I am not running down reading at all. But Eruv was probably a more trivial
example.
You and I have read about Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki, Ra expeditions and Bill
Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” about the Appalachian trail. And possibly
Patrick O’Brian’s novels about the royal navy in the Napoleonic wars.
The essential thing about brilliant travel literature is that it makes me want
to go there, and hike (as much as I can, mind) through some part of the trail.
And Heyerdahl and O’Brian make me want to go out to sea in something more than
the Hong Kong Star Ferry (the sum total of my actual nautical experience).
That is what good travel literature is – and all good literature. It opens up
multiple pathways to experiences and thoughts that one would never be exposed
to, if not for reading them.
But once you’ve read them, a visit to say the Boston Navy Yard to see the USS
Constitution, or a visit to the Appalachians, becomes much more meaningful and
valuable to you. You actually find yourself seeking out places to travel to
based on what you have read .. or everybody’s holidays would be Thomas Cook
package tours stuck eating paneer butter masala and naan and then getting onto
a tour bus for sentosa island.
On 26/08/16, 5:06 PM, "silklist on behalf of Samanth Subramanian"
<silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus....@lists.hserus.net on behalf of
wordpsm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 26, 2016, at 16:52, Suresh Ramasubramanian <sur...@hserus.net>
wrote:
>
>> On 26/08/16, 5:00 PM, "silklist on behalf of WordPsmith"
<silklist-bounces+suresh=hserus....@lists.hserus.net on behalf of
wordpsm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Intrigued by the phrase "second-hand nature of knowledge."
>> Can any knowledge be grouped into first- and second-hand?
>
> Oh I don’t know. Experiential knowledge does tend to be a cut above the
“I’ve read about it” variety.
>
> For example that question about the “Eruv” enclosures erected on streets
in orthodox jewish neighbourhoods so that observant jews can step outside their
homes during the Sabbath and still technically remain indoors.
>
> What difference do you see between our mutual friend Vikram Joshi
pointing out that he lived in such a neighbourhood and saw those for himself
versus someone else who just read about it somewhere?
>
> Not much when you’re looking at the +15 on the pounce in a quiz. Possibly
a lot more when that fact becomes one part of the total knowledge that makes
you / shapes you as a person.
>
> A cruder non quizzing (or Brahman Naman) example that might draw a
clearer distinction would be the hormonal teenager’s “before and after” – the
before being when his only date is Mrs.Palm and her five daughters, helped
along by an impressive collection of porn, and the after being when he begins
to actually make friends with and date, let alone take that relationship any
further.
>
> I am sure both the before and after incarnations of that teenager are
familiar with the “insert tab A into slot B” mechanics of sex – but do they
have the same knowledge?
>
Our lives would be pretty poor lives if we all just relied upon
experiential knowledge for the sum total of our knowledge of the world.
Whatever happened to reading as a way to improve our exposure to the world,
improve the world's exposure to us? Why would we devalue, in this manner,
travel literature, or histories, or narrative non fiction, or any books by
foreign writers -- all of which provide us only with so-called "second-hand
knowledge" and not with the experience of these things (which are either
difficult or, in the case of histories, impossible to experience)?
You can be shaped by the eruv like billy-o. But to suggest that the
cultural significance of that practice should only matter to people who have
lived in those neighbourhoods doesn't make sense.
> --srs
>
>
>
