Confidence could turn to arrogance. I regularly read Science magazine...the contributors are not as confident as the general public might think and many do consider the affects--positive and negative--on the world around them.
As to your second point, that isn't a question of intellectual versus anti-intellectual; it's simply a question of good scholarship versus no scholarship. That the academy continues to reward the latter along with the former with tenure and promotion warrants a bit of scholarship.
 
 
 
James G. Gibb

Gibb Archaeological Consulting

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On 05/26/15, geoff carver<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
True that; and yet, I have a sneaking suspicion, that physicists and molecular biologists, etc., don't worry so much about, say, the influence of things like hermeneutics and phenomenology on their disciplines... they're more... confident(?) in their opinion of the value of their work?
On a wider level I'm looking at a lot of the "theoretical" work going on, and wondering how so many can get away while missing some of the basics of scholarship (i.e. actually researching your subject before writing about it).

-----Original Message-----

The very act of questioning what we do, and on a regular basis, suggests that we pursue archaeology as an intellectual enterprise. I doubt the same could be said of many treasure hunters and collectors.