, the prize is often awarded based on the conclusions of the work of the winners: a discovery, a product etc. In Economics however, it has become common for winners to be decided based on methods.

It is a different way to understand what “ground-breaking” research is. In some fields of scholarship, the relentless pressure to publish new and novel findings would have rendered engaging with such antiquated work impossible. This year's Nobel Prize in Economics is a small reminder that sometimes progress comes from examining existing ideas through a new lens. 

RESOURCE

Chomsky’s Advice for Young Scholars 

A few weeks ago, we stumbled across a lecture by Noam Chomsky on what’s known as the ‘poverty of the stimulus’, the idea that the knowledge we acquire, such as language, far exceeds the information we receive from experience. Neither of us, The Critic nor The Tatler, are linguists ourselves. And yet, while the lecture is unsurprisingly about linguistics, the broader philosophical insight on which Chomsky builds his argument felt motivating for anyone pursuing inquiry. He reminds us that scientific progress has often been made by those who allow themselves to be puzzled by the ordinary:

We didn’t want to recommend a fairly long lecture as this week’s resource, but we did come across a short snippet from a webinar where Chomsky offers advice for young scholars. The first few minutes, in particular, carry the same message and are relevant to scholars of all kinds, linguists or not. 

OPPORTUNITIES

Funded PhDs, Postdocs and Academic Job Openings

• PhD Positions @ University of Groningen, Netherlands: click here

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• Postdoctoral and Academic Positions @ University of Sydney, Australia: click here

• Academic Positions @ Singapore University of Management, Singapore: click here

KEEPING IT REAL

On Not Lacking Talent, But Moderation

Gilles Deleuze is not known for the clarity of his writing, yet it is hard to deny his impact on modern philosophy. Part of what makes his work so endearing, and persuasive, is its passion and bombast. A project at Purdue University is working on translating his Paris lectures and happily has also got hold of an essay he wrote for part of his entrance exam to the University of Paris. His writing style was already taking its familiar shape at the age of 18, and he earned a score of 17/20 for his submission. A translators note at the bottom of the page reads:

The Deleuze’s essay - alongside two others - was published in the daily newspaper Le Figaro. As well as the essay itself, the translator included the following quote which was printed in bold at the bottom of the essay:

Looking at the work he would go on to produce, we can safely assume he held the first two sentences close to his heart - and paid no attention to the third.    

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