Words&Dirt

“They came into the light of another street-lamp.  Daniel took advantage of it to look at his companion’s face, and gauge his mood.  Leibniz looked a good deal more resolute than he had beneath the previous street-lamp.  ‘It is childish of me to expect older men to tell me what to do,’ the Doctor said.  ‘No one told me to think about free will versus predestination.  I plunged into the middle of the labyrinth, and became thoroughly lost, and then had no choice but to think my way out of it.’

‘The second labyrinth awaits you,’ Daniel reminded him.

‘Yes…it is time for me to plunge into it.  Henceforth, that is my only purpose.  The next time you see me Daniel, I will be a mathematician second to none.’

From any other Continental lawyer these words would have been laughably arrogant; but they had come from the mouth of the monster.”

––Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 317-8

“Grounded thought and action take place in relation to the qualities that make up our current situation––the pitch and timbre of a baby’s cry, the texture of our lover’s skin, the fear in our children’s eyes, the thick dark redness of blood pouring from a wound, the quality of light on a late winter afternoon, the anxiety in a coworker’s voice, the roughness of the path under our feet, the slightly tart sweetness of fresh raspberries, the conflict in our heated conversation.  At our most visceral level of functioning, the meaning, values, thoughts, and plans that engage us are primarily influenced by the qualities available to us through our interaction with our environments.  These qualities are not just perceptual properties of objects, but include qualities of our felt relations with other people and our cultural practices and values.”

––Morality for Humans: Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science, by Mark Johnson, pg. 97