The world is multi-layered, and it is simple-minded to think that one approach can be exhaustive

[struggle4progress]

I went to a Picasso exhibit this week-end and felt that I learned something useful about ways of looking at the world. But I don't expect Picasso to remove my warts, to provide universal health care, to end pollution, or to solve the problems I have in dealing with various tiresome people I sometimes encounter in daily life

Now and then I find it useful to listen to some old music. It profoundly affects my thinking, but it's no substitute for eating, for loving children, or for learning about the relationship between Brownian motion and elliptic equations

My current work involves some computer programming. It's simultaneously challenging and tedious, but writing a program doesn't replace washing my dishes, watering my flowers, checking on my elderly parents, making political contributions, planning a meal at the soup kitchen, or philosophical daydreaming

I go to church most weeks to hear Isaiah cry about his hope for a time when the wolf will live with the lamb and to hear Mary, mother of Jesus, speak of the hungry being filled with good food and the rich being sent away empty-handed. It doesn't cancel the fact that Bill still remembers his long-dead great-grandmother, who remembered life as a slave, or that Zuzanna (alone of all her family) survived WWII because someone hid her under the floorboards for years; it doesn't cancel my scientific understanding that I am made of atoms formed in stars that exploded long ago or that chimpanzees are my cousins; it doesn't cancel New Orleans drowning while hardly anyone did anything

It is a serious mistake, I think, to forget the following facts: The world is old and big, our lives are short, and our minds are small. To understand is to make a map of the world, but a map is not the same as the world: what is included in the map is never accurately included, and by including one thing others are necessarily omitted. One makes progress only by being single-minded -- so one makes progress only by being blind to something else

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. ewwwwwww

You have warts?

[struggle4progress]

4. Several. My friends often overlook them, and my enemies usually find more substantive reasons

to dislike me

[orwell]

2. Absolutely stunning post

...thank you.

[Mist]

3. Thank you for a thoughtful post. Much appreciated. nt

[wryter2000]

5. Exactly

Science is our best explanation for how the physical world operates. It can't explain why Picasso was a great painter.

[SidneyCarton]

6. Thank you for an excellent post.

I am reminded of Hamlet, who argued that there are more things in heaven and in earth than our philosophy (or knowledge in this case) can describe.