The academic mind can eat away the very basis of its own assurance produce contortions when it tries to bend over backward allow itself to be dismayed by the picture it has created of relentless historical process.
– Herbert Butterfield
The very fact of its finding itself in agreement with other minds perturbs it, so that it hunts for points of divergence, feeling the urgent need to make it clear that at least it reached the same conclusions by a different route.