[Martin Taylor 960606 14:30]
Bill Powers (960606.1015 MDT)
Remember the motto of the National Reorganization Association (NRA):
Theories don't explain phenomena; People explain phenomena.
Very wise. But like the motto of the other NRA, a half-truth. People
without theories don't explain phenomena nearly as easily as do people
with theories, and some theories explain more readily than others. People
with some theories can divine implications that people with other theories
cannot, just as some of the weapons favoured by that other NRA can do their
work much more easily than can others.
On the first page of Chapter 1 of a book "At Home in the Universe" by
Stuart Kauffman of the Santa Fe institute is the following:
"...Gunter looked northward, past pin~on and juniper, taking in the long
view toward Colorado, and somewhat astonished me by asking what my image
of paradise was."
Strikes me as a very appropriate comment, spoken in Santa Fe.
Later on the same page:
"What stories we tell ourselves, of origins and endings, of form and
transformation, of gods, the word, and law."
Martin