[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that > can be counted counts." - Albert Einstein
And nobody ever counts anything that does not count: All "facts" are part-aspects of evaluating acts -- at least if we exclude "boundary cases" if there are any, which may possibly include severe obsessive-compulsive states, but certainly not the daily activities of accountants, academic "psychologists", employees of ETS, etc. (AKA "bean counters"). I think the Walt Whitman quote describes the *problem* -- in a way that looks like it is prescribing the solution. Both the boring astronomical lecturer and the ignorantly gawking star-gazer -- both the "empirical scientist" "realist" and the new-Agey touchy-feeley sentimentalist -- each see only one side of the situation which our centrifugal [capitalism, Cartesianism, Peter Ramus...] history has led us to. As Robert Musil urged (_Precision and Soul_, _The Man Without Qualities_...), we need to seek the mystical at the center of the most exacting disciplined praxis -- and, for the astronomer, this will not consist of him or her oohing and ahhing over how beautiful false-color photographic images of distant celestial objects are, but rather in a quality of his or her *experience doing science* -- what Abraham Maslow called "peak experiences" (and his followers at Univ. of Chicago call: "flow state experience"...), what another person I know called: "Ekstasis" (referring to the condition in which Hermann Broch did at least some of his writing), etc. And I think one way to start getting out of the muddle we take to be complete clarity is to reflect on how every fact must be embedded in an affective context, while, on the other hand, every emotion (again, excluding things like grand mal seizures...) asserts truth claims -- A person only says "1 + 1 = 3 (or 2 or whatever)..." only if they have some reason for it (maybe to pass Math 101 so they won't be sent to Vietnam, or because they get off on Pythatogean imagery of music of the spheres, or because, like Sartre's waiter, they want to be an accounting clerk....).... Conversely, to -- even "blindly" -- hate somebody implies the truth claim that the person did some act or has some quality (e.g., being a card carrying member of the Communist Party USA, or having a sense of entitled arrogance due to being a member of Skull and Bones, etc.). Long ago, Western humanity took a wrong turn in its understanding of *both* the mystical and the scientifical -- read Musil; read Stephen Toulmin's _Cosmopolis: The hidden agenda of modernity_.... We have not yet really tried all the ways of being modern.... Would that I was writing this from Theleme instead of the "Homeland".... "Yours in discourse...." [outside of which there is not even "nothing", for even "nothing" only finds its place in "the conversation we are"....] \brad mccormick > > -----Original Message----- > From: Brian McAndrews [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 1:59 PM > To: pete > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: FWk: Re: Double-stranded Economics > > At 5:38 PM -0800 2002/01/31, pete wrote: > >Some decades ago, I took a course in celestial mechanics, which used > >the beautifully elegant Newtonian formulations to develop a framework > >for computing the positions and movements of bodies under gravity, > > Pete, > Your ideas reminded me of this: > > When I heard the learned astronomer, > > When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, > > When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, > > When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much > applause in the lecture-room, > > How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, > > Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself, > > In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, > > Looked up in perfect silence at the stars. > > Walt Whitman > > -- > ************************************************** > * Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator * > * Faculty of Education, Queen's University * > * Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 * > * FAX:(613) 533-6596 Phone (613) 533-6000x74937* > * e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * > * "Education is not the filling of a pail, * > * but the lighting of a fire. * > * W.B.Yeats * > * * > ************************************************** -- Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
