Screens, Research and Hypertext

The Confession of John Joseph Miller

I, too, talk about books I haven't read.

I suppose I count as a scholar. At the very least, I’ve most of the outward trappings of one. Large diplomas bestowing increasingly pretentious titles. A doctoral dissertation slowly gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. Several articles in academic journals. Lines on my CV with the words “assistant professor of philosophy” in them.

I’ve never read Plato’s Republic all the way through.

I once owned—though never cracked the cover of—Kant’s Critique of Judgment.

I successfully defended a dissertation on John Stuart Mill without reading all 33 volumes of his Collected Works.

Yet I can—or could once upon a time—explain Plato’s cave to undergraduates, situate Kant’s views on aesthetics within his larger architectonic, and publish peer-reviewed interpretations of Mill.

Scholarship isn’t reading every last scrap of text. Scholarship is drawing new ideas from the texts you have read.

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Screens, Research and Hypertext

The Confession of John Joseph Miller

I, too, talk about books I haven't read.

For more context

If people used to be so much smarter, then why'd they spend so much time dying of preventable diseases?

Google Is Rotting Our Brains

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Google Is Rotting Our Brains