                           20050202.00

     When I was a student in college, I suggested to Karl Vietor
that much if not the preponderance of critical efforts in the
interpretation (explication) of literature was attributable to
the need (or desire) to correct misconceptions, to mitigate
misunderstanding. And he concurred.  At the time I thought that
the history of literature in general and specific works of
literature in particular were subject to canonically correct
interpretations which had escaped the errant predecessor critics.
Either that such an interpretation had in fact been found and
overlooked, forgotten or ignored, or that the errors now to be
corrected were the tentative and halting steps on a pilgrimage to
the discovery of an absolute truth.  Things look very different
to me now.  It seems to me now that there is an inherent
limitation in all conceptual conclusions, be they verbal, logical
or mathematical, a limitation which sooner or later appears as
error.  It seems to me that all conceptual conclusions are
inadequate to their purposes, and that their inadequacy is the
stimulus to ever resurging critical efforts.  This is
particularly the case with scientific propositions deemed to be
valid beyond doubt, such as the conclusions of theoretical
physics.

     One asks, why should conceptual conclusions inevitably be
inadequate?  I think this is the wrong question.  instead one
should ask, why should conceptual conclusions ever be adequate?

     There will be many answers, and, - guess what, - they will
all be conceptual, and therefore unavoidably inadequate.  So what
is to be done?  Keep silent and dig ditches?  Well perhaps.  I
keep recurring, keep coming back to the notion, that the process
of pursuing our concepts is in some way edifying, that it somehow
improves the qualities of thought and feeling.  I am not
confident of the extent to which this is true.

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