aklinstopia

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.