http://www.frostbytes.com/~jimf/informing.html
Archive for April 19th, 2008
19
Apr
Truth…
It is better to have access to more than one profound truth. To be able to hold comfortably in one’s mind the validity and usefulness of two contradictory truths is the source of tolerance, openness, and, most important a sense of humor, which is the greatest enemy of fanaticism. Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly better to have one profound truth, one god, one narrative, than to have none.
The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
19
Apr
Ideas…
Ideas are dynamic. A new idea, a new way of conceiving events, operates to shift our focus, to give us an altered perspective. It makes us begin to see and think and act in different ways. The new idea indicates that what we have previously assumed and what we have accepted are no longer to be taken for granted. The shape, the form, the meaning, the relationship in which we have perceived events, are all altered, if only slightly, by the new conception. This alteration or revision, however minor we may consider it, modifies other perceptions and to some extent changes all the ideas relevant to, or in any way connected with, the original new idea, as Galileo’s physics led to widespread revision of the beliefs about nature. Thus, we may say that a new idea disturbs the existing stock of ideas and distorts the accepted frame of reference. In our endeavor to restore the former coherence and balance, to remedy the disturbing situation, we are compelled to examine these other ideas and assumptions.
19
Apr
Literature…
Literature is to the race what autobiography is to the individual; it is the “Life and Remains of the natural man.” Literature is more than style, form, and sensibility. It is the image of man as he moves. Everywhere we get propositions about him or measurement of him, but here he is half dust, half idea. The poet who paints the passions well, has not shown us his riches, but ours. Great literature is about its reader, the man who is always different and who never changes. The capacity to believe history is the capacity to see many potentialities in men, and to understand that extreme behavior are confined by no providence to the past. The subject of literature is human possibility, which is not infinite but which is greater than complacency admits.
19
Apr
Knowledge…
It is knowledge that connects one experience with another, correct false impressions and inadequacy, and makes possible that progression and sequence in experience without which there could be no such thing as criticism. It was long ago observed by Burke that it is understanding alone which distinguishes good from bad taste.
