Constructions
A Philosophy book. Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure...
By our inmost nature we are readers, and what we read is not just words and symbols but the world around us. We have to - our very existence depends upon it. So in its turn does the existence of the world. The limitations imposed by our viewpoint and purposes give it its form and substance, and our very transience its savour. A collector’s item for many years, Michael Frayn’s Constructions is reissued for the first time since its original publication in 1974, with a new introduction by the author. Here can be found the first sketches of many of the ideas that he has developed throughout his writing, most fully in his recent book, The Human Touch.See more at:...
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 176 pages
- ISBN: 9780571240883 / 571240887
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More About Constructions
We can't stop reading. Compulsively we find ourselves reading significance into dreams (we construct a science upon it); into tea-leaves and the fall of cards. We look up at the shifting vapours in the sky, and see faces, lost cities, defeated armies. Isolated in the dark, with nothing to hear and no surfaces to touch, we hallucinate reading-matter. Our craving becomes generalized for 'the meaning of life'. If we lived alone in a featureless desert we should learn to place the individual grains of sand in a moral or aesthetic hierarchy. We should long... Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look at the way your hand goes on and on, while the clock ticks, and the sun moves a little further across the sky. Michael Frayn, Constructions //
I'll quote from the author himself "random musings....which seem as insubstantial as eclairs to readers brought up on the solid fruit cake of most English literature" [ix]Interesting idea to put 309 tidbits of philosophical thought into a collection..the first hundred or so were a treat to read...but for me,I would have left it there.... I think the phrase from 'Constructions' that sums it up best is, 'The metaphorability of the universe is bottomless'. Frayn dwells on the preponderance and importance of metaphors, which he describes as modes of perception. This short, fascinating book is concerned with how human beings perceive the universe. I found it a lot easier... This is an interesting one. Extremely thought-provoking about perception, thought, language, notation - and a lot more.But I found it quite difficult, despite the short, sometimes aphoristic sections. I had to do a lot of work to resolve the meanings of some pieces into a form that I could relate to my own experience or knowledge.One...
