Selma Singer wrote:
>
> And to me there's nothing more exciting than this journey in which every
> time we get what we think is an answer we get a whole world of new
> questions.
[snip]
As Susanne Langer wrote back in the late 1940s, in her
fine book _Philosophy in a New Key_: the questions we
ask shape our lives, not the answers we get to them. For
the questions determine the *kinds of things* we can
experience; the answers "only" determine which of them
we in fact encounter. (Obviously the answers sometimes are
very important. But a person who believes that lumps in
their body are evil spirits punishing them for their
sins cannot either have or not have cancer, nor, a fortiori,
seek medical treatment.)
I also note that Langer's book has fine insights about
"digital versus analog" media, and the solution to the
problem of the "disenchantment of the world" by the modern
Galilean exact sciences of nature. It is a remarkable
and far under-known book. It is also very readable.
--
To see things in a new way is generally far more iunteresting [to me,
as you write...] than to just see new instances of the
things I see in the old way.
This perspective damns all schoolmarms, who are devoted to
beancounting of how many "facts" the student adds to the
student's fact-collection, i.e., how many more-of-the-same
the child adds to the probably already all-too-many (esp.
of the teacher him or herself!).
The pioneering Jesuit missionary to China,
Matteo Ricci, wrote back to his mother at home
in Italy:
To go on an adventure one does not need to leave
one's native town.
(Peregrinatio in stabilitate)
The Shackletons of this world are more epynomic than
most people think: they *are* shackle-tons, i.e.,
instances of being shackled to their "weltanschauung".
Man is a thing to be overcome
(--Nietzsche)
Modernity is, in a way, unsurpassable, because
it is the project of always overcoming one's
current position.
(paraphrase, --Albrecht Wellmer)
\brad mccormick
--
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]
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