Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 344.
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        Date: 2025-01-29 15:45:06+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: nudging words

Recently I began to wonder about the implications of terms used to
identify the action of studying something. Several times I have noticed
and wondered about the frequency with which a close friend writes that
she "looks at" this or that academic subject (as if it were an object in a
museum or gallery) and others who write about "approaching" the 
object (in modesty or trepidation? from a distance?). I find myself 
writing that I "consider" some problem or other (as if looking to the 
stars for direction or advice, pondering but without the weight?). 
Does anyone use 'contemplate' or 'meditate in academic discourse?

Where the mind is led--that's the problem. Sight, Rudolf Arnheim writes, 
is the "distance sense par excellence" (New Essays on the Psychology of 
Art, 1986), favouring detachment, offering a degree of safety, hence 
survival, perhaps. Imagine being in a jungle where tigers prowl, 
or ponder Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows. 

Anthropologist Anne-Christine Taylor writes about the art produced 
under the influence of ayahuasca as devices for seeing with or through, 
not looking at. Alfred Gell's "The Technology of Enchantment and the 
Enchantment of Technology" (in The Art of Anthropology, 1999) brings 
us back to our machine. "Magic haunts technical activity like a shadow".
he writes.

I have a collection of PDF'd editions and revisions of Peter Mark
Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases from the original 1852
edition and a few that followed, in 1911, 1946, 1962 2002 and 2003--plus
the OED. But I'd like to catch a flavour (there's another one) of the
words in current use for leading the reader's (and one's own) mind 
here or there..

All help with this will be greatly appreciated!

Best,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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