It is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite emotional comments

From William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

It is notorious that facts are compatible with opposite emotional comments, since the same fact will inspire entirely different feelings in different persons, and at different times in the same person; and there is no rationally deducible connection between any outer fact and the sentiments it may happen to provoke. These have their source in another sphere of existence altogether, in the animal and spiritual region of the subject's being. Conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try to imagine it as it exists, purely by itself, without your favorable or unfavorable, hopeful or apprehensive comment. It will be almost impossible for you to realize such a condition of negativity and deadness. No one portion of the universe would then have importance beyond another; and the whole collection of its things and series of its events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective. Whatever of value, interest, or meaning our respective worlds may appear endued with are thus pure gifts of the spectator's mind. The passion of love is the most familiar and extreme example of this fact. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms Mont Blanc from a corpse-like gray to a rosy enchantment; and it sets the whole world to a new tune for the lover and gives a new issue to his life. So with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship. If they are there, life changes. And whether they shall be there or not depends almost always upon non-logical, often on organic conditions. And as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts,- gifts to us, from sources sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always non-logical and beyond our control. How can the moribund old man reason back to himself the romance, the mystery, the imminence of great things with which our old earth tingled for him in the days when he was young and well? Gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit; and the spirit bloweth where it listeth; and the world's materials lend their surface passively to all the gifts alike, as the stage-setting receives indifferently whatever alternating colored lights may be shed upon it from the optical apparatus in the gallery.

If God had made man a solitary animal . . .

Frederic Bastiat, via 1994 Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

If God had made man a solitary animal, everyone would labor for himself . . . But, since man is a social creature, services are exchanged for services . . . Do this for me, and I will do that for you.

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.