Friday, March 26, 2010

Bandwagon and weathercock

Defending the thesis is one questionable skill that the academicians are trained in early on. Philosophies grow out of such one-sided marshalling of arguments. A lawyer’s ability, on the other hand, to plead for either side of a case appears flexible, but paradoxical at the same time. Because spatio-temporal fixity fails to accommodate varying perspectives of the seven blind men admiring an elephant. Rationalizing such a scenario under an overarching postulate of sapta-bhangi-naya too is not free from ambiguity as invoking avyakta or unmanifest is something difficult to grasp.

Logical positivism, in its halcyon days, encountered deadlocks on many fronts and consequently the epistemological rigor had to be abandoned. The same happened with analysis of language in the recent years. The current obsession with SR/OOO is sure to meet a similar fate. But the puerile passion with which it is pursued at present is really astonishing. That a Bourdieuian field is the binding force is however understandable.

The need for perceiving that the opposite is also true is considered normal in the Sri Aurobindian landscape. As if this challenge is not high enough, empirical astuteness is further elevated to the genre of knowledge by identity. Academic verification, obviously, is out of question in such instances, but speculative reasoning firmly points in this direction. Thus the choice, clearly, is between a bandwagon and a weathercock.  [TNM]

No comments:

Post a Comment