Dear Marion,

We didn't need to go to Konnarock after all. Anna Ludwig Wilson,
a family friend, the daughter of Rudolph Fridolin and Grace Ludwig,
sometime tenants of the Konnarock parsonage, who, together with Onkel
Fritz appear on a picture that I attached to an e-mail of June 22,
telephoned Margrit in Konnarock, and on hearing Margrit was sick,
came to visit her, spent two nights, and put Margrit on the plane
to Boston. Margrit had the benefit of a wheelchair on boarding at
TriCities Airport near Bristol, on changing planes in Charlotte NC,
and on disembarking from the plane in Boston. The scheduled arrival
time was 12:08 a.m., but when we had retrieved her luggage and left
the parking garage at the airport, it was 1 a.m. Once we got to Belmont,
I gave her some broth and water, - she wouldn't eat anything, measured
her blood pressure and counted her pulse, but was unable to find a vein
sufficiently large for drawing blood. She slept well, without further
vomiting, and has slept all day. When I've woken her every hour or two
to give her fluids, was been oriented and alert. At about 5 p.m. saying
"I guess I should show you my tumor," and permitted me to palpate a
10 x 20 cm mildly tender mass that protruded just below the left inguinal
ligament, which I did not try to reduce. I then remembered the Konnarock
physician's having made incidental mention of a hernia, when discussing
the vomiting and presumed gastic bleeding. I waited for Klemens who was
on his way home from a long busy day, "on service" at his hospital, which
now calls itself "Tufts Medical Center." After Klemens had examined the
hernia, he telephoned his emergency room and told them we were coming.
Contrary to reports of interminable waiting for emergency room patients,
Margrit was seen very quickly. We were treated with great consideration
and courtesy. The emergency room nurse also was unable to find a vessel
for venipuncture, but it was finally accomplished, - I didn't have a
chance to observe. Liver and kidney function was normal, as were chest
X-ray and EKG. The surgery resident was unable to reduce the hernia,
and scheduled immediate surgery. By 11 p.m. Margrit was in the operating
room; at 1 a.m. I had a telephone call from the surgeon who reported
that he had found a strangulated, perforated femoral hernia with pus
surrounding the herniation; that he had resected 6 inches of bowel
and repositioned the anastomosed ends into the peritoneal cavity,
leaving a penrose drain to permit the tissues to granulate after the
infection had been controlled. Because of ileus, which he said might
take days to resolve, a nasogastric tube was left in place. Margrit
would stay in the hospital for about a week; convalescence would
require at least a month. I will be going to see her as soon as my
patient, scheduled for 12 noon, has left.  It's obvious that, for a
change, I've been doing something useful.

As for my various useless activities, I never did get back to the
Katenus Mansion on Main Street where I was to plan the weekend, -
the uncertainty of my sister's problem distracted me.

=========================

Thank you for looking at my essay.  I'm not sure that reading it
is worth the effort.  As for the denouement, there is none.  
What I was trying to do, without obvious success, and what I have been
attempting since, is to describe a certain cognitive detachment, -
which I call doubt -, a detachment which, as it were, "brackets"
the assertions of the sciences, - of both "Naturwissenschaften"
und "Geisteswissenschaften" -. The sciences convey experiences
distinct from the immediacy of perception and intuition. Hence
the contrast between Mt. Rogers and White Top as extinct volcanos,
remote in time, and the immedicay of the bees visitng the goldenrod,
ready to sting me, right now.

I'm not sure to what extent such doubt, even if it were at all reasonable
and something more than a figment of the frustrated thirst for knowledge, 
would be susceptible to propaganda. Perhaps, to the extent that it's real,
such doubt has only subjective meaning and should be concealed, like other
facets of subjectivity, under the wraps of modesty and decency.

=========================

I conclude that various issues will be clarified, and some disagreements
will be resolved on closer scrutiny of the nature and quality of our
awareness. I ponder the differences between the unconsciousness of sleep
and, for example, the critical awareness of threading a needle. I conclude
that there is a wide and rich spectrum of awareness, of consciousness,
There are many levels of mental activity. Mental concentration, it
seems to me, is highly variable. "You are not paying attention (to what
I am saying)," is a complaint to which I must frequently make my defense.

The imagination of the child who has not learned to distinguish fantasy
from reality is easily distracted and exploited. Even for the mature mind,
the distinction between what is imagined and what is real remains
problematic: if only because everything that is real, in order to be
perceived, requires also to be imagined; furthermore, many products of the
imagination have a reality which in some respects is indistinguishable
from the reality that is perceived independent the exercise of the
imagination.

To phrase it differently: the perception of reality is attended
by imagination that differs from occasion to occasion and from
person to person in degree and in quality. For the uncritical
imagination the "alien" from outer space is as real as is the
fireman from Waltham or Arlington. For the uncritical imagination,
the dinosaurs of 200 million years ago are as real as the deer
that I see grazing under the apple trees of the lawn fifty feet
from the porch on which I sit. For the uncritical imagination,
the Greek soldiers who fought and died at Thermopylae are as
real as my patient who happens to die of a stroke or a heart
attack in my office.

For me, that which I see or hear is more compelling by far
than that which I imagine. History is essentially imagination;
that is why the historical event is not as real to me as the
event which is present to my eyes or ears. The "reality"
attributable to the inferences of archeology, paleontology,
evolutionary biology, cosmology and geology are unavoidably
contingent on imagination. All of these are historical disciplines.
What they tell me is less real than what I glean from nature with
my own perception.

My surmise that evolutionary biology might be considered history
was corroborated by an article that I found on the Internet.
O'Hara, Robert J. "Homage to Clio, or Toward an Historical Philosophy
for Evolutionary Biology" Syst. Zoology 37(2):142-155, 1988
If evolutionary biology is history, then it is Geisteswissenschaft
as distinct from Naturwissenschaft, and must be understood to be
subject to the same constraints that govern all other history.
And not only evolutionary biology, - geology, cosmology, paleontology,
archeology would all of them appear to be historical disciplines,
and as such, subject to the limitations of history.

Maybe its because I've been too distracted by Margrit's illness
that this has turned out to be not much of a letter, but I'll
send it nonetheless.

Jochen