Sunday, December 12, 2010

Richard of York

There are seven colours in a rainbow, right? Wrong. It contains every colour we can see. The same holds true for most things in life: science, music, personality, art, sexuality, politics and favoured combinations of pizza toppings. But we take each subject and impose the restricted colours of the rainbow onto them - those "boxes" that I hate.

Taking those "boxes" to that previous list: chemistry, Romantic, self-confident, Pre-Raphaelite, intuitive, Liberal with extra pepperoni and anchovies. That may be the recipe for my perfect woman, but it's also an example of not understanding any of the subjects.

Q.) Where, within biochemistry, does pure biology end and pure chemistry begin?

A.) Nowhere.


Q.) When, in music, does Classical turn to Romantic?

A.) It doesn't. I can cite examples of both in a 50 year window.



The examples go on and on: Picasso (nuff said), heterosexual/bisexual/homosexual, Liberal/Social Democrat, capers/olives/spicy chicken.

These are all just words that filter out some of the colours that we would be able to see if we were not conditioned by classification. I have never in my life met an extrovert who is not also an introvert. I have never in my life come across an introvert who is incapable of façade. Everything and everyone we experience is unique and cannot be described exactly. Each experience is, by definition, a step into the future.

Of course we need these "marker words" in order to both properly navigate and describe the world we live in. But they are not words in impenetrable "boxes"; they are markers on the axles of cogs.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I recently came across the concept of 'granularity'. It is Googlespeak so immediately dubious, but the idea that we can increase or decrease the 'granularity, of a subject means that boxes are useful from a certain remove but not close up - if that makes any sense.

7:59 PM  

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