This is well worth reading:
[…] The Life of the Mind is not professorship, not building a long curriculum vita, it’s not being a talking head with a big wizardy beard and a floppy hat on Discovery Channel. It’s the cultivated ability to span boundaries, cross borders of disciplines, bring what you’ve learned over there to bear over here, where they haven’t seen the connection.The Life of the Mind is merely acting on the belief that what we see around us fits together. That everything is, in some context, of use. […]
Bill Tozier, There are exactly two ways: one, and many [via Dave Pollard]