We in  NILAS   were started to a large extent by academics, who loved scholarship but felt alienated by many aspects of academic life. We aspired to share the adventure of learning, yet we were put off by the infighting, and pettiness that so often seemed to accompany it. We wrote about the natural world, I believe, in part because that seemed to be an area, like the ocean depths or outer space, that could not easily be claimed by any faction as private turf, and which, therefore, offered scope for exploration that could no longer be found in established disciplines such as English or Philosophy, with their elaborate traditions and protocols. We were in the academy but not of...