a few suggestions for possible additions to this wonderful idea. I read quite a few 'older' books and often find both the writing and thinking (very much related matters!) clearer. (At least) Three strike me a prescient and worth resurrecting for our times: Language in Thought and Action by H. I. Hayakawa; Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and D…
a few suggestions for possible additions to this wonderful idea. I read quite a few 'older' books and often find both the writing and thinking (very much related matters!) clearer. (At least) Three strike me a prescient and worth resurrecting for our times: Language in Thought and Action by H. I. Hayakawa; Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions, and Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. I most recently finished this last one, along with their follow-on book called Philosophy in the Flesh. I am thoroughly convinced that metaphor are indeed how we come to reach an understanding with each other regarding abstract ideas we toss around. If we bother, of course, to try to reach an understanding. I also absolutely agree that words are rarely literal and mean only what we consider them to represent. Yes, a chair is a chair but, even there, there's a lot of variation and two people conversing pretty much have to talk about what the chair is being used for to make sure they are actually understanding each other! Kudo's to the Free Press for stumbling on this idea of resurrecting people who 'got' it at some point in the past. In some weird way that only a few physicists understand, the past is the present is the future. We can all stand to learn that people in the past were neither stupid or deplorable and might have something we could benefit from reading or hearing today.
a few suggestions for possible additions to this wonderful idea. I read quite a few 'older' books and often find both the writing and thinking (very much related matters!) clearer. (At least) Three strike me a prescient and worth resurrecting for our times: Language in Thought and Action by H. I. Hayakawa; Thomas Sowell's Knowledge and Decisions, and Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By. I most recently finished this last one, along with their follow-on book called Philosophy in the Flesh. I am thoroughly convinced that metaphor are indeed how we come to reach an understanding with each other regarding abstract ideas we toss around. If we bother, of course, to try to reach an understanding. I also absolutely agree that words are rarely literal and mean only what we consider them to represent. Yes, a chair is a chair but, even there, there's a lot of variation and two people conversing pretty much have to talk about what the chair is being used for to make sure they are actually understanding each other! Kudo's to the Free Press for stumbling on this idea of resurrecting people who 'got' it at some point in the past. In some weird way that only a few physicists understand, the past is the present is the future. We can all stand to learn that people in the past were neither stupid or deplorable and might have something we could benefit from reading or hearing today.