High Definition

[alexanderscttb]

“. . .why can’t we be what we want to be?
We want to be free. . . [. . .] Three o’clock
roadblock / And hey, Mr. Cop! Ain’t got
no. . . birth certificate on me now.”
-Bob Marley-One can’t speak precisely

Comments

[alexanderscttb]

I admit that my intent with that was more to provoke than assert, because I feel like the idea that only scientists can approach the truth, or that imagination is trivial compared to analysis, or that a physicist or journalist has more value than an artist or poet say, is unwarranted.
Yet at the same time I also stand by it in the broader sense, because I think to speak is not the same thing as to understand. A philosopher, a scientist, a physicist is not entering directly into the field that they are studying, they are using the medium of language, or the scientific method, or mathematics to engage with the facts of those fields. Their understanding is catalyzed through the medium, and the medium is a very useful tool, a kind of metaphor, for recording what they discover about the field, but the fact remains that the medium is not the field. The map is not the territory.
I think it’s possible to understand things without a medium, but it’s not possible to speak without language. Not to mention that words or symbols can deceive us, especially when we forget they are mere representations, that they are a form of metaphor.
I think all of this can be summarized nicely in the words of Lao Tzu: “Those who know do not speak; / Those who speak do not know.”