it's not knowing that it's not what
we know that counts
that counts
Liberal Art (general education)
‘How can he well use his ignorance which his growth
requires who has so often to be using his knowledge?’
(Thoreau)
Imagine: a Core (Gen-Ed) program that focuses on constraints
of mind with a consequence of opening-up and expanding
facility by virtue of exposing and elaborating limits and
the limits of limit by studying impossibilities that reveal
the possibilities our impossibilities eclipse and occlude.
Coming Out. Out of IT: Cave Culture Custom
Convention Convenience Closet Kansas Private
Box Warren Wilson Bubble Bias Belief Prejudice
Conviction Frame of Mind Set, Attitude…
“But when was I ever IN it?”
“You’re over me?” asks Ross of Rachel.
But when was I ever under you?”
“Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,”
writes O.W. Holmes, observing the life sea-voyage
of a chambered nautilus, demonstrating poetically that
to escape one constraint is to live under another, larger,
more transparent (unfortunately) and just as confining. .
Plato’s “philosopher” escaped the Cave practicing
“dialectic”—surfing opposition, so to speak: entertaining
un-postponed joy in the cerebral if not affective clash of
contrariety, loving the enemy, as it were—a necessity if
emergent values and properties are to be appreciated &
evolution to be enjoyed.
There is no “word” (like “dialectic”), however that Plato
gives for Returning Into the Cave,
Blinded by light and then blinded by darkness, as it were:
stumbling and muddling bumppety-bump like a one-eyed
man in the valley of the blind, the “enlightened” philosopher
betrayed by his own newly discovered epiphanic insight
and lucid schemes, it would seem: yet another seemingly
unfortunate fall..
Francis Bacon’s “Idols of the Mind” (Novum Organun,
1620 said to father modern science) describes problems
in the human interpretation of nature: universal constraints
(he claims) that limit and shape and confine our ways of
knowing: a deep grammatical imaginary description of
cave culture custom convention convenience box bubble:
you know— the various images and metaphors with
which we both indicate & deny our narcissistic,
solipsistic, inside-the-closet conditioning.
http://www.constitution.org/bacon/nov_org.htm
Bacon describes 4 “idols” (collectively shared constraining
transparent“archetypes”—like driving on black ice unawares)
common to humansin our collective limited perception of our
selves and nature. Consider them (for the sake of argument)
as possibly 4 topic-areas forexploration in an inquiry in our
Liberal Art (General AS Opposed to Specific) Educational
SACS credentialed and validated format.
(Just a thought)
XLI
The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human
nature itself,and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a
false assertion that the sense of man is the measure
of things. On the contrary, allperceptions as well of the
sense as of the mind are according to the measure of
the individual and not according to the measure of the
universe. And the human understanding is like a false
mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and
discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
XLII
The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man.
For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature
in general) has a cave orden of his own, which refracts and
discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper
and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation
with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority
of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the
differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place
in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind
indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man
(according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in
fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed
as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by
Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser
worlds, and not in the greater or common world.
XLIII
There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and
association of men with each other, which I call
Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce
and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men
associate, and words are imposed according to the
apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and
unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the
understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations
wherewith in some things learned men are wont to
guard and defend themselves, by any means set the
matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the
understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead
men away into numberless empty controversies and
idle fancies.
XLIV
Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into
men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies,
and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call
Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the
received systems are but so many stage plays
representing worlds of their own creation after an
unreal and scenic fashion. Nor is it only of the systems
now in vogue, or only of the ancient sects and philosophies,
that I speak; for many more plays of the same kind may
yet be composed and in like artificial manner set forth;
seeing that errors the most widely different have
nevertheless causes for the most part alike. Neither
again do I mean this only of entire systems, but also
of many principles and axioms in science, which by
tradition, credulity, and negligence have come to be
received.
My favorite: Idols of the Market Place. (Language)
But Idols of the Theater is compelling (our Received
Systems of Thought/Belief)
Imagine: a Core (Gen-Ed) program that focuses on constraints
of mindwith a consequence of opening-up and expanding
facility by virtue ofexposing and elaborating limits and the
limits of limit: by studyingimpossibilities revealing the
possibilities our impossibilities eclipse and occlude.
Bacon’s 4 Idols introduced above are developed and
expanded in the link given.Very savvy post-modern
neo-oral notions expressed prior to the Age of
Enlightenment and Reason’s Why, which has
been a dark Idol of the Theatre if not Tribe
ever since the 18th c. Need we argue?
xxxooo, Sam
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