Re: virus: Re: Science and Religion

zaimoni@ksu.edu
Wed, 25 Sep 1996 13:37:24 -0500 (CDT)


On Wed, 25 Sep 1996, Wade T. Smith wrote:

> At 02:31 +0000 11/26/56, you wrote:
>
> >>'Spirituality' is one of those catch-all words for anything one pretends to
> >>think about all sorts of make-believes.
> >
> >No, the term for that is pseudo-intelectual.[sic]
> >
> >>What's the meme for keeping precision to a minimum?
> >
> >Art.
> >
> >David Leeper
> >Homo Deus
>
> First he posts a simply cogent multi-layered comment, and then he comes up
> with this....
>
> 'Spirituality' _is_ pseudo- although the intellectual is an open question.
>
> And art would seem to me to be precisely the opposite. Very few artists (I
> think, since I try to include myself in the group) use memes of
> obfuscation, and I would contend that art is a primal communication,
> whatever that means (I'm still working on this....)

Obfuscatory art is, by definition, bad art. The reason I resort to
writing science fiction when analyzing some problems [in the social
realm], is because art can communicate MUCH faster--basically, the use of
inductive definition combined with symbology.

Please do not confuse 'precision' with 'explicit definition'. I have
seen unclear--even outright 'wrong' definitions. [A definition may be
said to be 'wrong' in math when its consequences do not reflect its
English name well.]

[CLIP]

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/ Kenneth Boyd
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