Category Archives: Grammar

NL V: “The Ambiguity of Feeling”

February 17, 2014 – 4:48 pm

Index to this series

Feeling differs from thought. Thought is founded in feeling; thought is erected on feeling; thought needs feeling. Thought needs feelings that are strong enough to support it. But thought itself is not strong (or weak); it has (or can have) other properties, like precision and definiteness. Thought can be remembered and shared in a way that feeling cannot.

Two shiny spheres, more or less translucent, streaked with green and brown respectively, sitting on a flat surface of fake woodgrain

Onyx balls from a tourist shop in Cappadocia

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Collingwood, Descartes, Fowler, History, Logic, Mathematics, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Plato, Principles of Art, Psychology, Science, T. S. Eliot | Tagged , , , , | Comments (7)

Strunk and White

June 19, 2012 – 12:30 pm

The following is a lightly edited concatenation of some emails I wrote several years ago, in response to “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice,” Geoffrey K. Pullum’s article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 17, 2009). [I returned to Strunk and White in March 2018; I supplemented the present post in July 2018.] Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Also posted in Education, Strunk and White | Tagged | Comments (8)