Here’s a small book of drawings I made over Christmas, while reading Meaning, by Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch.
Not that what I was reading was consciously directing the drawing – only afterwards did I realise that the space I’d been inhabiting, reading these rich ideas (Polanyi’s, principally), had influenced my at-the-time supposedly unrelated process of making the drawings.
Assisted by Harry Prosch, Meaning was Polanyi’s last book (before his death in 1976). As the dust jacket says:
Polanyi contends here that the foundation of meaning is the creative imagination. Largely through metaphorical expression in poetry, art, myth and religion, the imagination is used to synthesise the otherwise chaotic and disparate elements of life. To Polanyi these integrations stand with those of science as equally valid modes of knowledge.
So what happens to the power, the mystery, of metaphors when they are explicated, are no longer integrations? From atheists to neuropsychologists and neurophysiologists, we are currently, collectively, adept at such explications in the name of rationality and a postmodern denial of mystery.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
the imagination is used to synthesise the otherwise chaotic and disparate elements of life. To Polanyi these integrations stand with those of science as equally valid modes of knowledge.
“Equally valid’ and also subjective vs objective . . . meaning is individual. ie the meaning of life = no answer, but the meaning of an individual life or of my life –that’s a different story.
A metaphor might be seen as explicated objectively but still alive subjectively, if the subjective is nurtured. If they are seen as having meaning by an individual then they are integrated in that they have life and influence through that persons life. But more to the point –way cool drawing!
Good point Rueben, thanks for the comment. You’re right, when something has real meaning for my life no explication of that is going to reduce the meaning…