tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19646581.post6174550607051877043..comments2024-03-09T02:32:34.549-06:00Comments on Dr. Melissa Clouthier: G.K. Chesterton's Modern Thoughts: Part III The Maniac and ActivistsMelissa Clouthierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15864991953502438461noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19646581.post-20714196887418804022007-07-19T07:58:00.000-06:002007-07-19T07:58:00.000-06:00"..his education had had the curious effect of mak..."..his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than the things he saw. Statistics about agricultural laboureres were the substance: any real ditcher, ploughman, or farmer's boy, was the shadow...he had a great reluctance, in his work, to ever use such words as "man" or "woman." He preferred to write about "vocational groups," "elements," "classes," and "populations": for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen."<BR/><BR/>--C S Lewis, describing his protagonist (a sociologist) in the novel That Hideous Strength.<BR/><BR/>The problem is not so much excessive devotion to reason as it is the inability to use abstractions correctly. Too often, people who are educated extensively but shallowly have a hard time distinguishing between an abstraction and the reality that it represents--this confusion is sometimes referred to as the *reification* of the abstraction.<BR/><BR/>More on this later.David Fosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15464681514800720063noreply@blogger.com