Polytropy

For certain reasons, this is something of a follow-up to an earlier article, Interconnectness, in which I quoted myself from December of 1987 as saying,

I came to think that if one understood the law of contradiction, there would be nothing left to understand.

I am going to quote now the person I quote the most, Collingwood, from the fourth paragraph from the end of Religion and Philosophy:

Uniformity, in a word, is relative to our needs; and to suggest that a game of cricket, for instance, would be impossible if we supposed that the ball might suddenly decide to fly to the moon, is no less and no more sensible than to suggest that it is impossible because the bowler might put it in his pocket and walk off the field. We know that the friend we trust is abstractly capable, if he wished, of betraying us, but that does not prevent our trusting him. It may be that our faith in the uniformity of matter is less removed from such a trust than we sometimes imagine. Whether we describe it as faith in matter or faith in God makes, after all we have said, little difference.

Continue reading →