Fire and Knowledge

Introduction

Love.  It is one of the most complicated, yet most desired virtues—it is what every human heart longs for.  Is that not why the most devastating thing a parent could say to his child is “I do not love you”?  Or a spouse telling the other “I hate you”?  It is also why the love of God is one of the most amazingly precious truths—it is answer to our dominant longing.  Without love, life seems meaningless.

Love is usually associated with the marital relationship between a man and woman.  Historically, the common way to peruse marriage has been courtship and betrothal.  Around the time automobiles were mass-produced dating began to replace courtship.  New freedom was given to teenagers—namely, four motorized wheels and a backseat.  Before the automobile, spending time with your lover without your family was rare.  Nowadays, it is rare to spend time with your lover together with family.  Because of this, a wave of unprecedented sexual freedom (that is actually bondage) has swept in that has not been seen since pagan times.

The Internet appeared around a century after the automobile.  We (or at least some of us) are currently watching how the Internet is shaping culture.  No technology is neutral, and all technologies affect culture for the better and for the worse.  We are constantly reminded what benefits modern technology bring; yet we ponder little what it will destroy.

With the dawning of the Internet came immense globalization.  Instantly you could chat with someone in Hong Kong for the same price as someone next door.  The potential advantages for communication and growth seemed endless.

It was only a matter of time before “personal ads” would move to the Internet.  Since it is by nature a more interactive and global medium than newspapers, it was destined to be popular.  Perhaps there isn’t anyone compatible with you in your city, but maybe there is in another state or country.  Or at least that is how the thinking goes.

When I looked for articles assessing the negatives of online dating, I found very little.  In fact, I found only one article, and it was hardly what one could consider negative.  Now, I am sure there are articles available somewhere, but the point is that I could not find them easily and that means neither could someone wanting reasons why online dating could be personally and socially dangerous.  Therefore, I have decided to make my own small case against the current practice of online dating.

Online dating seems like the perfect solution to humanity’s love problems.  A popular idea is that people can’t get along because they don’t have enough in common or do not “match” up.  We supposedly know this because couples lose interest in one another, or as many put it, “fall out of love.”  The solution, then, make sure you are compatible before you begin dating.  Surely that will make the relationship more “lovely.”

So online dating services take a survey of the applicant’s likes and dislikes, what color hair and eyes they have, what kind of music they listen to, etc. ad nausem and then shows them a list of matches.

The Perceived Benefits

From what I can gather, there are three main perceived benefits of online dating.

• You can find the person that you have dreamed about, since you can find out everything about them before you even decide to email them.
• Location is not an issue anymore.  You used to be limited to the few people in your city, now you only limited by those with an Internet connection.
• You can get to know someone without the commitment of actually getting together.

The Problems

Anyone can see how the perceived advantages could be tempting.  Who doesn’t want to find Mr. or Mrs. Right?  However, I believe there are far more problems with online dating then there are advantages.

• Unparalleled Frankness.  When you read all these self-revealed facts about someone you don’t know, you can “hit it right off” because you already know a wealth of information about them.  Yet that information also creates a pseudo-intimacy that leads to unhealthy and premature frankness.  Add to this the removal of personal intimacy through the medium of text and you have one bold man and woman.  They will say things to each other that people in a real relationship could not say for months, if not years.  You know what I mean if you have been involved (or know someone) involved in an “Internet-based” relationship.
• Extreme Dishonesty.  It is estimated that 1/5 of online daters are married men.  You never know who you are really talking to—even what gender or “sexual orientation” they are—until you meet them and see them for who they really are.  And by that time, it may be too late.
• Knowing only a façade.  Even if a person is being more honest than dishonest, they usually put their best foot forward when talking about themselves.  But online you can be an entirely different person.  People create multiple online personas.  It is the ultimate place of being whoever you want to be.
• Turns love into shopping.  It is one thing to shop around for the best price on a car, but it is a whole other thing to shop around for a date by pre-defined answers.  “Hmm, let’s see, I’d like a girl with brown hair, blue eyes, 5’9’, 120lbs, smart, and funny.” (Of course, thousands of matches would probably come up, since people seem to find ways of exaggerating these qualities.)
• Let’s men be wimps.  Let’s be honest here.  It takes “guts” to ask a girl out on a date.  Let’s continue to be honest.  It takes none to email some girl you’ve never met.  If there is an easy way out, most wimps will take it.  Consider the middle school way of asking someone out: “Uh, hi my name is Scott and my friend Johnny over there—yeah, the one with buck teeth and pimples—he wanted me to ask you if—hey, come back!”  Real men don’t hide behind friends or email.
• Profiles based on what the person thinks of themselves, not what you think of them. Even if a person is being more honest than dishonest, they usually put their best foot forward when talking about themselves.  But online you can be an entirely different person.  People create multiple online personas.  It is the ultimate place of being whoever you want to be.

  When you look at someone’s “profile” or “autobiography,” you are basing your “match” on what that person thinks of himself.  So, even though one girl might say “I am a vivacious, intelligent, warm-hearted, attractive, cool chick, with a sharp, witty, and effervescent personality” you might say “She’s an airhead” after watching her with her friends for 30 seconds.  But you won’t know that until you finally decide to meet up somewhere, which could be weeks to years down the road.

• Removes support and accountability of family and friends.  Good relationships thrive best when nourished with support and accountability from friends and family.  Friends an2d family want what is best for you and can often see when something isn’t working out long before you can.  It is nearly impossible to have any accountability on the Internet—which is, of course, one reason why people love it.

Based on the above reasons, I cannot in good conscience recommend online dating to anyone.  Are there exceptions?  Yes!  Marvelous exceptions where God has used online dating to bring people together who genuinely love one another.  But let us not look for truth in exceptions.  Let us look for truth through the normative experience of healthy relationships from the past and at the present.

Update 2/1/07: Scientific American has an article on “The Truth about Online Dating.”

[Note: All page citations are from John Adams by David McCullough]

Most people associate the fourth of July with fireworks and firecrackers and grilling.  Most know it is called “Independence Day.” Most think the Declaration of Independence was signed on that day.  It wasn’t.

Did you know that the key date resulting in independence with Britain was not July 4, 1776 but rather Wednesday, May 15, 1776?  On that day

the preamble was approved.  When an exasperated James Duane [who was against the preamble] told Adams it seemed “a machine for the fabrication of independence,” Adams replied that he thought it “independence itself.”  [Adams] was elated.  Congress, he wrote, had that day “passed the most important resolution that was ever taken in America.”

Others agreed.  Even “the cool considerate man thinks it amounts to a declaration of independence,” wrote Caesar Rodney enthusiastically. (p. 109)

A little less than a month after, on Monday, June 10, Congress was scheduled to have an official vote regarding the independence of America.

Rutledge… succeeded in having the final vote delayed for twenty days, until July 1, to allow delegates from the middle colonies time to send for new instructions [on how to vote].  Nonetheless, it was agreed that no time be lost in preparing a declaration of independence.  A committee was appointed, the Committee of Five, as it became known, consisting of [Thomas] Jefferson, [John] Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin… (pp. 118-9)

It was decided that Thomas Jefferson would draft the declaration.

[Jefferson] had none of his books with him, nor needed any, he later claimed.  It was not his objective to be original, he would explain, only “to place before mankind the common sense of the subject”…. He borrowed readily from his own previous writing, particularly from a recent draft for a new Virginia constitution, but also from a declaration of rights for Virginia….

But then [George] Mason, [James] Wilson, and John Adams, no less than Jefferson, were, as they all appreciated, drawing on long familiarity with the seminal works of the English and Scottish writings John Locke, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and Henry St. John Bolingbroke, or such English poets as Defoe[:]

When kings the sword of justice first lay down,
They are no kings, though they possess the crown.
Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things,
The good of subjects is the end of kings.

Or, for that matter, Cicero.  (“The people’s good is the highest law.”) (pp. 120-21)

Congress met for the fateful final decision on Monday, July 1, 1776.

Richard Henry Lee’s prior motion calling for independence was again read aloud; the Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole and “resumed consideration.”  Immediately, Dickinson, gaunt and deathly pale, stood to be heard.  With marked earnestness, he marshaled all past argument against “premature” separation from Britain…. To proceed now with a declaration of independence, he said, would be “to brave the storm in a skiff made of paper”….

[John Adams rose to speak.]  He wished now as never in his life, Adams began, that he had the gifts of the ancient orators of Greece and Rome, for he was certain none of them ever had before him a question of greater importance….

No transcription was made, no notes were kept.  There would be only Adams’s own recollections, plus those of several others who would remember more the force of Adams himself than any particular thing he said.  That this was the most powerful and important speech held in Congress since it first convened, and the greatest speech of Adam’s life, there is no question.

To Jefferson, Adams was “not graceful nor elegant, nor remarkably fluent,” but he spoke “with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats.”  Recalling the moment long afterward, Adams would say he had been carried out of himself, “‘carried out in the spirit,’ as enthusiastic preachers sometimes express themselves.”  To Richard Stockton, one of the delegates from New Jersey, Adams was “the Atlas” of the hour, “the man to whom the country is most indebted for the great measure of independency…. He it was who sustained the debate, and by the force of his reasoning demonstrated not only the justice, but the expediency of the measure.” (pp. 126-127)

The debate lasted nine long hours.

At one point, according to Adams, Hewes of North Carolina, who had long opposed separation from Britain, “started suddenly upright, and lifting up both his hands to Heaven, as if he had been in a trance, cried out, ‘It is done! and I will abide by it.’” (p. 128)

But when a preliminary vote was taken some of the colonies unexpectantly held back.  Some delegates were divided and some were missing.  The final vote would be postponed until the next day.  “To compound the tension that night, word reached Philadelphia of the sighting off New York of a hundred British ships, the first arrivals of a fleet that would number over four hundred” (p. 129).

The next day on July 2, Congress met again.  Ceasar Rodney, a missing delegate from Delaware, “had [almost unimaginably] ridden eighty miles through the night, changing horses several times, to be there in time to cast his vote” (p. 129).  Two of the opposing delegates for Pennsylvania did not show up so that the Pennsylvania vote would be swung towards independence.

New York continued to abstain, but South Carolina, as hinted by Edward Rutledge, joined the majority to make the decision unanimous in the sense that no colony stood opposed…

So, it was done, the break was made, in words at least: on July 2, 1776, in Philadelphia, the American colonies declared independence.  If not all thirteen clocks had struck as one, twelve had, and with the other silent, the effect was the same.

It was John Adams, more than anyone, who had made it happen. Further, he seems to have understood more clearly than any what a momentous day it was and in the privacy of two long letters to [his wife] Abigail, he poured out his feelings as did no one else:

The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more….

That the hand of God was involved in the birth of the new nation he had no doubt.  “It is the will of heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever.”  If the people now were to have “unbounded power,” and as the people were quite as capable of corruption as “the great,” and thus high risks were involved, he would submit all his hopes and fears to an overruling providence, “in which unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.” (pp. 128-9)

Yet things were still not completed.  The Declaration had to be edited and a final vote be taken.  It all went very smoothly—the votes were the same as on July 2.

Congress ordered that the document be authenticated and printed.  But it would be another month before the engrossed copy was signed by the delegates.  For now, only the President, John Hancock, and the Secretary of the Congress, Charles Thomson, fixed their signatures.

With the passage of the Declaration of Independence thus completed, and having thereby renounced allegiance to the King and proclaimed the birth of a new United States of America, the Congress proceeded directly to other business.  Indeed, to all appearances, nothing happened in Congress on July 4, 1776.  Adams, who had responded with such depth of feeling to the events of July 2, recorded not a word of July 4.  Of Jefferson’s day, it is known only that he took time off to shop for ladies’ gloves and a new thermometer…

But by the following morning, the fifth, printer John Dunlap had broadside editions available and the delegates were busy sending copies to friends.  On July 6, the Pennsylvania Evening Post carried the full text on its first page.

The great day of celebration came Monday, July 8, at noon in the State House Yard, when the Declaration was read aloud before an exuberant crowd… Bells rang though the day and into the night.  There were bonfires at street corners.  Houses were illuminated with candles in their windows.  In the Supreme Court Room at the State House, as planned, a half dozen Philadelphians chosen for the honor took the King’s Arms down from the wall and carried it off to be thrown on top of a huge fire and consumed in an instant, the blaze lighting the scene for blocks around…. As in Philadelphia, drums rolled, bonfires burned, prayers were said, and toasts raised in town after town, North and South.  When the news finally reached Savannah, Georgia, in August, it set off a day-long celebration during which the Declaration was read four times in four different public places and the largest crowed in the history of the province gathered for a mock burial of King George III….

The actual signing of the document would not take place until Friday, August 2, after a fair copy had been elegantly engrossed on a single, giant sheet of parchment… Nothing was reported of the historic event.  To judge by what was in the newspapers and the correspondence of the delegates, the signing never took place.

In years later, Jefferson would entertain guests at Monticello with descriptions of black flies that so tormented the delegates, biting through their silk hose, that they had hurried the signing along as swiftly as possible.  But at the time Jefferson wrote nothing of the occasion, nor did John Adams.  In old age, trying to reconstruct events of that crowded summer, both men would stubbornly and incorrectly insist that the signing took place July 4….

The fact that a signed document now existed, as well as the names of the signatories, was kept a secret for the time being, as all were acutely aware that by taking up the pen and writing their names, they had committed treason, a point of considerably greater immediacy now, with the British army so near at hand….

The most encouraging results of the decision for independence was its almost immediate effect on “spirit,” within Congress and among the people, but also among the rank-and-file militia….

Even those in Congress who had been so ardently opposed, now, by word or deed, committed themselves to the “Glorious Revolution.” Robert Morris continued in his duties without pause, working as strenuously as anyone.  “I think an individual that declines the service of his country because its councils are not comfortable to his ideas makes him a bad subject,” he wrote, still unable to see himself as other than a “subject.”  John Dickinson, though ill and exhausted from the strain of the past weeks, departed at the head of the first troops to march out of the city to join in the defense of New Jersey, a scene that made a deep impression on many, including John Adams.  “Mr. Dickinson’s alacrity and spirit,” he told Abigail, “certainly becomes his character and sets a fine example.” (pp. 136-9)

So for this Independence Day, I encourage everyone to remember our heritage, read our documents, and serve this country even if its decisions are not your decisions.  It is one amazing country.

Suggestions for Independence Day readings:

• The Declaration of Independence [free online]
• The Constitution of the United States [free online]
• The Articles of Confederation [free online]
• The Judiciary Act [free online]
• The Bill of Rights [free online]
• John Adams by David McCullough
• 1776 by David McCullough
• The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History, Ed. By Michael Kammen

I seem to have developed a habit where I desire to write things that have already been written. This undoubtedly branches from my bibliographic ignorance. I could list several examples of this, but I will use only one. I have written a fairly extensive outline talking about various cultural trends and suggestions on how to avoid relapsing into a kind of “technological dark age.” While I still think such a work has eventual merit, I have found a book that accomplishes a similar goal in regards to the evangelical Christian community. It is entitled Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think and What to Do About It.

Written 11 years ago by Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds is a work every Christian should read at least once. I am serious. It is a helpful (not to mention very concise) overview of a variety of cultural (secular and religious) trends that have impacted evangelicalism for the better and for the worse. From postmodernism to advertising to television to premillenialism to pietism, he doesn’t hold back the punches.

Have you ever wondered why modern Christians imitate and adapt culture instead of creating it? Why evangelical leaders are not “equipped intellectually to think through the complex social issues of the times and offer genuinely new and promising solutions to them” (p. 13) ? Why evangelicalism has a tendency to slide into anti-intellectualism (“a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind”)? Or falsely dichotomizing the “heart” against the “head”? This book will answer your questions.

The one drawback is that most of the book talks about the many negatives of culture but does not talk enough about ways to combat the negative influences. Because of this, I have listed several more works below that would be of interest to people who want to begin cultivating a Christian mind. Of course while the first action is to begin thinking, it does not always start until people begin reading. It’s impossible to think without knowing anything. With that in mind, my first recommendation is The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer since it gives an extremely helpful overview of good classic books to read (with summaries), including how to read them.

Fit Bodies, Fat Minds is only 152 pages. Even the slowest reader could finish it in a week if they devoted half an hour a night to it. So I plead with you, read this book and seek to develop a Christian mind for the glory of God!

Related Books

• The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer
• Habits of the Mind by James Sire
• All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture by Kenneth A. Myers
• The Christian Mind by Harry Blamires
• The Vanishing Word by Arthur Hunt
• Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
• The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
• How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom
• How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren

Have you noticed it? The iPod earplugs sticking out of everyone’s ears as they walk down the street, ride in their cars, shop at the mall, sit at their house. The best term I can think of for this is iPodaciousness (from the latin acious meaning “full of”), but feel free to email me your better word. I am no master of linguistic lore.

This iPodaciousness is beginning to bother me for a variety of reasons. One reason is that it is simply rude. Someone walks by and you call their name. No answer. Oh, they must be listening to music. You beep at someone, they don’t hear you. Oh, they must be listening to music. Someone walks right in front of you. No big deal, they must be listening to music.

But really all that is secondary. The real problem lies in that people are completely filling every idle moment with music—and not just background music. Music that takes over all other sounds and thoughts. When do these people think? Well, you usually think when you are alone and either 1) don’t have anything else to do or 2) make time for it. For many throughout history this thinking time has been morning time, through reading, praying, and walking. But not many of us make time for any of those anymore. We read book summaries or listen to abridged audio books instead of reading. We almost never think to pray. And of course, when we do walk, we must listen to music. It would be a waste of time simply to just walk and think. So we habitually slip on the headphones and walk, hoping we don’t step right in front of a semi.

However, there is, as I can see it, one advantage to all of this. Silence. In my neighborhood, the locals spend (literally) much delight in their loud bass car systems. However, yesterday I saw one of those locals have a car that was completely quiet. I stared in shock. Then I realized why it was silent—he had iPod earbuds in! So he can now blow out his own eardrums and not mine. Yes, that is quite an advantage–at least for me.

My point in all this is to exhort myself—and you—to think about when we give ourselves time to think and meditate. Do you do it in the morning, when everyone else is sleeping? Do you do it in the evening? Lunch break? Weekends? Or is all your time spent filling yourself up with music, entertainment, frivolity? Do you read good and thoughtful books? Do you give yourself time to think about spiritual things? Do you talk about important topics (other than current news events) with others? Have you considered that the reason you don’t know what to think about an issue is truly because you never have really thought about it? It is my hope and prayer that we will consider these types of questions and strive to be a thoughtful people.

[On a related note, I would highly recommend the articles "The Age of Egocasting" and "Our Cell Phones, Ourselves" by Christine Rosen. They are both thoughful, informative, and helpful.]

For those just jumping in, here are the previous links:

• John’s Article: A Word Wrapped in Light
• My First Thoughts on His Article
• John’s Comment and My First Response
• John’s First Response
• My Second Response
• John’s Second Response
• My Final Response [you are here]

John,

I really appreciate the time and effort you have put into this discussion. I think things have cleared up pretty well as we have interacted and gotten more specific with each other.

I completely agree with your assertion that verbal language and visual language have their uses.  Icons certainly have their place and, when done correctly, are often helpful.

I also agree with your example how maps can help convey the relation between distances.  It is a visual representation of visual things, which visual language is perfect suited for.  Words can be used, although it takes more effort to understand what is being conveyed. I think this furthers my point that words are better at conveying abstract thought, whereas visual language is not as helpful.  But your point is certainly not lost and, if I understand it correctly, I readily agree with it.

Your assertion that verbal and visual language is a difference in kind not caliber is helpful.  I believe you have brought up a helpful distinction.  After thinking about this for a while, I believe I can say I agree with you.  Perhaps I was unfair to treat them as a difference in caliber—although, if visual imagery can indeed have syntax is still seems they are still attempting to communicate through language.  I would be willing to admit “each lends itself to certain uses that that other does not.”  Photography conveys a specific scene exactly as it happened visually, something that would be impossible for a human to document with words.  Likewise, typography conveys propositions and logic and context that a photograph never could.

Your example of visual syntax with the sentence “the purpose of education is the cultivation of virtue” was helpful and interesting.  I also think you hit on something important: it is, in fact, a translation.  If I read the sentence, I do not have to translate it.  I understand what it means as I see it.  You would probably argue that the same could be done with images if the syntax was developed enough (and with widespread visual literacy), and I do not doubt that it might be possible.  But why?  Words seem better at communicating such a concept as the sentence regarding education.  However, I am not opposed to it being tested and seen what kind of uses it might have, which seems to be what you are proposing.

You also made a great point about how the written word can often be more precise than we ourselves wish it to be.  I don’t think I have heard anyone make that point before, but I agree.  That is why we read what we write with such a critical eye.  Your conclusion to this, that “ideography may prove itself better suited to the ambiguities of human thought and intuition,” is interesting but I am unsure what that would mean in practice.

I don’t have much to say about your response to my speculation about the second commandment.  Overall, I found myself agreeing with you and I am still struggling with some of the various interpretations that are available.  It is an area that I will do some more thinking and research on, because right now it is filled with too many questions in my mind.

Thank you for the wonderful public and private discussion.  It has been helpful for me and I am very glad we were able to discuss these issues—and perhaps even help others who might be thinking about the same issues.  May God bless you and your family!

Sincerely,

Joshua Sowin

For those just jumping in, here are the previous links:

• John’s Article: A Word Wrapped in Light
• My First Thoughts on His Article
• John’s Comment and My First Response
• John’s First Response
• My Second Response
• John’s Second Response [you are here]
• My Final Response

Josh,

Thanks again for your response. You’ve done an excellent job at demonstrating why verbal language (here and elsewhere I use “verbal language” to include both the spoken and written word) is important for all people to master and should not be expected to disappear any time soon. Like Postman, you are concerned to stave off any trend which would lead to the neglect of literacy.

I don’t believe I am proposing a deprecation of reading and writing. It was never my goal to argue that visual language could replace verbal language. Rather than offering an either-or, I am submitting for your consideration a both-and: that both verbal language and visual language may have their uses. And while certain forms may preclude certain kinds of content, in my experience ideography is extremely flexible. Even very abstract concepts are rather easily encapsulated in it. I’ll provide an example later which I hope will help to demonstrate this further.

All the same, my contention really isn’t that we start doing philosphy in visual language. Rather, it’s that we begin to think about where ideography might have some use. Verbal language, after all, carries with it both advantages and disadvantages—the intersection of which render it very well fit for some uses, and perhaps less well fit for others. Certain kinds of discourse, therefore, may lend themselves as much to visual, or ideographic, language—which also has its good and bad points.

What kinds of ideas might recommend themselves to the ideographic form? As a general rule, I feel images are better than verbal words at depicting connections and relationships. Thus it is very hard to describe the relative locations of the cities of France in words, but quite easy to understand them from a map. Family trees quickly show us how members of a family relate to each other, data charts show us differences in quantity or change over time, and so on.

Thus, the ideographic form might prove superior to verbal language in cases where the idea that needs to be conveyed includes concepts such as levels of importance, nearness and remoteness, differing quantities, changes over time, causes and their effects, and so on.

These are speculations only; however, what I hope to show by this is that I do not see the differences between verbal and visual language as being ones of caliber, but of kind. It’s not that one language is superior to the other, or affords superior discourse. It’s rather that each lends itself to certain uses that the other does not; while for some uses, both may be equally well-suited. There is a lot of thinking and practice that would have to be done if we were to take seriously the challenge of working out which form was best suited to any particular use.

In the meantime, though, I am content to argue for a rather more limited point: that visual language has a syntax, and is therefore capable of conveying propositional truth. I’m glad to see you coming around on the issue of visual syntax. If you can also agree that images are capable of representing wide classes of objects—that is to say, they are capable of abstraction—then the possibility of propositional truth seems almost a foregone conclusion. A reliable syntax combined with abstract signifiers seems to me to be, if not an incontrovertible guarantee of propositional capability, at least a very persuasive case for it.

Let’s bring this closer to home with an actual example, which will hopefully add weight to my assertions as well as show up the strengths and weaknesses of ideographic language.

I asked my wife for an example of a verbal sentence, in order to translate it into visual ideography. The construction she came up with was, “The purpose of education is the cultivation of virtue.” That’s a pretty lofty sentence, no? It’s full of abstractions and intangible meanings. But watch how easily it’s translated into a series of verbal metaphors:

As I’ve said before, ideography often works through metaphor. The pasteboard is a familiar representation of all things educational; the gear is an accepted symbol for “action” or “work”; the equals sign needs no introduction; the hoe is my own suggestion for “cultivation”; and the man with a halo is obviously not too bad a guy.

The first thought you probably had was, “There’s no way that image would get translated into the original sentence!” That’s true—this is a translation from one language to another, and translations are never exact. However, this is also representative of the beauty of ideography. What we’ve encapsulated is not the English words, but the ideas they stood in for. So “reading” the image back, we might say any of the following:

“The work of education is the growth of a good person.”

“The application of schooling equals the production of goodness.”

“The activity of learning is nothing other than the development of a complete individual.”

Every one of which, we can see, is implicitly contained in the original English; especially if we realize that “virtue” originally meant something like “mannishness” or “that quality of being fully and completely human in the best way.”

This is why I am not much worried about your concern over misinterpretations of an icon. If you think of interpretation in this context as drawing out the represented ideas and their relationships, then one only needs to be familiar with a few (already mostly well-known) symbols and a bit of the language’s syntax to understand what the author is trying to convey. If, on the other hand, you mean “interpretation” in the sense of translating the ideography into English, then there are a number of excellent options available to us; and one almost cannot go wrong.

Of course, there is always a danger of unsympathetic interpreters—those who have some axe to grind with you or your ideas and will perform every hermeneutical contortion in order to present your ideas in the worst possible light. However, there is as much a danger of this in speaking and writing. Words can always be twisted. In fact, the printed word may be the most susceptible to this kind of antagonistic pedantry. Whereas the spoken word sounds out and is gone, the written word is a permanent and precise record of one’s argument. The skeptic can pore over it with a fine-toothed comb and draw out every apparent contradiction, every questionable generalization and every neglected counterexample.

This is because the written word is often more precise than we ourselves wish to be. It can be useful, of course, to impose on oneself the rigors of the orthographic form; but often the writer finds himself taking special pains to protect himself from hostile pedantry when he would rather just say what he means and be done with it. He must read his work with the critic’s eye because he knows the medium renders him vulnerable.

Ideography may prove itself better suited to the ambiguities of human thought and intuition which the written word resists, precisely because ideographic interpretation is less determinate. This, I admit, remains to be seen; and it will be both a good and bad thing if true.

At the same time, it may be that in the near term ideographic constructs will need a little verbiage to help them along. This may lead us to think that the verbal is somehow more primary or essential than the visual. However, words themselves were never exempt from such an evolution of usage. There was most likely a time when anyone using or hearing the word “sincere” had to actively bring to mind an image of a marble statue made “without wax” in order to understand the metaphorical reference. At some point that word-picture was abstracted away through usage, and now most of us use the word without any thought as to the metaphor originally behind it. If ideography must get along on similar “training wheels” for a while, it is only following in the footsteps of other languages before it.

That, in a nutshell, is my real claim: that we are witnessing a new form of language (really a variation on an old form) starting out “on training wheels.” I mostly feel it will catch its stride whether some of us choose to help it along or not. I am simply trying to provide an account of the phenomena to those, like yourself, for whom this might be a worrying trend.

***

Finally, I want to address your points about Jesus and the second Commandment.

I feel that you understate the corporeal significance of the Incarnation somewhat. You say that Jesus has given us a book; I would argue that what He gave us was his body. The book is a record of the Incarnation; it is much less a thing than the Incarnation itself—though, naturally, important for preserving and transmitting the account of it.

The Incarnation is no small thing for Christianity—it is its primary defining characteristic, compared to all other religions. It demonstrates to us that the body is not evil; that matter can have spiritual significance (we operate under this assumption every time we take of the Lord’s Supper or administer baptism); that God relates to his people as whole beings; and that the redemption plan extends to the whole created order. In fact, this sacramental significance is brought out in every part of the Word—with Genesis, Leviticus, the gospels and Revelation merely containing some of the most strikingly earthy examples.

Sadly, Protestantism never quite grew past its original iconoclasm and we still find it impoverished in the area of sacramentalism today. This is part of why many Christians are finding themselves drawn back into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

When we read of Christ “being the brightness of [God’s] glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3, KJV), we cannot miss the author’s exorbitant declaration. Jesus came to us, in a profound and fundamental way, as God’s own image. He was more than that, it’s true—but he was certainly not less. And if God is willing that the ultimate Word should be captured in the form of an Image, then I am emboldened to do it for many much lesser words.

The fact of the Incarnation must also inform how we interpret the second Commandment. God prohibits the Israelites from ever making “carved images, or any likeness” of things in the created order, and they are not to “bow down to them.” I think there are only two ways to take this command. Either we are not to make images of anything at all; or we are merely not to make carved images, such as likenesses of natural things, in order to worship them as idols.

The first interpretation is problematic—if for no other reason than that God orders the temple artisans to craft many creaturely likenesses (pomegranates, cherubim, almond flowers) in the construction of his own temple.

Neither interpretation, however, says anything about God preferring to be referred to by verbal language instead of visual language. After all, he himself gave us an “express image of his person.” So I think Postman and Hunt are wrong to take this commandment so far. Certainly God does not want to be confused with any idol, and certainly he is not like any created thing. However, there are a number of symbols which do a fine, abstract job of communicating “triune God” and do it without breaking the second Commandment. They’ve also been in use among Christians for hundreds of years.

(Borrowed from here)

I don’t consider such symbols to be any more blasphemous than uniting the letters G O D in a line.

God, in his pleasure, has decided that his primary way of being known in our time is through Christ’s body on earth—the church. We experience this body in many ways: through hearing the words it preaches, certainly; but also in encountering the good works and concern of its people, and in experiencing its sacramental observances with our senses. None of these parts can say to another part, “I don’t need you.” In the same way, I don’t believe proponents of a purely verbal society can say to those experimenting with visual language, “We don’t need you.” If the visual word is indeed in the ascendency, they may soon need us more than ever.

Here is my second response to John Marstall’s previous response.

For those just jumping in, here are the previous links:

• John’s Article: A Word Wrapped in Light
• My First Thoughts on His Article
• John’s Comment and My First Response
• John’s First Response
• My Second Response [you are here]
• John’s Second Response
• My Final Response

John,

Thank you for your clarifying and thoughtful response. Discussing these topics with you has sharpened my thinking regarding visual imagery and the ideal way to communicate information to an audience. I appreciate you taking the time to correspond with me regarding it.

I also appreciate you bringing Jesus into the discussion, which I believe will be helpful in thinking about these issues. He is, as you mentioned, the logos (the Word), and that brings in a helpful foundation to my argument that I did not discuss in my previous response. I will give treatment to it in this response, but not quite yet.

I believe you when you say you are sympathetic with Postman’s emphasis on the written and spoken word. I think your statement “As you point out, we could not be having this discussion in icons; at least, not with the present state of visual language being what it is” shows where we mainly disagree, however. I simply don’t think a conversation of this caliber is possible with icons. You could, of course, replace each word (or at least words for objects that can be conveyed visually) with a symbol, but that seems amazingly backwards and inconvenient.

It would be like the children’s books that have a paragraph with words in it, but is often broken up by an icon of an animal instead of the word for it. A child mainly reads books with pictures. An adult mainly reads books with words. That has been the definition of an adult for about 400 years—one who has access to “secret knowledge” by books that children do not have access to intellectually. Therefore, a child spends years in education in order to understand how to receive that “secret knowledge,” and once he can he is labeled as an adult. That mode of thinking has waned a little in the last decades, but from shortly after the printing revolution until recently that has been the distinguishing quality of an adult (this is one of the arguments Postman puts forth in The Disappearance of Childhood and I apologize that I cannot do the full argument justice).

Regardless, I think this is our main point of disagreement, and please correct me if I am wrong: while I believe that iconography can convey information, I do not believe that even if the “syntax” of iconography developed for 1,000 years it would never be able to convey the complexity of information that the written word can. The only exception to this would be that if iconography developed more and more into shorthand for letters and eventually became a language itself—which would then be the written word, and not iconography.

I think that is our main point of departure. Icons can certainly convey information like you have argued in the last paragraphs of your last response, but I am not convinced it is possible for them to do more than the simple representations they are currently used as. Street signs, yes. Philosophic discourse, no. Computer interfaces, yes. Epic poems, no. Postman talks about how different mediums are made for certain types of communication, and one example he gives is that of smoke signals:

[F]orms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content can issue from such forms. To take a simple example of what this means, consider the primitive technology of smoke signals. While I do not know exactly what content was once carried in the smoke signals of American Indians, I can safely guess that it did not include philosophic argument. Puffs of smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of existence, and even if they were not, a Cherokee philosopher would run short of either wood or blankets long before he reached his second axiom. You cannot use smoke to do philosophy. Its form excludes the content. (Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death, pp. 7-8)

That is what I am trying to say about icons: its form excludes the content. You cannot do philosophy in smoke signals or icons.

Regarding innate reason, you wrote:

Reason is not a product of any communication medium or technology; it is something innately human, and I would want to believe that thoughtful individuals in pre-literate societies were every bit as capable of forming and comprehending arguments as any professor of literature is today. . . . I expect you would probably agree with this; I am simply adding a clarification to your claim.

I would like to believe this as well, but I do not think it is right. In my last reply I wrote, “Without a foundation of typography … people are not as rational and intellectual as they would be if they had a strong foundation of typography.” I stand by that statement. I do believe reason is innately human, but there are degrees of reason. The person in a pre-literate society could not reason in such a complex manner as someone who has had the benefit of being transformed by reading and writing. I believe this is one of Postman’s main points that he is trying to drive home in most of his books. The written word changes the minds of the culture in such a way that it changes the entire culture—from a more primitive society, to a more advanced society.

This can be easily seen in a study of what happened in medieval Europe when common literacy was lost and craft literacy was set up (the “dark ages”). Arthur Hunt has a good summary:

Literacy faded. Education faded. Civility faded. Superstition seeped in…. One was twice as likely to be murdered than to die by accident … and your murderer faced only a one in a hundred chance of being brought to justice. Roving gangs, sometimes composed of renegade knights, waited in the woods to fall on the lone traveler…. Thankfully, life was short. Half the population died before their thirtieth birthday. Manchester says a woman who reached this age might be called an “Old Gretel” since her life expectancy was only twenty-four. Girls traditionally received a fine piece of cloth from their mothers on their wedding day that could be made into a frock; six or seven years later it could be used as a shroud. If the villain in the forest, daily labor, or childbirth did not kill you, then perhaps a pandemic would….

For five hundred years the ability to read and write was practically unknown, not only to the average layperson, but also to kings and emperors. This is not to say that no one could read or write; rather, these skills were restricted to a privileged class. In other words, medieval Europe possessed only craft literacy. (The Vanishing Word, p. 63)

A frightening time indeed! These people were not as civil, not as educated, and simply could not reason as well as we (hypothetically) can. Why could they not see the blatant errors all around them that they were susceptible to? Because most of them did not have the capacity to. Those with knowledge had power over them and kept them stupid. The Reformation did not come from peasants—no, it came from the highly educated Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. Erasmus helped contribute as well and he was extremely well-educated. And what was one of Luther’s main goals? Widespread literacy.

Now I would like to address your argument regarding Jesus and imagery. I am not sure if I agree with your conclusions drawn from Jesus coming as “an image”. Yes, Jesus came as an image. But he is not just an image. He is a person. A person has personality, speech, body language, a mind of his own—an icon has none of these. Curiously enough, Jesus did not leave us with any image of himself. He left us with words. He gave us a book! He has not given us a video. He has not given us photographs. He has not given us paintings. He has certainly not given us icons. Why? The form excludes the content! They are not fit for the message God has for man. But language does, because it is the best medium for abstract thought. He knew that simply an image of Jesus could not convey the depth of what a book could.

I do, however, agree with your statement:

Jesus proposed a way of life in the way that he lived. Intentionally or not, I do this for my own friends and for my children. You are doing it every day for the people around you.

That is true, but I would argue that simply living your life is not the same as living your life while talking/writing. If that were the case, we could have a pantomime Jesus who never spoke. I am thankful we had one that did not just act, but left us with words.

I believe thinking about how images can be worshipped would be helpful here as well. Take, for instance, Deuteronomy 34:5-6:

So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, and he [God!] buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no one knows the place of his burial to this day.

This verse says much about why we have a book written by (and about) Moses and not drawings and a grave for him. I think this also applies to Jesus—there is no body, no drawings or paintings left, not even detailed descriptions left so that we can reproduce something like him. I believe one of the reasons God buried Moses in an unknown place is because the people would have worshipped Moses’ body and his burial ground. This can be seen in a contemporary context with Jesus in many Catholic churches. They have images of Jesus everywhere, and people often worship them instead of him. This has also been the case historically with such gimmicks as saint’s relics and such.

Strongest of all arguments, perhaps, is in the ten commandments (Exodus 20:4): “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Postman says about this:

It is a strange injunction to include as part of an ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of communication and the quality of a culture. We may hazard a guess that a people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures or making statues depicting their ideas in any concrete, iconographic forms. The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves who are in the process of converting their culture from a word-centered to image-centered might profit by reflecting on this Mosaic injunction. (pg. 9)

Arthur Hunt, in The Vanishing Word, says regarding this:

It should be noted that two of the three establishing commandments deal directly with how God wanted Himself to be symbolized. God was saying to the Hebrews, “Do not signify Me with a store likeness; and when you do signify Me, be very careful about it.”

When God took the initiative to reach down to mankind, it was not a mistake that He purposefully chose the medium of writing to make Himself known. The Ten Commandments, and the entire Bible for that matter, did not come to use through an oral tradition or through pictures. To the contrary, the message delivered to Moses was written with the finger of God. The very notion of divine revelation, the communication of truth that cannot otherwise be known, demands a method of documentation and preservation that goes beyond orality, pictorial representation, dance, or smoke signals. If one believes that revelation is “God-breathed” (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16), that each word of Scripture originates from the mind of God, then writing is the obvious choice, for no other medium possesses the objectivity and permanency needed to tell the old, old story. (Hunt, Arthur W. The Vanishing Word: The Veneration of Visual Imagery in the Postmodern World, p. 35)

People have a tendency to worship images. It can even be seen today with the pervasiveness of TV, movies, and visual imagery. However, God did not want to be known as an image. He was to be known by the word. So I think if you were to make an icon for “God” that would be extremely degrading and possibly blasphemy.

You mentioned, “The early church, after all, did quite well in its limited literacy.” I would say they did, even though it was a struggle! My 38 volume Early Church Fathers set (Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene) speaks quite well regarding the amazing energy the early church poured forth into the written word, giving us an amazing legacy to stand on. Even with their limited literacy, they knew the importance of the written word. If all we had were icons and drawings and photographs from them, we would be at quite a loss. But instead of having icons and drawings we have epistles, liturgies, the Seven Ecumenical Councils, letters, treatise, and eight entire volumes dedicated to the mighty Augustine. We would be very poor without these works in written form.

I do not dispute your example of the icon mix-up. I entirely agree that those two different icons can communicate two different things, simply by making the representation of the person larger/smaller. Perhaps I am wrong to say that icons/images have no syntax whatsoever. They can communicate ideas, so perhaps I could agree they contain some kind of syntax. But I cannot agree, as I stated before, that they have the same capacity for communication as words. It is like Postman’s smoke signals analogy—perhaps smoke signals have syntax as well, but I’d hate to see someone try to communicate the Gettysburg Address through them!

I believe your icon for “truth” adds strength to my argument. To be truthful (and perhaps to my shame), I did not understand your visual representation for truth until you explained it to me. Now that you have explained the icon to me in propositional form, I understand what you were attempting to communicate with the icon. But even though I recognized and knew various definitions of truth, the icon did not convey the idea of truth to me. Perhaps it was, as you put forth, articulated badly. But I don’t think so. I believe that is probably the best one could do with an icon. Abstract thought cannot be communicated with icons unless you already know what it is you are communicating, unlike words.

Worse, perhaps, is that it is incredibly easy to “misinterpret” an icon. A sentence has fixed meaning and grammar, but an icon has none of this. I could put forth that your icon means that one triangle is more important than another (somewhat like your person + document icons), because one is bigger. Or perhaps it means the earth is really a triangle with a moon as a triangle. What would you refute this with? Sure, you meant something else, but you can’t prove it from syntax. However, with a sentence you can say, “No, look at my syntax, it has vocabulary and grammar that you can look up for yourself.” But how could this effectively be done with icons? I do not believe it could be, and even if it could, it would be so complex and crazy that nobody would want to use it. “Okay, the 312th pixel from the bottom is #F2F9E2, so that means it is constructing an argument from the previous pixels.” Perhaps that is over the top, perhaps not. I do not know how one could make complex propositions in icons without such pedantry.

Well, I hope this is somewhat worthy of your reply! Thanks again for taking the time out to dialog about these issues with me. It has been helpful and interesting!

Joshua Sowin

Here is John Marstall’s response–and a most excellent response it is.

For those just jumping in, here are the previous links:

• John’s Article: A Word Wrapped in Light
• My First Thoughts on His Article
• John’s Comment and My First Response
• John’s First Response [you are here]
• My Second Response
• John’s Second Response
• My Final Response

John’s Response

Josh,

This is exactly the kind of discussion I was intending to provoke. Thanks for taking the time to consider my argument at length and present these counterpoints.

I want to reiterate that I am, in fact, very sympathetic to Postman’s emphasis on the value of the written and spoken word. I said that I don’t disagree with Postman in general, and I stand by that. Imagery typically does not inhabit the same realm of discourse as do typography and the spoken word. What I am offering, or attempting to offer, is not a refutation of that claim but an exception. The reach of this exception is not yet fully understood. It may be a small exception, or it may turn out to be quite large. Either way, I do not consider myself to be overthrowing Postman’s arguments — because, in general, his concern for well-reasoned discourse is an excellent rule of thumb. (As you point out, we could not be having this discussion in icons; at least, not with the present state of visual language being what it is.)

If I were feeling very ambitious, I might choose to quibble just a bit with the claim that the illiterate cannot be as rational and intellectual as persons of letters. Reason is not a product of any communication medium or technology; it is something innately human, and I would want to believe that thoughtful individuals in pre-literate societies were every bit as capable of forming and comprehending arguments as any professor of literature is today. Of course, the illiterate still have access to the tools of spoken language; but even acknowledging that, I would want to assert that reason is the underlying faculty, and is expressed or worked out in the form of language. I expect you would probably agree with this; I am simply adding a clarification to your claim.

This clarification becomes important when we shift from thinking about human words to considering the divine Word. The original Greek expression, used of Jesus, is actually logos ; which means something like “reason” or “ordering principle,” — not necessarily a spoken utterance or set of written symbols per se. I mention this because the truth of Jesus-as-the-Word is sometimes heralded as a basis for bibliocentrism, or book-centeredness, when in my opinion it simply doesn’t require that. It points strongly to logocentrism, sure — but in the sense of logos as reason and not merely as certain word forms. The early church, after all, did quite well in its limited literacy.

Note also that Jesus is the Word incarnate; as God’s first and final Word to us, it’s worth pointing out that Jesus was visible as well as audible. He could be perceived as a body; but more than that, he could be witnessed as an actor in history. His actions told us something about God, even without verbal articulation. Something akin to this kind of signification is what I have in mind when I am working in the realm of icons — demonstrative, rather than expository.

However, if this is true, something is wrong with your assertion that only words can communicate propositional content. Jesus proposed a way of life in the way that he lived. Intentionally or not, I do this for my own friends and for my children. You are doing it every day for the people around you. Choosing one course of action over another means that you put your stamp of approval on that choice; it is a message in a wordless medium, and it’s a far from insignificant part of what we “say” to others. The proposition expressed is, “This is the way to live.”

What I am suggesting is the possibility of meaningful communication without an easily identifiable syntax. However, you can reject this possibility and still agree that visual language can be cognitive. This is because there is an identifiable syntax in visual language. I went over a few examples in my article, but I’ll just reiterate one: The largest part of the icon is the most conceptually central. Smaller parts represent concepts which modify or derive from the main element. Analogously, we can think of these as icon “subjects” and “predicates,” though I expect the comparison is not exact. The example I gave was two inverted icons: one a larger document “badged” with a smaller person, or user; and the other a larger user badged with a smaller document.

These two icons, while composed of the same images, mean demonstrably different things. In fact, when I first posted my article, I had accidentally reversed the two images. So in my exposition I was referring to the first icon as if it were the second, and vice versa. The interpretations I offered for each design were therefore incorrect — and one of my readers recognized the error. This person wrote to say that my explanations of the icons were completely wrong, and hadn’t I got something reversed? Indeed, that was exactly the case; and I was able to correct my mistake. What’s extremely interesting about this exchange is that we both knew I had made a mistake. We both recognized that the visual configurations required different meanings than the ones I had apparently offered.

In short, we both recognized the same visual syntax.

Now, if this is true, then most of your counter-argument is based on a wrong assumption. You wrote:

“1) they [images] do not have syntax, therefore 2) they cannot communicate propositional truth which 3) makes it impossible to refute any assertions, because it does not have assertions. And without making assertions, 4) they cannot communicate anything abstractly. Hence images 5) do not cultivate the “higher reasoning” skills that words do.”

I agree with the logic of your deductions there (with the possible exception of deriving #2 from #1, as above); but I deny that the initial premise is actually true. Images certainly can have a syntax, and — in the case of icons — probably often do. That this syntax is less well understood than written or spoken syntax does not mean it isn’t there. It simply means designers and academics have their work cut out for them in taking visual language further. We need to explore what areas might be well-served by ideography; and what areas will always require verbal discourse. We need to catalog what visual language conventions are already well-established, and guide new ones into common usage. For me, this is something of an exciting new frontier. The endeavor may well not go anywhere; but then again, it might.

That there can be a syntax to ideography also suggests the possibility of visual abstraction. You quote a passage from Amusing Ourselves to Death, concerning the particularity of images. In it, Postman says, “Photography is a language that speaks only in particularities. Its vocabulary of images is limited to concrete representation. Unlike words and sentences, the photograph does not present to us an idea or concept about the world, except as we use language itself to convert the image to idea.” (Later in the passage, Postman seems to show he is talking about imagery in general, with photography acting as a representation of a wider medium.)

I find this to be a remarkably weak argument, and I wonder if it only makes sense to Postman because he is so committed to the superiority of spoken and written discourse. It is definitely true that one can take a photograph of that tree or that person, and mean nothing more by the result than a suggestion of the specific thing itself. However, it’s also true that we use images to stand in for general classes of things all the time. The geometric woman leading her angular child by the hand on the roadsign seen at a school crossing is not intended to refer to any particular mother, nor the child to any particular student. These objects simply mean “parent” and “child,” and are easily understood in that general sense. This, of course, is the kind of abstract communication icon designers engage in every day.

(Nor are photographs excluded from working in this way. I often see photos of mountains or trees located in other areas of the world and, having no idea where the photograph was taken, understand the subjects as “mountains” or “trees.” One also sees photos of crowds meant to stand in for “people,” “mankind,” “diversity,” “community,” and so on. Photos of businesspeople are used to suggest “the business world.” In fact, this is exactly the kind of use for which stock photography exists. The particular subject is interchangeable; it’s the concept that the user of such photos is after. That the intended meaning suggests itself as a range of ideas rather than as a single word is unproblematic — that’s simply the difference between an ideogram and a logogram. This use of images of particular things in abstract ways seems to me to be such a commonplace occurrence as to be incontrovertible.)

This brings us to your assertion that “There is no possible way that an icon representing truth can match a propositional statement of what truth is.” However, I’m pretty sure I made a good stab at doing exactly that. You may contend that my propositional statement was wrong, or that I articulated it badly. Nonetheless, the proposition I was putting forward, visually, seems to me to be very obvious from the art. The design is a larger triangle, with latitudinal and longitudinal lines — such as one would see on a globe — accompanied by a smaller copy of the same, appearing to rise from the original.

The intended proposition, of course, is none other than the very quote you drew from Phiip Kenneson: “Truth is merely the word for the way the world really is, which we are trying to picture or mirror with our knowledge.”

Thanks again for your thoughtful response.

John