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I've been thinking about Paul's statement above that, "All reasonably successful organisms have certain characteristics in common, including a measure of attentiveness to their environments" and the idea that this attention is "the deep core of what a humanist means by "close reading" and a scientist would call 'rigor.'"  This broader discussion of texts and animals, academics and attention, led me to notice as connected the words "species," "special," "specific," "speciality," etc.  To me, the connection speaks to something important about human perception and meaning making.  We arrive at these by way of particulars, by enabling forms.  This pertains to the classroom -- the necessity of specific somethings to attend to, even when more general understandings/questions are sought,  to fields of study and the way they grow, and to interpersonal relationships.  Not just the devil is in the details.  At the same time, though, art and science can teach us how to perceive (or imagine) forms, and shifting states between them, not available to everyday attention.  These shifting states exist in classrooms, fields of study, and relationships, as well, but it seems we find them more easily by indirection.