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| | | Poetry for the Blinded | |
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< | K. N. Llewellyn's chapter titled "And Law School Offers What?" from his book The Bramble Bush fell into my lap during a lunch event and left me inspired. Llewellyn opens his piece with a poem: | >
> | K. N. Llewellyn's chapter titled "And Law School Offers What?" from his book The Bramble Bush fell into my lap during a lunch event. Llewellyn opens his piece with a poem: | | | "There was a man in our town
And he was wond'rous wise;
| | | He jumped into another bush
And scratched them in again!"
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< | This odd verse gave me something I had been longing for - insight. In some sense the bush was about law school, and in another, it was about the lifelong study of law. On a deeper level, the bush was life itself. Until this realization, I was playing around with the inputs and plugging them into formulae expecting certain outputs, and every time the process failed me. Our legal system continued to make little or no sense and I felt helplessly lost. But how could I have known that I was supposed to jump into another bush first? The method to the madness, was that the method was the madness, and the madness in turn spawned the method. "No cure for law but more law," as Llewellyn put so beautifully. | >
> | This odd, violent rhyme gave me something I had been longing for - insight into myself, and my condition. "Yes I am a lawyer. That is how I make my living, doctor. I make my living by committing acts of violence against myself and acts of violence against others." Until this realization, I was playing around with the inputs and plugging them into formulae expecting certain outputs, and every time the process failed me. Our legal system continued to make little or no sense and I felt helplessly lost. But how could I have known that I was supposed to embrace the feeling? "No cure for law but more law," as Llewellyn put so beautifully. | | | | |
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< | I understand now that I have to scratch my eyes back in again. | >
> | I understand now that I have to scratch my eyes back in again, and that involves a certain level of violent thinking. | | | "Rinse. Repeat."
Where Am I going? | |
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< | The point of this long story is two-fold: First, this "Aha!" moment reaffirmed the importance of insight in any kind of significant change, personal or otherwise. Second, the moment revealed the lack of conversations about insight in our discussions about consilient thinking. Why should consilient thinking try to accommodate something as amorphous as human insight? | >
> | The point of this long story is two-fold: First, this "Aha!" moment reaffirmed the importance of insight in any kind of significant change, personal or otherwise. Second, the moment revealed the lack of conversations about insight in our discussions about consilient thinking.
But why should consilient thinking try to accommodate something as amorphous as human insight? | | | Insight | | | Attempt at a Definition | |
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< | But first, what is insight, and how is it distinct from other processes we address in our class? Insight is the moment when the reality of the internal world aligns with that of the external, and in that fleeting space and limited time, the idea is truly born, real choices are made, and truth is seen. It is the gap preceded by biology and intra-psychic activity, informed by sociological, historical, economic and cultural influences, and followed by significant consequences, both real and legal. It is the moment of choice, when Meursault shoots the Arab, or when the Ladakhi says, "chi choen?"; It is the moment when the trickster crafts the first fishnet, and when Newton, rubbing his head, declares, "F = ma!"; | >
> | First, what is insight, and how is it distinct from other processes we address in our class? Insight is the moment when the reality of the internal world aligns with that of the external, and in that fleeting space and limited time, the idea is truly born, real choices are made, and truth is seen. It is the gap preceded by biology and intra-psychic activity, informed by sociological, historical, economic and cultural influences, and followed by significant consequences, both real and legal. It is the moment of choice, when Meursault shoots the Arab, or when the Ladakhi says, "chi choen?"; It is the moment when the trickster crafts the first fishnet, and Jack declares, "something inside me snapped." | | | Insight and Science | |
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< | The increasing importance of the need for human insight in the future cannot be overstated. We have created computers that can analyze complex sets of data in nature and produce the formulae for us. The Eureka system, for example, has been able to take data about the thousands of simultaneous biochemical changes taking place within a single-cell organism, and churn out two equations which predict with alarming precision the biochemical processes taking place within that cell. Unfortunately, we have no use for these knowledge or tools without the insight needed to synthesize the equations, the inputs, and the outputs to explain why those reactions occur the way they do. We can, as we do, have the entire human genome at our disposal, but without the right question, without an understanding of the relationship between the raw science and the real world, we lack any application for the knowledge. | >
> | The increasing importance of the need for human insight in the future cannot be overstated. We have created computers that can analyze complex sets of data in nature and produce the formulas for us. The Eureka system, for example, has been able to take data about the thousands of simultaneous biochemical changes taking place within a single-cell organism, and churn out two equations which can predict future biochemical processes within that cell with alarming precision. Unfortunately, we have no use for this ability without the insight needed to synthesize the equations, the inputs, and the outputs to explain why those reactions occur the way they do. We have the entire human genome at our disposal, but without the right question, without an understanding of the relationship between the raw science and the real world, we lack any application for the knowledge. | | | Douglas Adams was on to something - knowing that the equation to "Life, the Universe, and Everything" is 6 X 7 = 42 is useless without the insight to interpret its meaning and significance. | | | Theories about the external and internal worlds have come far in closing the space between thought and action. We have a workable, if not perfect system of understanding natural phenomena, including human behavior. However, we know little about that spooky place where synthesis happens, where connections between otherwise unrelated phenomena are made, and where insight occurs. If the need for insight is as real as the scientists at the cutting edge of technological innovation would have us believe, at the very least, we must begin the conversation about it in non-mystical, non-magical terms. | |
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< | If insight is a moment of true nuclear randomness, I admit I have wasted everyone's time. The input is set, and the output is too, and we just have to wait for the right time and place for insight to strike. However, if insight can be better understood, and decoded like any other phenomena, then part of the craft of lawyering should be to alter the variables in our lives to replicate these moments of profound clarity and inspiration. A truly consilient theory of the world would benefit greatly from understanding the mechanism of insight. | >
> | If insight is a moment of true nuclear randomness, I admit I have wasted everyone's time - the inputs and outputs are set, and we just have to wait for the right time and place for insight to strike. However, if insight can be better understood and unraveled like any other phenomena, part of the craft of lawyering should be to alter the variables in our lives to replicate these moments of profound clarity and inspiration. A truly consilient theory of the world would benefit greatly from understanding the mechanism of insight. | | |
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