Dear Jon, lists This is indeed a problem.
So much literature appears now - partially due to bibliometric imperatives like "publish or perish" - that many papers are now never really read by anyone but editors and peer reviews - among them undoubtedly many good or even great papers. So those papers never "force" anyone's mind … Even with more widely read papers, there is probably not much "forcing" in that sense going on, as you indicate. An additional reason, I fear, working strangely in tandem with bibliometric overflow, is the spread of constructivism. If all papers are but opinions, why should you care to investigate whether any one of them might force your mind in ways more fruitful than others? Best F My sermon du jour, "Signers in the Hands of an Angly Hermenet", pays homage to that preacher of manifestly more iconic sermons who admonished congregations down through the ages about the very Razor's Edge of which you speak, but the distance between Perice-diction and Perdition is all the Elbow Grace we need between ☰ and ☷, so let us say "amen" and go in peace. We presented an earlier version of Awbrey & Awbrey (1995) at a conference on "Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences" in 1992. It was "well-received" and the the reception grazed me with the impression, or illusion, that our audience was hip to all the connections, distinctions, and nuances that we sought to convey. More and more lately, however, I begin to suspect that I haven't a clue, haven't the foggiest what is passing through a random receiver's mind when I transmit these bits of diagrams and discursions by way of conveying what I have in mine. Of course, the responsibility for communicating rests with me and not my inert devices, but the longer we have the sorts of discussions we've been having here the less inclined I am to believe that there are any sorts of signs that "force" the mind along the intended tracks of connotation or denotation. At any rate, I hope you see the larger problem that is looming here. Regards, Jon
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