![]() In this new calendar year, I’ll try hard to pay attention to all those mistakes and missteps, mine and my favorite main characters’. You have to look it all up online.) We each learn our own Truths and our own truths by combining trial and error with observation.Īs we march ahead bravely where some of us have been before and some of us have not, we’re bound to make mistakes by acting (or not acting), speaking when silence was called for, or be misunderstood or misunderstand someone else. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual. This is for sure: Whether we’re contemplating yesterday, when love was such an easy game to play, or betting our bottom dollars that the sun will come out tomorrow, time keeps moving in only one direction. We want to know how the main character (real or imagined) makes decisions and deduces the consequences that inevitably develop because of those decisions. This can and does either change or reinforce our own perspectives. When we read a great book and get lost in the story, we identify with the characters and experience what they experience. So, whether we are in the Rationalist camp and prove existence by believing ourselves to be thinking beings or in the Empiricist camp and grow our knowledge through our varied experiences, we as moderns can learn from both camps.Ĭurrent brain science has shown that we learn through listening to and reading stories. ![]() Descartes explained how the world worked through deductive truths that could be proved, like mathematics and laws of science. Before Locke, Rationalists such as René Descartes (1596-1650) thought that experience could not be trusted to define truth. This seems like common sense now, but in Locke’s time it was a departure from the accepted way people believed the world worked. Nothing should called true or real unless it can be ratified by our experience. We learn what is real by analyzing our experiences. When he posited that we learn from our experiences, Locke was creating the definition for empiricism: knowledge comes from experience. Sprite is sold in over 190 countries and is the third best-selling soft drink brand worldwide. We can imagine how it tastes because we have experienced lemon and lime. Some genius at the Coca-Cola company 50 years ago thought of mixing lemon and lime in one drink. Our creativity comes from combining those ideas in unique ways. Try to think of a new color, or sound, or taste. Jack Maden, in an article for the on-line journal PhilosophyBreak, suggests we try out Locke’s philosophy. These different ways of thinking can draw on ideas that are complex and unique, but all ideas are learned through our senses and our experiences. We can only combine ideas through experiences to come up with different ways of thinking. As we grow up, we learn through our senses and our experiences, but even he acknowledges these are fallible.Īccording to Locke, our minds cannot create new ideas. John Locke argued in his 1689 “Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” that people are born without knowledge of the world. Maybe the tabula rosa theory only applies to infants (and caterpillars). But knowing how important it is to draw on our memories, maybe it’s not even possible to start fresh, to start over on a clean slate. Yesterday still exists, if only as a memory.įresh starts and do-overs imply something new. We turn the calendar to a new week or month or year but the things that happen today still depend on what we did or didn’t do before. In all my examples, except The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the main character, like all of us, is not really starting fresh. The characters, just like us, move around in their environments, talk to people in their made-up or real worlds, learn facts and philosophy, and make decisions. I chose these because they all lead their readers to ask, “Then what?” We need to continue reading to find out. This time some of my favorite opening lines. Levine Books, 1997įirst, let me get something straight: this is a journal, not a diary.įrom Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley's Journal Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.įrom Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ![]() In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf. On Thursday, when Imogene woke up, she found she had grown antlers.Ĭrown Publishers/Dragonfly Books/Random House, 1985 In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |