Having established a territory and learned to hunt within it, the mature academic animal faces the central problem of evolutionary continuity.
It must reproduce.
In most species, reproduction is relatively straightforward.
The animal finds a mate.
A nest is constructed.
Young are produced.
The young are fed.
Eventually, they leave.
In Homo academicus, the process is considerably more elaborate.
There is usually a supervisor.
A proposal.
A committee.
A literature review.
Several years of uncertainty.
And, eventually, a document of approximately eighty thousand words explaining why the juvenile should now be allowed to become an adult.
The Nest
The academic nest is usually called a research group.
It may occupy a laboratory, a department, a centre, a reading group, or simply a collection of offices whose inhabitants have gradually begun using the same vocabulary.
The nest provides protection.
It provides resources.
It provides access to the literature.
And, most importantly, it provides a conceptual environment in which juveniles can observe mature behaviour at close range.
The nest is therefore not merely a place in which research occurs.
It is a site of cultural reproduction.
Nest Construction
Before juveniles can be admitted, the mature animal must establish that the nest is viable.
This involves acquiring funding.
Securing institutional recognition.
Obtaining space.
Recruiting collaborators.
And constructing a sufficiently impressive description of the nest for external observers.
The resulting structure may be called a:
Centre.
Institute.
Laboratory.
Hub.
Network.
Initiative.
Or, in particularly fertile environments:
Strategic Interdisciplinary Platform.
The distinction between these structures is difficult for outsiders to perceive.
The animals themselves appear to know immediately.
Courtship Within the Nest
Once the nest has been established, mature animals begin to attract potential juveniles.
The signals are subtle.
A research project is described as exciting.
A field is described as rapidly developing.
A methodological opportunity is identified.
The mature animal mentions the possibility of international collaboration.
There may even be funding.
The juvenile listens carefully.
This is not quite recruitment.
It is not quite courtship.
Researchers therefore classify it as academic nesting display.
The Choice of Supervisor
The juvenile now faces one of the most consequential decisions in its development.
Which adult should it follow?
The choice is not necessarily determined by intellectual brilliance.
The juvenile may be attracted by confidence.
Kindness.
Reputation.
Charisma.
Availability.
A particular theoretical vocabulary.
Or simply the fact that one adult appears to have understood what the juvenile was trying to say before the juvenile had worked it out itself.
This last characteristic is particularly powerful.
The juvenile experiences recognition.
The mature animal has identified something in the juvenile that the juvenile did not yet know was there.
The bond may be immediate.
Researchers call this supervisory affinity.
The Egg
Once accepted into the nest, the juvenile produces an egg.
It is called a research question.
At first, the egg is extremely small.
It may be expressed in one sentence.
Sometimes even half a sentence.
The supervisor examines it.
The juvenile waits.
A response is given.
“That’s interesting.”
The juvenile relaxes.
Then:
“But I think we need to narrow it down.”
The egg is opened.
Its contents are examined.
Several weeks later, it has become a proposal.
Incubation
The research question is then incubated.
This process can take several years.
During incubation, the juvenile feeds on literature.
It consumes methods.
It absorbs theory.
It collects data.
It produces drafts.
It is repeatedly told to clarify its argument.
The juvenile may occasionally believe that the thesis is nearly finished.
This is usually an illusion.
A mature supervisor can detect unfinished work at considerable distance.
The call is familiar:
“I think there’s something really interesting here.”
This is encouraging.
It also means there is considerably more work to do.
Feeding the Young
Supervisors feed juveniles with conceptual material.
A book is recommended.
Then another.
Then another.
Eventually the juvenile is given an article written in 1978 by somebody whose name appears nowhere else in the literature.
This article is important.
The juvenile does not yet understand why.
The supervisor does.
The juvenile reads it.
A new distinction appears.
The distinction is incorporated.
The juvenile begins to see the problem differently.
This is conceptual feeding.
It differs from ordinary teaching because the juvenile is not merely being given information.
It is being given food for its developing conceptual apparatus.
The First Flight
Eventually the juvenile begins to speak independently.
This is an important developmental stage.
At first, its sentences resemble those of the supervisor.
Its preferred distinctions are familiar.
Its examples are familiar.
Its objections sound familiar.
Its citations are familiar.
Then, gradually, something changes.
The juvenile says:
“I’m not sure that’s quite right.”
The supervisor looks up.
This is a significant moment.
The offspring has begun to disagree.
Reproductive Success
Disagreement is not necessarily a failure of reproduction.
Indeed, it may be evidence of successful reproduction.
The purpose of reproduction is not to produce an exact copy.
A successful academic offspring must inherit enough of the parent’s conceptual organisation to remain recognisably related, while developing enough variation to occupy territory of its own.
This is academic differentiation.
The offspring begins to modify the inherited repertoire.
A distinction is sharpened.
Another is abandoned.
A third is combined with something acquired elsewhere.
A new research question emerges.
The lineage continues.
The Thesis Defence
The final stage of juvenile development is the viva.
The offspring enters a room with several mature animals.
These animals examine the specimen.
They inspect its plumage.
They examine its methods.
They challenge its distinctions.
They ask questions.
The juvenile responds.
This is one of the few occasions on which academic territorial behaviour becomes almost completely explicit.
The examiners test whether the offspring has established a territory sufficiently robust to defend itself.
The crucial question is not merely:
Does this animal know enough?
It is:
Can this animal survive without its supervisor?
Independence
A successful viva therefore marks a peculiar biological transition.
The juvenile is declared independent.
It may now supervise other juveniles.
It may establish its own nest.
It may develop its own vocabulary.
It may even publish a paper criticising the conceptual assumptions of its academic parent.
This is considered a healthy sign.
Provided, of course, that the criticism is properly cited.
The Academic Family Tree
Over several generations, the resulting relationships form a remarkable structure.
Supervisor produces student.
Student becomes supervisor.
Student produces students.
Those students produce further students.
Soon there is a lineage.
The lineage may be represented as a tree.
But the tree is not merely genealogical.
It is conceptual.
A particular way of asking questions passes from one generation to another.
A preference for certain distinctions.
A characteristic vocabulary.
A characteristic style of argument.
Even characteristic forms of objection.
The descendants may insist that they have escaped the influence of their ancestors.
Field researchers are rarely persuaded.
The Problem of Inbreeding
Reproduction has risks.
A research group that reproduces itself too successfully may become intellectually homogeneous.
The same assumptions circulate.
The same authors are cited.
The same questions are asked.
The same answers are regarded as obvious.
The nest becomes comfortable.
And comfort, in academic ecology, can be dangerous.
Researchers call this conceptual inbreeding.
The population remains vigorous.
It publishes extensively.
It attends conferences.
It may even win awards.
But its conceptual diversity begins to decline.
The Outsider
Occasionally, an animal from another habitat enters the nest.
It uses unfamiliar terminology.
It asks apparently naïve questions.
It fails to recognise distinctions that everyone inside the nest regards as fundamental.
At first, this is irritating.
Then something unexpected happens.
The outsider notices something the inhabitants have stopped seeing.
This is one reason academic ecosystems occasionally benefit from migration between territories.
The outsider introduces conceptual variation.
A mutation has arrived.
The Academic Orphan
Not all juveniles are successfully reproduced.
Some lose their supervisor.
Some are abandoned.
Some discover that their research question has ceased to be fashionable.
Some finish their thesis only to discover that there is no suitable habitat for them.
These animals become academic orphans.
They may migrate.
They may change fields.
Some leave the academic environment entirely.
Others survive by establishing small territories at the edges of established populations.
A few return years later.
They are often described as having “taken a different path.”
Reproductive Selection
The institution itself participates in the process.
Some academic lineages reproduce more successfully than others.
A successful research program attracts funding.
Funding attracts students.
Students produce publications.
Publications attract recognition.
Recognition attracts further funding.
The nest grows.
This creates a powerful reproductive loop.
Success produces the conditions for further reproduction.
Researchers call this cumulative reproductive advantage.
The phenomenon is not unique to universities.
But the academic animal has refined it to an extraordinary degree.
What Is Actually Reproduced?
At first glance, the offspring appears to inherit knowledge.
But careful observation suggests that something deeper is being transmitted.
The juvenile learns how to frame a question.
How to recognise a significant problem.
How to distinguish an important result from an unimportant one.
How to decide which evidence matters.
How to know when an argument is strong.
How to recognise an interesting anomaly.
How to tell when a conceptual territory is becoming crowded.
In short, the juvenile inherits a way of participating in an intellectual world.
The propositions may change.
The terminology may change.
The territory may move.
But the form of attention survives.
The Reproductive Paradox
This leads to a curious paradox.
The academic animal reproduces itself most successfully when the offspring becomes sufficiently different from the parent to establish a territory of its own.
Too much similarity produces inbreeding.
Too much difference produces abandonment.
The successful offspring therefore occupies a narrow evolutionary region.
It must be recognisable as a descendant.
But not merely a copy.
This may explain the familiar academic phrase:
“Building on previous work, this study takes a different approach.”
The entire reproductive strategy is contained within the sentence.
The Nest Remains
As the new adult leaves the original nest, another juvenile arrives.
The cycle begins again.
A question is proposed.
A book is recommended.
A distinction is learned.
A territory is explored.
A disagreement emerges.
A thesis is written.
A viva is survived.
An independent voice appears.
And somewhere, perhaps years later, the new adult hears a younger animal say:
“That’s a very interesting question.”
The mature animal pauses.
It recognises the call.
It remembers where it first heard it.
Then it begins to recommend some reading.
The university, viewed from a distance, appears to be transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next.
But field observation suggests a more complicated process.
It is transmitting the capacity to reproduce a particular kind of attention.
The nest does not simply produce researchers.
It produces researchers who know what researchers are supposed to notice.
And once they become mature, they build nests of their own.
The territory is inherited.
The hunting techniques are inherited.
The calls are inherited.
The distinctions are inherited.
But each generation modifies them slightly.
Enough to keep the species alive.
Enough, occasionally, to change it.
Next episode: Episode VIII — Migration and Speciation
For although the academic animal is born in a nest, it cannot remain there forever.
Eventually, it must leave.
And when enough animals leave in different directions, something remarkable happens.
They become different species.
