Rog, David, and all,
I have another analogy.
Imagine a set of stylized rolling hills. There is a lake in a valley.
This lake represents the total of all thoughts on a given narrow subject
within an intellect. At the centre, there is the most accepted view. At the
edges, a thin covering of opinion. Gravity is funny, too. The water surface is
not always flat. As more opinions are added to the lake, the water level rises.
A change in the water level is DQ.
Sometimes, the valley gets too small, or gravity shifts again, and a stream
of thought runs down into another valley; this is what we have been calling a
pragmadigm shear, or a paradigm shift.
When you start thinking about something else, you have to start afresh with a
new set of hills and new water.
Now, imagine that there are a hundred different kinds of water, each of which
don't know about the others. They just pass through each oher without
noticing. We, as the priveliged observers, are able to distinguish between
them and see the individual water levels.
I am represented by the first kind of water, you as the second, etc...
Each kind of water represents an intellect; in toto, all the waters represent
society. The hills are reality.
'Direct' concepts hug the ground, such as 'salty' 'rough' 'bright' etc;
'Abstract' concepts prefer to get away from the ground, and float on the top,
such as e=mc2 or interest rates. They are no less valid for being removed
from reality, and in fact they form their own reality.
The landscape changes really slowly; in fact, if we speed things up and
remove the water, we see that in fact we've accomplished nothing, for a
lower level (biological) has taken the place of the water, and an even lower
level, inorganic, has taken the place of the rolling hills...
Interesting analogy. I'm sure it has too many flaws to list here, but it is
interesting to try to come up with an analogy which encompasses the
whole MoQ...
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