Had he studied Thoreau, he would have been able to predict this outcome. This statement proves true throughout the university. The university can only reproduce itself. A student of literature is merely learning about literature as a professor of literature is teaching only about literature. The science department talks a lot about science but they are hardly creating science.
More discoveries originate in the garage than in the university laboratory.
As Pirsig points out early in the book, demonstration and experimentation are vastly different. The university is about methodology and retrospect. A practitioner already owns the methods, and can function without the retrospect. Academia does not embrace the artist. Academia embraces the artist only after the art has survived time.