From: Wade Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Tue 03 Dec 2002 - 14:03:01 GMT
On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, at 08:53 , Lawrence DeBivort wrote:
> It might be more interesting (and more feasible) for the university to
> catalog those ideas that have become obsolete or have died.
Seems like a paradox, finding an idea that is no longer there. Of
course, you could go look for one where the light is better....
But then, as the Zim has said, 'inside the museums, infinity goes up on
trial'.
I again am reminded of those artifacts of the Tlingit that were recently
brought out of the vaults of the Peabody here at Harvard, and shown to a
group of visiting elders, who, alas, had no idea what some of the items
were, although they made some guesses, but could only shrug, saddened
with the loss.
Museums are, in fact, already storehouses of ideas that are dead, or
just as dead, obsolete. We can only catalog these finds by place and
time, not by meaning.
IMHO, it is impossible to find a dead idea.
Kind of like those memesinthemind I hear tell about. I don't know about
them until someone performs something, and I never know what was in that
mind, or even what is in mine, because when I perform my version of it
(deduced in some way from the observed performance), unless repetition
and skill have allowed me to repeat performances with a high degree of
accuracy, I don't know what is going to happen, and, indeed, no
performer, regardless of skill or expertise, can predict the precise
then and there performance.
And it is the precise then and there performance that gets observed.
- Wade
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