Words&Dirt

“‘Yes, Dr. Waterhouse, we live in an orderly society and men replace each other.’

‘Sometimes.  But some can’t be replaced.’

‘I don’t know that I agree.’

‘Suppose that, God forbid, Newton died.  Who would replace him?’

‘Hooke, or maybe Leibniz.’

‘But Hooke and Leibniz are different.  I put it to you that some men really have unique qualities and cannot be replaced.’

‘Newtons come along so rarely.  He is an exception to any rule you might care to name––really a very cheap rhetorical tactic on your part, Daniel.  Have you considered running for Parliament?’

‘Then I should have used a different example, for the point I’m wanting to make is that all round us, in markets and smithys, in Parliament, in the City, in churches and coal-mines, there are persons whose departure really would change things.’

‘Why?  What makes these persons different?’

‘It is a very profound question.  Recently Leibniz has been refining his system of metaphysics––’

‘Wake me when you are finished.’

‘When I first saw him at Lion Quay these many years ago, he was showing off his knowledge of London, though he’d never been here before.  He’d been studying views of the city drawn by diverse artists from differing points of view.  He went off on a rant about how the city itself has one form but it is perceived in different ways by each person in it, depending on their unique situation.’

‘Every sophomore thinks this.’

‘That was more than a dozen years ago.  In his latest letter to me he seems to be leaning towards the view that the city does not have one absolute form at all…’

‘Obvious nonsense.’

‘…that the city is, in some sense, the result of the sum total of the perceptions of it by all of its constituents.’

‘I knew we never should have let him into the Royal Society!’

‘I am not explaining it very well,’ Daniel admitted, ‘because I do not quite understand it, yet.’

‘Then why are you belaboring me with it now of all times?’

‘The salient point has to do with perceptions, and how different parts of the world––different souls––perceive all of the other parts––the other souls.  Some souls have perceptions that are confused and indistinct, as if they are peering through poorly ground lenses.  Whereas others are like Hooke peering through his Microscope or Newton through his Reflecting Telescope.  They have superior perceptions.

‘Because they have better opticks!’

‘No, even without lenses and parabolic mirrors, Newton and Hooke see things that you and I don’t.  Leibniz is proposing a strange inversion of what we normally mean when we describe a man as distinguished, or unique.  Normally when we say these things, we mean that the man himself stands out from a crowd in some way.  But Leibniz is saying that such a man’s uniqueness is rooted in his ability to perceive the rest of the universe with unusual clarity––to distinguish one thing from another more effectively than ordinary souls.'”

––Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 620-1

“An important part of moral growth is coming to see that morality is about better and worse––not about the Right or the Good––and cultivating our dispositions and skills for determining better and worse in actual human situations.  For the fact is that sometimes things do actually develop for the better.  Sometimes we manage to be perceptive and sensitive enough to achieve a breadth of perspective that encompasses much of what matters in a particular situation, and to see a way to harmonize competing interests and perspectives so that people feel more free, more connected, more respected, more fulfilled, more cared for, better understood, and more able to act constructively than before.  And when that happens as a result of our moral deliberation, it is a consummation much to be desired, and it is often accompanied with a sense that grace was somehow at work––not the grace of an Almighty Father, but the harmonious convergence of various constituents of a world-in-process.”

––Morality for Humans: Ethical Understanding from the Perspective of Cognitive Science, by Mark Johnson, pg. 220-1