RonPrice
05-10-2008, 10:20 AM
THE DRAMA OF INVISIBILITY
In 1959, Alfred Ayer, the foremost advocate of logical positivism, published an anthology of essays written by bright men earlier in the century who had committed themselves to reconstructing philosophy uncontaminated by metaphysics. The book was called Logical Positivism. In the next three years several books were published demolishing the pretensions of positivism. Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions were two of these books. Philosophy swims in metaphysics like a fish swims in water. At the time, the years 1959 to 1962 being my first three as a Baha'i, I was beginning to swim in new metaphysical waters. I knew nothing of logical positivism or metaphysics, but I was clearly attracted to the poetry and the narrative I found in the Baha'i Faith. It was poetry and narrative that invited reflection on the nature of my culture and humanity itself. -Ron Price with thanks to Evan Cameron, "Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies," Philosophy and Literature, Vol. 21, No.2, pp.492-494; and Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry, Summer 1981.
The story was simply there,
like life itself:
international,
transhistorical,
transcultural---
not really a problem,
rather--a solution.
Helped me translate
knowing into telling,
took my life, what I'd done
and fashioned a form,
structures of meaning,
but slowly, faintly, like a star.
The story was translated
into my world in southern Ontario
by the lake on Seneca Street
where I played baseball
without fundamental damage
to me or the story.
And so it was that I began that drama,
only possible with those whom
you share a common history,
a drama of the invisibility
of interior experience,
the place where feelings lie hidden
and we have few words, if any,
for what happens inside us,
where we feel defeat
at the problem's enormity,
where we have trouble naming what we see.
Ron Price 7 September 2001
In 1959, Alfred Ayer, the foremost advocate of logical positivism, published an anthology of essays written by bright men earlier in the century who had committed themselves to reconstructing philosophy uncontaminated by metaphysics. The book was called Logical Positivism. In the next three years several books were published demolishing the pretensions of positivism. Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions were two of these books. Philosophy swims in metaphysics like a fish swims in water. At the time, the years 1959 to 1962 being my first three as a Baha'i, I was beginning to swim in new metaphysical waters. I knew nothing of logical positivism or metaphysics, but I was clearly attracted to the poetry and the narrative I found in the Baha'i Faith. It was poetry and narrative that invited reflection on the nature of my culture and humanity itself. -Ron Price with thanks to Evan Cameron, "Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies," Philosophy and Literature, Vol. 21, No.2, pp.492-494; and Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry, Summer 1981.
The story was simply there,
like life itself:
international,
transhistorical,
transcultural---
not really a problem,
rather--a solution.
Helped me translate
knowing into telling,
took my life, what I'd done
and fashioned a form,
structures of meaning,
but slowly, faintly, like a star.
The story was translated
into my world in southern Ontario
by the lake on Seneca Street
where I played baseball
without fundamental damage
to me or the story.
And so it was that I began that drama,
only possible with those whom
you share a common history,
a drama of the invisibility
of interior experience,
the place where feelings lie hidden
and we have few words, if any,
for what happens inside us,
where we feel defeat
at the problem's enormity,
where we have trouble naming what we see.
Ron Price 7 September 2001