CCCI-P100 Dewey Introduction
Jeremy Chance
jon
The part about the Copernican theory interests me.
Actually Aristarchus Of Samos (310-230 BC), suggested that the Earth
move around the sun much earlier than Copernicus but was countered by
Aristotle.
Naturally Aristotle's objections may have originated in no small part
from what "felt right to him" but I think that Dewey's assertion that
what we feel or believe to be right prevents us from making
discoveries is illustrated even more dramatically during the middle
ages when the average European faced ex-communication or considerably
worse for challenging the accepted picture.
At a different level I think that knowing something prevents us from
stopping, the whole point about knowledge is that it means we do not
have to constantly re-evaluate everything in order to proceed to the
next step, we don't pause for thought. Knowledge prevents us from
having to THINK; we only think in the act of gaining knowledge, the
rest is repetition. Everything that is known was once discovered,
knowledge is the result of discovery but is at the same time the end
of discovery. We only progress when we finally manage to free
ourselves of the shackles of what we already know. In some peverse
way, knowledge is the price we pay for the opportunity to exceed the
achievements of our predecessors and our disatisfaction with the rate
of progress that would result from a continual re-assesment of every
tenant we hold currently.
In this context, habit is no more than another type of knowledge, it
relies on knowledge of previous events and consequences and our
expectations of repetition.
Alexander said something along the lines that if we think we have "got
it" then the best thing to do is to throw it away and start again. It
seems that knowledge once gained is very hard to throw away. Once we
know a path we find it extraordinarily difficult to really leave it,
we readily find similar or parallel paths but our ability to find
radically different paths (a measure of our imagination) is greatly
influenced and hence constrained by our existing knowledge.
On a different tack, as I sit here in my home in the Pyrenean
mountains and look out of my window I can see mountains and numerous
small streams runing down them. Whilst there are brief moments of
choice of path for each particular water droplet, as it cascades down
there are very few; the choice has already been made by the erosion of
gulleys by the countless droplets that have already passed. The
original few droplets that created each new path probably took that
route for the triviality of a bit of marginally softer rock or a
prevailing wind one particular spring but the droplets that follow
millenia later see no such choice because of the ease of the path that
they are offered.
Each time we use a piece of knowledge without question we carve it's
groove a little deeper, eventually the groove becomes sufficiently
deep that only the most robust challenge based on the strongest
evidence is able to dislodge us. The walls of our gulley get a little
higher everytime we pass through, isnt it true that the elderly often
say they are "too old to change".
Interesting new AT list.
Regards Jon