Jim's post suggesting that stories and LAWS are opposites is
interesting. Among other things, it suggests much about our "having
thoughts" that is so far from thinking.
I think that the problem he is pointing at is not that laws do not
contain the richness of detail of stories about life and life itself.
Good stories, I think, are exemplifications of "laws" which provide
the detail, the richness, the deepened understanding of those laws.
The stories, if well formulated and told, are the connectors to
experience.
The problem, I think, is that we are most often lost in between. The
stories and the details are connected to experience. The "laws" are
connected to profound understandings and from which patterns are
made. (We understand - make meaning - by patterns.) It is the loose
conceptual talk in between, the representations which are empty, the
words without referents to "laws" or to experience that are the
problem.
Most of these are superfluous at best. With good theory (or laws)
and direct experience, little mediation is needed. All of the
conceptual stuff becomes so many words to obscure.
-- Michael McMaster Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk