Literature

Last July I read a book about the Great Depression. In it they described a carnival tent, kept at arm's length from the others, where men would gather at night. And they would peer through a gauzy curtain to watch a woman lie on a fainting couch and await the coming dawn. The men could not make out her face, or even if she was truly beautiful, but

“When the thistle blooms and the chirping cicada sits on trees and pours down shrill song from frenziedly quivering wings in the toilsome summer, then goats are fatter than ever and wine is at its best; women’s lust knows no bounds and men are all dried up, because the dog star parches their heads and knees and the heat sears their skin.”

Anaximand

Being aware that we may be wrong is different from claiming that it is senseless to speak of right and wrong. Recognizing diversity and taking seriously ideas that diverge from our own is different from claiming that all ideas are equally worthy. Knowing that a given judgement is born within a complex cultural context and is related to many others

Human beings often cling to their certainties for fear that their opinions will be proven false. But a certainty that cannot be called into question is not a certainty. Solid certainties are those that survive questioning. In order to accept questioning as the foundation for our voyage toward knowledge, we must be humble enough to accept that today

Little Fly,

Thy summer’s play

My thoughtless hand

Has brushed away.

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

For I dance

And drink, and sing,

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing…

William Blake

Numbers, techniques, and predictions are useful for suggesting, testing, confirming, and putting discoveries to use. But there is nothing technical about the content of the discoveries. The universe does not revolve around the Earth. All the matter that surrounds us is just made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons. There are one hundred billion

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

Asimov

“All things originate from one another, and vanish into one another according to necessity; they give to each other justice and recompense for injustice in conformity with the order of Time.”

• Anaximander

But no one has ever started over from scratch by devising a wholly new conceptual structure, an entirely new vessel. Why? Because we cannot step outside of our own thought. We think in terms of the conceptual structure that we happen to have. Thought changes from within, step by step, in the harsh and continuous confrontation with its object: reali

“In the fall, do leaves on the trees still change color if no one is there to see them?”