I really enjoyed this and part 1! The description of analogy about the horse reminded me of a passage from Hard Times where Mr Gradgrind, a facts obsessed schoolteacher, asks Sissy, a young girl, to give him a definition of a horse. She can’t answer, and another boy gives a “factual” definition of a horse, how many teeth, feet, legs and so on, and Mr Gradgrind says “now girl, you know what a horse is”. In fact, Sissy has helped her father raise and train horses all her life, and the reason she cannot give a definition is because she can’t compress her intimate knowledge of a horse into a few bare facts.
I really enjoyed this and part 1! The description of analogy about the horse reminded me of a passage from Hard Times where Mr Gradgrind, a facts obsessed schoolteacher, asks Sissy, a young girl, to give him a definition of a horse. She can’t answer, and another boy gives a “factual” definition of a horse, how many teeth, feet, legs and so on, and Mr Gradgrind says “now girl, you know what a horse is”. In fact, Sissy has helped her father raise and train horses all her life, and the reason she cannot give a definition is because she can’t compress her intimate knowledge of a horse into a few bare facts.
Being asked to condense an experience into words is such a hard thing to do, isn't it?
Fascinating!