The main idea is to be interesting

H.L. Mencken in Newspaper Morals.

Aspiring, toward the end of my nonage, to the black robes of a dramatic critic, I took counsel with an ancient whose service went back to the days of Our American Cousin, asking him what qualities were chiefly demanded by the craft.

'The main idea,' he told me frankly, 'is to be interesting, to write a good story. All else is dross. Of course, I am not against accuracy, fairness, information, learning. If you want to read Lessing and Freytag, Hazlitt and Brunetiere, go read them: they will do you no harm. It is also useful to know something about Shakespeare. But unless you can make people read your criticisms, you may as well shut up your shop. And the only way to make them read you is to give them something exciting.'

Footprints on the sands of time

A Psalm of Life
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What the heart of the young man said to the psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! -
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,- act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Importance versus Epistemological Uncertainty

In thinking about reading, behaviors, cultures, and problem solving, it seems to me as if there is probably a hierarchy of questions that can be asked of any situation, problem, or issue. There are approaches to problem solving that require the asking of questions and sometimes the standard questions of who, what, where, when, why and how are referred to as the six servants of inquiry. In fact Rudyard Kipling had a short poem (in The Elephant's Child)

My Six Servants
by Rudyard Kipling

I keep six honest serving-men
They taught me all I knew;
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Reporters historically have been counselled to focus on Who and What to lead their stories, followed by Why, When, How, and Where.

In investigating an issue or problem, though, it seems to me as if there is a different hierarchy. There are some things that are relatively easy to know, the What, Where, and When. Not that these are necessarily easy to know, but easier to know. They can be determined with some degree of objectivity. What Happened?: A murder occurred. Where Did it Happen?: In the parlor. When Did it Happen?: Last night.

Then you get to the next more complicated aspect. To whom did this happen. Sometimes it is quite clear, in other cases, it is less obvious. Next you have the question of Who did it. It seems as if you are moving along an axis where the degree of certainty becomes less and less. You can usually figure out who did it but there is always at least some modicum of doubt.

Then you take a big leap of epistemological uncertainty: How did it happen? What were the sequence of steps and dependent actions that led to this outcome at this place and at this time to this person(s). That is a much more tangled tale and subject to greater doubt. Some pieces are clear - Action B had to follow Action A. Other times, it is a matter of probability: This probably followed that.

Finally you come to the question with the greatest uncertainty of all - Why did this happen. As it goes to motive, state-of-mind, and estimation, this necessarily is the least certain answer of all. We can guess, we can speculate. We can identify multiple probable causes but our ability to be certain is low.

While we are venturing along the axis of epistemological uncertainty, we are also climbing an axis of importance to forecasting. Knowing what happened, where it happened and when it happened may help a little bit in estimating the probability of it happening again, but probably not a lot of help. Knowing the individuals and personal dynamics helps more. Knowing how something happened helps a lot in forecasting the future probability. Knowing why it happened helps the most.

This progression might look something like this.

In solving a problem, answering a question, or determining some prospective course of action, we are always dependent on knowing the background and the context. However, knowing the simple facts (What, Where, When, Who) is never enough. We need to know the How and the Why but they are the pieces of knowledge in which we are the least confident. The movement along that line of questions takes you from the objective, the factual, the logical, into the realm of the subjective, the probable, the motivational.

Enthusiasts with something to sell

From Jacques Barzun's Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning

. . .another illusion bred by university research, the idea of the obsolete, the apparent elimination of the past by the future, the belief propagated by science and industry that later is better, even when later has not yet come about and is only a prophecy by enthusiasts with something to sell.

Vilified by base and illiterate scribblers

From Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy.

"With us in France," saith Scaliger, "every man hath liberty to write, but few ability." "Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers," that either write for vainglory, need, to get money, or as Parasites to flatter and collogue with some great men, they put cut burras, quisquiliasque ineptiasque.

Amongst so many thousand authors you shall scarce find one, by reading of whom you shall be any whit better, but rather much worse, quibus inficitur potius, quam perficitur,
by which he is rather infected than any way perfected.

------ Qui talia legit,
Quid didicit tandem, quid scit nisi somnia, nugas?

So that oftentimes it falls out (which Callimachus taxed of old) a great book is a great mischief. Cardan finds fault with Frenchmen and Germans, for their scribbling to no purpose, non inquit ab edendo deterreo, modo novum aliquid inveniant, he doth not bar them to write, so that it be some new invention of their own; but we weave the same web still, twist the same rope again and again; or if it be a new invention, 'tis but some bauble or toy which idle fellows write, for as idle fellows to read, and who so cannot invent? "He must have a barren wit, that in this scribbling age can forge nothing. Princes show their armies, rich men vaunt their buildings, soldiers their manhood, and scholars vent their toys;" they must read, they must hear whether they will or no.

Et quodcunque semel chartis illeverit, omnes
Gestiet a furno redeuntes scire lacuque,
Et pueros et anus . .

What once is said and writ, all men must know,
Old wives and children as they come and go.

"What a company of poets hath this year brought out," as Pliny complains to Sossius Sinesius. "This April every day some or other have recited." What a catalogue of new books all this year, all this age (I say), have our Frankfort Marts, our domestic Marts brought out? Twice a year, Proferunt se nova ingenia et ostentant, we stretch our wits out, and set
them to sale, magno conatu nihil agimus. So that which Gesner much desires, if a speedy reformation be not had, by some prince's edicts and grave supervisors, to restrain this liberty, it will run on in infinitum. Quis tam avidus librorum helluo, who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

The multitude of books

Adrien Baillet in Jugemens des savants sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs in 1725.

We have reason to fear that the multitude of books that are increasing every day in a prodigious manner will put the centuries to come into as difficult a state as that in which barbarity had put the earlier ones after the fall of the Roman Empire. Unless we try to prevent this danger by separating those books which we must throw out or leave in oblivion from those which one should save and within the latter between what is useful and what is not.

Be quite candid with ourselves and with the facts

From William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with ourselves and with the facts. When we think certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic antecedents? No! it is always for two entirely different reasons. It is either because we take an immediate delight in them; or else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life.

Canonical Milestones

From The Limits of Complexity by Theodore Modis, an attempt to define and measure complexity. Modis attempts to identify the most significant milestones in history: "The 28 'canonical' milestones, . . . generally represent a cluster of many milestones events." See the article for his methodology which is necessarily open to criticism, but it is an interesting attempt. Below are the 28 inflection points of history which he identifies from a larger complilation from a variety of sources.

1) The Big Bang and associated processes: 15.5 billion years ago

2) Origin of Milky Way, first stars: 10 billion years ago

3) Origin of life on Earth, formation of the solar system and the Earth, oldest rocks: 4 billion years ago

4) First eukaryotes, invention of sex (by microorganisms), atmospheric oxygen, oldest photosynthetic plants, plate tectionics established: 2 billion years ago

5) First multicellular life (sponges, seaweeds, protozoans): 1 billion years ago

6) Cambrian explosion, invertebrates, vertebrates, plants colonize land, first trees, reptiles, insects, amphibians: 430 million years ago

7) First mammals, first birds, first dinosaurs, first use of tools: 210 million years ago

8) First flowering plants, oldest angiosperm fossil: 139 million years ago

9) Asteroid collision, first primates, mass extinction (including dinosaurs): 54.6 million years ago

10) First hominids, first humanoids: 28.5 million years ago

11) First organutan, origin of proconsul: 16.5 million years ago

12) Chimpanzees and humans diverge, earliest hominid bipedalism: 5.1 million years ago

13) First stone tools, first humans, Ice Age, Homo erectus, origin of spoken language: 2.2 million years ago

14) Emergence of Homo sapiens: 550,000 years ago

15) Domestication of fire, Homo heidelbergensis: 325,000 years ago

16) Differentiation of human DNA types: 200,000 years ago

17) Emergence of "modern humans," earliest burial of the dead: 105,000 years ago

18) Rock art, protowriting: 35,800 years ago

19) Invention of agriculture: 19,200 years ago

20) Techniques for starting fire, first cities: 11,000 years ago

21) Development of the wheel, writing, archaic empires: 4,907 years ago

22) Democracy, city-states, the Greeks, Buddha: 2,437 years ago

23) Zero and decimals invented, Rome falls, Moslem conquest: 1,440 years ago

24) Renaissance (printing press), discovery of New World, the scientific method: 539 years ago

25) Industrial revolution (steam engine), political revolutions (France, USA): 250 years ago

26) Modern physics, radio, electricity, automobile, airplane: 100 years ago

27) DNA structure described, transistor invetned, nuclear energy, World War II, Cold War, Sputnik: 50 years ago

28) Internet, human genome sequenced: 5 years ago

An order that always refers to limited aspects of reality

Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation, p. 253

Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet.

Pleasure has no fellowship with virtue

Cicero, De Sectute -

The most noble and excellent gift of heaven to man is reason; and of all the enemies that reason has to engage with, pleasure is the chief. . . . Pleasure has no fellowship with virtue.