Country Path Conversations

1. Ἀγχιβασίη: A Triadic Conversation on a Country Path between a Scientist, a Scholar, and a Guide

1. Ἀγχιβασίη: A Triadic Conversation on a Country Path between a Scientist, a Scholar, and a Guide SCHOLAR: This past autumn we met for the first time on this country path. That meeting was a splendid coincidence, for I owe a precious inspiration to it: an old Greek word occurred to me, which since then has seemed to me to be a very appropriate name for what we are seeking. SCIENTIST: Our meeting was indeed splendid, but it was no coincidence . What we so name is always just the gap that still remains in our chain of explanations. So long as we have not ascertained the explanatory causes, we like to plug up the hole that remains with the name “coincidence.” Yet the cause of our encounter, which has in the meantime been repeated so fruitfully, lies close at hand. Each of us wished to free himself from his daily work by means of a distraction. SCHOLAR: The similarity of our occupations also quickly brought us to the thematic object of our conversation at that time. We spoke about cognition. SCIENTIST: Our discussions did, however, get easily lost in generalities that were difficult to grasp. It often seemed to me as if we were just talking about mere words. All the same, the conversation offered a distraction, which diverted me from the laborious experiments that I had begun at the time with the aim of investigating cosmic radiation. SCHOLAR: It is true that the definitions of cognition, which we talked through in connection with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, were indeed grasped quite “generally.” Is there anything that cannot be brought under the headings “intuition” [Anschauung] and “thinking ” [Denken]—which, according to Kant, are what make up cognition?1 Hence the physicist among us demanded—rightly so, 1. According to Kant, “there are two stems of human [cognition], namely, sensibility and understanding, which perhaps spring from a common, but to us unknown 1 from his standpoint—an experimental investigation [4] of the processes which accompany the human activities of intuition and thought. As for me, it was then that the previously mentioned inspiration came to me, which obviously pointed me in a different direction in accordance with my historiological occupation. On that autumn evening I also already felt the first breath of winter, that season which is to me always more favorable than the others for burying myself in the business of my work. GUIDE: The coolness of the past autumn is still present to me. SCIENTIST: Then, if you don’t mind my saying so, you have evidently retained little from our conversation. SCHOLAR: Indeed you barely took part in it; presumably because during the day you devote yourself all too ardently to the occupation of philosophy, and seek only a distraction by walking on this country path. GUIDE: In the coolness of the autumn day, the fire of summer finishes in cheerful serenity. SCIENTIST: This feeling for nature appears to be quite refreshing for you. You get enthusiastic and seek in such moods a counterweight to the abstractions of philosophy. GUIDE: The cheerful serenity of the autumn coolness, which harbors the summer within itself, drifts about this country path every year with its gathering play. SCIENTIST: Then on our walk, if I may say so, you allowed yourself rather to be gathered by the autumnal atmosphere of this path into a pensiveness which can be recommended only on occasion. SCHOLAR: You were thus not distracted enough to follow our conversation . GUIDE: Perhaps. [5] SCHOLAR: By this do you want us to understand that in our conversation the thematic object [Gegenstand] of our discussion, the essence of cognition, was constantly slipping away from us? SCIENTIST: That was hardly possible. We unwaveringly kept our eye trained on cognition with regard to its decisive fundamental trait. I mean that which fuels and rules our cognitive behavior. root. Through the former, objects are given to us; through the latter, they are thought. . . . The capacity (receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions; they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), pp. 61–62 (A 15/B 29), 65 (A 19).—Tr. 2 Country Path Conversations [3–5] [3.141.31.209] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 02...