An epistomology post-Isaac Newton

not objective and autonomous but apostolic, given & received, revealed, not a man-made construction nor human description of the physical world but only the physical world, proscribed by its Creator.

or

An argument for plagiarism, Swiftian style.

 

Yes! Steal your neighbour’s ideas. Steal his words and take her hard-earned knowledge. If you don’t, you will be forced to create with millions of others a new word, a new thought, a new ideal when as everyone knows there is no such thing, only redundancy.

 

You are talking about Naturalism. Do you mean Materialistic Evolution? Or Pantheism? Or Oneism ? or Monism? The world ends up with a new definition with few parts added, with few parts left out. Yet, the product is only new summary, new cognition to describe something that pre-existed before we were all born. Eventually the idea becomes irrelevant.

 

There is therefore, I argue, nothing “new” under the sun. So let us all talk of ALL and with simple collectively understood and shared wording. Not socio-centric Group-Think but echoes, reproductions, continuations and solidarity. Babel brought confusion of language but Pentecost recovered language, uniting it for a new society under new management – a more human way to live.

 

To avoid plagiarizing, one must put things in one’s “own” words. I must invent a clever new word when the one Joseph or Josephine used was perfectly good. Was that word first “discovered” by J or J? Maybe it is a translation from a foreign langauge we ignore or a word we have forgotten. Maybe I should give J or J the credit for its newness, and a salary and a car and an expense account to travel. Whatever happens to the distributer of the trendy term, the synonym dictionaries will require more paper.

 

Maybe the world needs variety, multi-perspectives. No two persons are alike, so why should their nomenclature be as such? Is it sinister to think a neighbour’s thought before, during or after they have thought it? If it be before, I might stifle their creativity, especially if I have an advantage in age, education, gender, etc. If it be during, I will be interupting. If it be after, I will be plagiarizing. I am doomed if I do and damned if I don’t. So sad.

 

Plagiarize, I will. I will quote the quoter and seize his knowledge as my own. For I am born into the same world, unchangeable by means of the creative forces of the same designer. Are we not all stealing from the same Designer? Can anything be altered to hide that workmanship? A Frankenstein (Shelley) or the head in That Hideous Strength (C.S. Lewis)? Can anything be added to my praise of it, my meditations upon it; altered from what we all “see” and believe by default?

 

I opt for Open Source, Intelligent Design, Critical Thinking which is Christical Thinking plagiarized. Did anyone make a footnote to indicate this was really and still is really the true truth? Does human reason always lead to anarchy? Is there mercy for someone who followed the wrong god home and was aquitted by the real Goo₃d – the giver of breath, oxygen, sight, sound, the ability to hear it – to hear or see or speak things in a super category or meta-narrative? Have we been at the party without knowing who is hosting?

 

Quote the Quoter – the Ecclesiast – the “Preacher”. There is nothing new under the sun. All is vanity – “Mr. Vain Glory” as John Bunyan named him. He will steal your very doubts, that panhandler of Reductionism. Then what will language feed upon ? Call a spade a spade and begin to cheat by using each word that proceeds from the mouth of God, copy conformed to your neighbour. We can be under new management and this does help.

 

March 30, 2017   Daryl Zoellner, Montreal