Adam
has yet to blog. Vince has not posted
anything. Neither has Sadie, nor Liam. My go-to guys for inspiration and orientation.
I cannot believe you did this to me! Alright,
so we are considering three texts. If
these authors were Tweeting their articles, the posts may look something like
this:
Gross: “The substance and
sustenance of science is rhetorical persuasion.”
Mishra: “The meaning of graphics is
highly contextual, referential, and paradoxical.”
Lakoff and Johnson: “Metaphor in
language is culturally and physically based, and structures action.”
The
synopses hardly do justice in representing that from each of these ideas stem
countless branches of thought. After reading
the texts, I feel I have taken a ginormous bite of some rich food, and am now
struggling to chew and swallow. And
thus, a truth about knowledge: it is deep, wide, variable, and contextual, and
the manner by which we strive to understand is by forming bite-size pieces, by
quantifying. All three pieces posed
excellent and thorough arguments, but it is apparent to me that humankind puts
ideas into boxes by way of defining and analyzing. There is an intrinsic need to know, which drives scientific endeavors. It is not enough to write about a new genetic
discovery. After papers are published
comes the second wave of wave of research, which is analyzing those texts to discover
more. Belong to this field are researchers
such as Gross, Mishra, and Lakoff & Johnson. Rather than exploring further the science presented
within a given research paper, these writers analyze the conduit, the language.
Epistemology,
our topic, seems to exist solely around the idea of rationalization. It asks, to what extent can we explain this? Is it plausible? Can we logically quantify this
information? After reading the articles, my
brain is in hyper-analyzation mode. I am
listening to conversations, and picking out the metaphorical assumptions in
each illocutionary act. I am reading
journal articles with a lesser focus on the content, and more on the persuasive
techniques. I see the graphic in my
Sociology textbook, and wonder how it specifically aids me in understanding the
content.
So, my thought is:
can we know without understanding? Is
all the analyzing that these texts represent actual knowing, or is it the attempt of humankind to rationalize, to find
ways to explain what we see happening?
Knowledge is infinite and interconnected, and we constantly strive to
quantify and position it. By using
metaphorical speech, we connect our discourse to other
previously defined meanings, assumptions, and understandings. We speak in relation to the bites of knowledge we have previously chewed and swallowed, forever in an endless race to quantify reality.
So, we use
language to communicate, and then we analyze that language for its flaws,
assumptions, and methods. Is this truly
the best way of knowing? Are there any
other ways? In science, we try to consider neat
little boxes of information: genes, atomic positivity and negativity,
temperature, and so forth. In actuality,
the natural world is spontaneous, indefinable, and we have hardly scratched the
surface. Therefore, it seems that language,
which strives to quantify, is an ill-suited tool for representing the non-numerical and abstract character
of the natural world.
Grrrrr. This is one outcome of not having a
stable orientation point in writing my post: I end up ranting and questioning
this whole endeavor. Sorry for the pessimism,
guys. I really do appreciate language,
hence the English-writing major. However, the question of language dictating cognition cannot go unattended. If we are to be innovative, we must ask
the hard questions, no?
“Can we *know* without *understanding*?”
ReplyDeleteGood question! It really gets down to whether “knowing” and “understanding” are synonymous or nuanced differently. Charles Ketterling—an American engineer, inventor, and businessman—said that “There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.” Understanding seems to go deeper than knowing. For example, I know how to use a microwave, but I don’t understand how it works. We may “know” that war is terrible, but we don’t really understand what it’s like to be on the front lines. The impression I get from the word “know” reminds me more of a recollection of facts, whereas “understanding” suggests a more personal involvement of those facts (notice that I’m deliberately steering clear of “dictionary definitions” and the like—thanks, Liam). We could say that knowledge can come without understanding, but understanding cannot come without knowledge.
But then again, people use the words “know” and “knowledge” in different ways. We might say we “know” a person, but then we mean something entirely else when we say we truly *know* a person. Similarly, we communicate something different when we say we have “knowledge about” a particular culture versus when we say we have “knowledge of” a particular culture. Hmm…You also mention a sort of analytical, “rationalizing” type of knowledge, later asking, “Is this truly the best way of knowing? Are there any other ways?” This type of rationalizing knowledge I might roughly label “head knowledge.” And in contrast to “head knowledge,” I believe there’s “heart knowledge.” For example, a young child might “know” that her mother won’t leave her at the grocery store (head knowledge). However, once the mother turns down the next aisle, the child, after looking up and not seeing her mother anymore, panics that her mother “left her”—thus, a lack of “heart knowledge.” This makes me wonder if this “heart knowledge” is really my term for “understanding.” Which means I’ve been talking in circles. Which means I’m back at square one. Lol, thanks for writing!
Hi Anjeli, I need to comment again on your excellent idea of reducing each article to one quote.
ReplyDeleteIn no way is this problematic.
Seriously, though, I thought you did this remarkably well. Sometimes when I’m lost in a text, I need to find one key sentence to gain my footing. I need to turn it over in my head and be able to say it and fully comprehend it. Once I have that, I feel like the words could just as easily be mine and therefore shouldn’t seem alien. I may eventually realize that the sentence I chose wasn’t the one I should’ve focused on, but by the time I get to the point that I realize I was approaching the text the wrong way, the sentence has done its job. It’s a lot like the small bites and chewing for comprehension that you describe.
I’m impressed that you find yourself analyzing each conversation for metaphors. After Lakoff and Johnson, I think my brain just gave up. It’s simply too pervasive in the way we think and talk. I tried for a few minutes, and eventually had to abandon the effort (efforts are tangible things; they can be taken up or we can be relieved of their burden. An effort can be “made” and then abandoned…). In the previous paragraph I attached a lot of physical value and ownership to sentences/words. You say “language, which strives to quantify, is an ill-suited tool for representing the non-numerical and abstract character of the natural world.” I’m thinking here that it turns that need to quantify onto itself, further complicating its inefficiency in expressing abstractions.
Writing/language will always fall short, and yet we so often use it to develop abstract thought. I suppose this is one reason why I’ve heard scientists state in interviews that there is a finite amount of understanding humans can do – we may be approaching the limit of what is knowable for humanity as a species. And if I’m not messing this up, that’s “knowing” and “understanding.”
Liam