MORE ON WRITING THEORY : AN ARGUMENT IS A THEORY AND WRITING IT IS A TEST I gues

MORE ON WRITING THEORY : AN ARGUMENT IS A THEORY AND WRITING IT IS A TEST

I guess, I should put it this way: I don’t assume I know anything. Anything at all. I just construct arguments to see how well I can make them. They’re like recipes. I bake a hundred variations of the cake. Maybe one of them rises enough to be worthy of frosting. When I run out of ways to write a recipe and the recipe produces a cake all the time, I consider it the best recipe I can make for a cake.

1) Write to learn what you do not know. (observe and record)

2) Write to test what you know. (conduct experiments)

3) Write what you know you know. (articulate hypothesis)

4) Publish what you have written (subject it to testing by peer review)

That’s about it. That’s science. I don’t assume I know anything except that which is false. And libraries are largely populated by that which is false. The problem is determining what’s left over that still might be true. 🙂

If each book held one idea, I’m pretty sure that a library of 1500 books (per both Murray and Adler) would accomplish the task.