Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Mistaken

James Shapiro's Contested Will proved to be an easy, fascinating read. And it's made me spend the day thinking of how easily we can be mistaken about things we regard ourselves as being experts in. And how difficult we find it to admit to our mistakes. Indeed, how fundamentally impossible this is when we know we are right, even when we're wrong.

Scary. Very.

1 comment:

Daryl LWJ said...

I am reminded of a -- to me -- somewhat obscure line from Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesy which Geoffrey Hill quoted in a recent Professor of Poetry lecture:

"...since our erected wit maketh us know what perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto it"