Focus Pocus

....One need not espouse pragmatism in order to appreciate Kant's saying: 'To yield to every whim of curiosity, and to allow our passion for inquiry to be restrained by nothing but the limits of our ability, this shows an eagerness of mind not unbecoming to scholarship. But it is wisdom that has the merit of selecting, from among the innumerable problems which present themselves, those whose solution is important to mankind.' [Emanuel Kant, Dreams of a Ghost Seer, II, chapter III.]
— Karl R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, p. 56.

....As applied to the history of human society — and it is with this that we are mainly concerned here — our argument has been formulated by H. A. L. Fisher in these words: 'Men ... have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern ... I can see only one emergency following upon another ..., only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations...'
[w/ footnote #2, p. 110: ....Fisher, who says in the continuation of the passage quoted: '...The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature. The ground gained by one generation may be lost by the next.' [Fisher, History of Europe, vol. I, p. vii.]
— Karl Popper, Ibid., p. 109 w/ footnote p. 110.

     Historicism mistakes these interpretations for theories. This is one of its cardinal errors. It is possible, for example, to interpret 'history' as the history of class struggle, or of the struggle of races for supremacy, or as the history of religious ideas, or as the history of the struggle between the 'open' and the 'closed' society, or as the history of scientific and industrial progress. All of these are more or less interesting points of view, and as such perfectly unobjectionable. But historicists do not present them as such; they do not see that there is necessarily a plurality of interpretations which are fundamentally on the same level of both, suggestiveness and arbitrariness (even though some of them may be distinguished by their fertility — a point of some importance). Instead they present them as doctrines or theories asserting that 'all history is the history of class struggle', etc. And if they actually find their point of view is fertile and that many facts can be ordered and interpreted in its light, then they mistake this for a confirmation, or even for a proof, of their doctrine.
     On the other hand, the classical historians who rightly oppose this procedure are liable to fall into a different error. Aiming at objectivity, they feel bound to avoid any relative point of view, but since this is impossible they usually adopt points of view without being aware of them. This must defeat their efforts to be objective, for one cannot possibly be critical of one's own point of view, and conscious of its limitations, without being aware of it.
     The way out of this dilemma, of course, is to be clear about the necessity of adopting a point of view; to state this point of view plainly, and always to remain conscious that it is one among many, and that even if it should amount to a theory, it may not be testable.
— Karl Popper, Ibid., pp. 151-152.

     Reality has become a literal chaos. It has escaped our definitions. I'm reading from my notes.
     If reality exists, it doesn't do so a priori, but only to be put together. Thus one might say reality is an actuality, of which literature is part, an important part, but one among many.
     Live as much in the moment as possible, to redress a balance. In the fifties, and for fifty years, we were paralyzed by the past: by history, by psychoanalysis, by myth, by our cultural heritage, by a kind of cultural neurosis — in the sense that neurosis can be considered the preservation of a traumatic past as the source of behavior no longer appropriate to the present. Our old systems of thought and behavior further obscured an almost incomprehensible present — like Bergson's theory of comedy. We must divest ourselves of all mechanical response, get rid of our habits. Quote from Wallace Stevens: "A violent order is disorder."
     We improvise our novels as we improvise our lives.
     The  didactic job of the modern novel is to teach people to invent themselves and their world — Robbe-Grillet.
     In fiction as in life, form arises as an idiosyncrasy, like an original work of art that can never be repeated. In this sense we must all become like artists, but artists of a risky art whose only convention is freedom.
— Ronald Sukenick, The Death of the Novel and Other Stories, p. 47.