[CG] Re: In the Way of Inquiry

Cf: In the Way of Inquiry • Material Exigency http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/20/in-the-way-of-inquiry-material-exi… Part 1 ====== Our survey of obstacles to inquiry has dealt at length with blocks arising from its formal aspects. On the other hand, I have cast this project as an empirical inquiry, proposing to represent experimental hypotheses in the form of computer programs. At the heart of that empirical attitude is a feeling all formal theories should arise from and bear on experience. Every season of growth in empirical knowledge begins with a rush to the sources of experience. Every fresh-thinking reed of intellect is raised to pipe up and chime in with the still-viable canons of inquiry in one glorious paean to the personal encounter with natural experience. But real progress in the community of inquiry depends on observers being able to orient themselves to objects of common experience — the uncontrolled exaltation of individual phenomenologies leads as a rule to the disappointment and disillusionment which befalls the lot of unshared enthusiasms and fragmented impressions. Look again at the end of the season and see it faltering to a close, with every novice scribe rapped on the knuckles for departing from that uninspired identification with impersonal authority which expresses itself in third-person passive accounts of one’s own experience. Regards, Jon https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry