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The Violence Bears IT Away

“We do not think real time, but we live it,because life transcends intellect…
Any thing  that is irreducible and irreversible in the  successive moments  
f a history eludes science.

The intellectualization of science can work  only on what is thus  withdrawn
from the   action of real time.

This is only what we should expect, given that  science and intellect focus
on what can fall  under general laws. It is the task of intuition to provide
insight into becoming. To get a  notion of IT one must break with Science,

doing violence to the mind by going counter  to the natural bent of intellect.

This ‘violence,’ Bergson sees, as ‘the function  of philosophy.’” (from Genevieve
Lloyd’s Being in Time, on Henry Bergson’s Creative Evolution)

Otherwise, without un-bending the intellect’s natural bent, say, IT is like
looking for keys-lost-in-the-dark-alley under the street lamp where the
light is good. IT = measure-mental assessmental  ratio-cinative studies,
aims goals, and predictable outcomes .

What is IT, that Science and Intellect are  inadequate to measure?
Anything alive, being becoming.

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Devils IN the Details

Consider the difference between General Truth

and Specific Truth— truth of a forest, say, and

truth of a specific tree, truth of a class, say,

and truth of a member, truth of a community

and truth of a citizen, truth of humanity and truth

of a person, truth of a team or band and truth of

a player…the individual on the one hand, the

collective on the other.

The two truths represent different  levels of

Logical Type (Whitehead, Russell), as wholes

are to parts; and they are incommensurate: the

terms and values and standards of the part do

not apply (except in error and projection and

by habit of convention) to  the standards of the

whole, and vice  versa.

But I collapse and confuse the 2 sets  of values

and the General  Truth dominates  the Specific –

where differences and  diversity fragment &

eclipse general truth so that it is also the case

that the Specific truths  obscure Generality.

General Truth dominates the values of Specific

truth.  Specific truth obscures the values of

General Truth.      

It is the gap between General and Specific that

makes history  unpredictable: between social and

individual, between common sense and  idiocy.

But I am convinced that GENERAL TRUTH is more
true than my  specific individual experience and so I
rely on statistics  and  probabilities to urge me to check
my colons  and breasts and lungs for cancer, go to college

rather than avoid the bother…General Truth seduces
me even as my Specific Truth resists and rebels and
succumbs to popular opinion.