Up@dawn 2.0

Sunday, March 28, 2021

Boldly go

Before we let Bergson and Pluralistic Universe go, I do just want to say that I appreciate--even if it's a bit repetitive--James's emphasis on the living experience of motion and forward movement as a corrective for the "intellectualist" (and nowadays "analytic") tendency to abstract and freeze bits of the stream of experience and then find them problematic on account of their discontinuity. "When you have broken the reality into concepts you never can reconstruct it into its wholeness." We need to live "inside of the living, moving, active thickness of the real..."

Plus, I must recall my speculation that Jean-Luc was (possibly) gifting Pluralistic Universe to young Wesley, on their way to deliver the young man to Starfleet Academy. 

It was an inspired scriptwriter who once had Captain Picard of the starship Enterprise give a book by James (A Pluralistic Universe?) to young Ensign Crusher. [fn: In Samaritan Snare Wesley tells Picard that "William James won't be on my Starfleet exams." Picard answers, "Nothing really important will be. Open yourself to the past--history, art, philosophy--and all of this might mean something."]

 

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