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Pursuing knowledge is not about recognition

Once again, the world’s leaders in academic and scientific study will step into the international spotlight as the most renowned honor in research recognition is awarded to six or more of their colleagues this week.

The Nobel Prizes, given in six categories of the humanities and sciences, will be awarded this week.

The international foundation announced Thursday its first award recipient. South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee received the Nobel Prize in literature for his life’s work detailing the struggles of the outsider and the vindication his characters often receive after falling through the downward spiral needed before attaining salvation.

The week will reveal this year’s recipients of the Nobel awards in physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, economic sciences and peace.

If only for a short while, this week’s announcements can remind all of humanity that the enduring spirit behind its existence has been to know the unknown and to achieve what has not been realized.

And this spirit is what guides the world’s universities and colleges. It is this spirit that propels the faculty and students who comprise academia to reach the most unattainable goals and afterward, to share their knowledge to propagate the process of learning and teaching. It is beautiful when learning itself is what the academic values most.

At the very least, Nobel Prizes give students and researchers confidence that a lifetime spent pursuing knowledge is not a lifetime wasted. And at the most, they can give everyone a sense that humans are capable of more good than bad.

As the week unfolds and students and professors become familiar with the work of these extraordinary researchers, they can also be reminded that the pursuit of knowledge is not the pursuit of individual recognition, glory or money. It is the pursuit of the very essence of existence: to know is to be.
This week should remind everyone that there is more to life than material pursuits and rewards.

This is a staff editorial from the Daily Lobo at the University of New Mexico.
This column was distributed by U-Wire.