“Curious knowers typically do not want to identify the knowledge they have arrived at as bearing an intimate link to their own persons or idiosyncrasies or place or interests; and they will certainly not wish to claim intimacy with what they study in the sense that a student occupying a world of gift and participation must. The curious, formed by mathesis, are always different in kind from what they are curious about, so their purpose is not to participate in what they study, but rather to isolate their object, and then to display it like a butterfly pinned in a display case. The voice the curious adopt in representing their knowledge will, therefore, avoid the first person, and will avoid, also, laying claim to the knowledge represented as though it were inextricably linked to the persona, charisma, or skill of the knower.”

Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 149.

Griffiths makes a lot out of the difference between being curious and being studious and scholarly. He is in favor of the latter. Curiosity tends to be a mile wide but only an inch deep. Studiousness and scholarship is a mile deep no matter how wide it is.

Look again at his last sentence. He really does not like the stilted artificial voice found in most academic writing. You might recognize it: all third person and passive voice. Griffiths calls us to write like the knowledge we share actually makes a difference. The merely curious keep it at arm’s length.