It seems to me that all life is characterised by attempting to know, and accepting that you don’t know. If you think you know, then you’re in the first category, but also in denial. I think you’d have to be pretty cocky though to say you know, though.


For me too, it’s the scholars who attempt to know, the poets who accept that they don’t know. It should be said that it doesn’t necessarily have to be an optimist/pessimist dichotomy (though maybe it is sometimes?), and it should also be noted that it is perhaps the case that many scholars are in the ‘category 1 + deluded’ group. Thus they claim to know. When really they don’t. But even if they are in denial, and do not actually know what they claim to know, they still engage in the process of attempting to know, yeah? Thus the categories. Of course, poets ‘attempt to know’ things, too. But we’re talking about a very specific type of ‘knowing’ or ‘not knowing’. It’s not knowing things like ‘1+1=2’ and it’s not knowing things like ‘I am confused’ or things like this. We could go on categorising like philosophers, but I’m not a philosopher. Really it’s knowing the real things, what the world is and what God is. And maybe scholars don’t even claim to know these things. But in trying to order everything of the universe, there is still some attempt to reach an answer. A hope (which, we must note again, does not mean that poets are not possessive of hope) there is one answer, and one order. Poets much more often embrace a certain degree on confusion. One could argue they offer simply a different kind of order, but if we were to say this, we would still have to admit that it is a very different kind of order, with no or very few constants, an 'order' not built on any sort of.. slowly accumulated foundation of knowledge, but rather one entirely open to change, shifts, freedom - one that is different for everybody, one completely maleable.

A thesis offers a hypothesis, and a conclusion, and, as it goes, will lead to a Ph.D being awarded if it ends up being 'a significant original contribution to knowledge', or something like that. It seeks to add to the building blocks. without doubt, it can certainly challenge the established structure and basis of knowledge entirely, evne attempt to tear it all down, but still let it be said that this is done in order to build another structure, lay new foundations for a claimedly more accurate representation of the world, the nature of things.

poets are not generally concerned with building blocks, pure rigour and creating structures. I am not really sure what exactly they are concerned with, at the moment I want to say that a good poet is simply concerned with capturing experience and nothing more, I haven't thought it all through quite enough. For poets also seek truths, like we can say theses do. But different kinds.... I'm not sure. Poets can be empiphanic, to be strongly influenced by the wikipedia articles on Joyce and Proust. Proust can dedicate a good part of Volume I of In Search of Lost Time (a beautiful, beautiful book) to simply thinking about flowers and church steeples, and he does want to know something about them, and the world, by doing this. But, it's not the same kind of knowing. It's using them... to know the experience of the world, to know... God... (Proust being extremely patheistic, to qualify the term contextually), and it's different to using evidence and facts and things to claim to 'know' the nature of the world like one does in academia. We are entering Alvin Plantiga sensus divitus territory now, which is helpful, I guess, he talks about proving God's existance, and you see the night sky or a flower or something, and it is not evidence in an argument where the conclusion is 'God exists' (i.e. I see this flower, therefore God exists - he says this would be a terribly weak argument) but rather when you see the flower, you simply come to know that God exists. Replace the flower with anything, any experience. They don't even have to be like the flower at all, one of his other key examples is when you do something bad and you feel terrible - and this leads to belief in God. Again not an argument like 'P1 - I killed my brother, P2 - I feel bad, Therefore P3 God exists' no, but just through the experience, you can say you 'know' God exists. The idea is actually way more complex that that but, that's the core of it. The faculty through which you come to 'know' in this manner he calls the 'sensus divinitus' (sp.) ~ obv. translating to something like the 'sense of divinity' (Latin next semester, eh.).

These are just experiences. Poets are about experinces. Maybe both poets and scholars have conclusions. Maybe poets use experiences to reach them and scholars evidence. But that's a muddled idea. I don't know. I still just want to say that poets are just about capturing experience. you know, an academic can go, x, therefore y. And a poet can go, 'x'. (and, oh, that's intresting, x is intresting, let's have a think about it and a float around it and give it an all round good consideration and possibly think about trying to penetrate right to the heart of this x).

I have to note somewhere again of course, the rationality vs. irrationality thing. Academia is strictly rational. Maybe it's not fair to say that poets are irrational, perhaps only the most madly wild of them are, but still, they are not wholly rational. And is the universe wholly rational or not wholly rational? AH! There is a good question. Its answer of course proving who's getting at things in the right way (if not both/neither). Rationality again, to refer to now long forgotten posts, a strictly human thing, at least as far as any of us are able to prove. Steven Hawking talks of a great hope of us building a grand comprehensive model of the universe, and this finally built, will then put us in the position of 'knowing the mind of God' (or some wording extremely similar to this). This of course, this model, is meant to be created through yeah, this careful, slow accumulation of building blocks, ultimately intended to form this comprehensive model. Yet what if the mind of God can't be accessed through a stack of building blocks? What if God simply lives inside each and every one of those building blocks - each x, and we don't need to stack up all the xs in a massive pile to know Y - in fact, this method is not going to work at all?

But then perhaps it will, though? we don't know. everyone has faith in something, right. Hawking in his building blocks, Plantinga in his sensus divinitus. And a man in his wife, and a child in his parents, and everyone else in everything else. I'll feel like Ecclesiastes if I start giving those big long lists; 'a time to live, a time to die...'.

I want to end with a poem, but it will show a bias to the poet side, and there's already a stong enough one of them running through here. But let it be said, the scholar is an entirely reasonable position. I currently spend my days studying, and I may for may more yet. And we owe them plenty. We also owe poets plenty. yeahh i duno. this was quite short, but i gotta get some sleep.