Ken Robinson takes a somewhat unconventional view of academic researchers in his great TEDTalk.
I like university professors, but you know we should not hold them up as the high watermark of all human achievement, there are just a form of life. You know, another form of life. But they are rather curious, and I say this out of affection for them. There is something curious about professors. In my experience, not all of them, but typically, they live in their heads. They live up there and slightly to one side. They are disembodied, you know in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. It’s there to get their heads to the meetings.
Although rather comical at first, once one thinks about it a bit it actually suggests that this form of life has a lot in common with people with a highly spiritual life practicing self-inquiry.
This is from the “Mario’s Entangled Bank” blog ( http://pineda-krch.com ) of Mario Pineda-Krch, a theoretical biologist at the University of California, Davis.
