Saturday, July 12, 2008

Pretext/Text/Context

Dr. Lane provides a valid point about cheap reductionalism. When breaking things down, one does not want to take the step from analyzing into oversimplifying. This method is similar to what Richard Feynman mentioned when talking about looking past the names of things. However, Dr. Lane wants to point out the correct approach into breaking something down. The goal of critical thinking is not to simplify something, but to learn everything. In an essence, Dr. Lane's main idea for writing this article was to teach that science deals with reducing something as much as one can, without losing any information about it.

Further into the article, Dr. Lane strongly argues between simplifying things and finding information about things. One cannot make something out to be so simple that nothing can be learned from it. Dr. Lane suggests that there is a fine line in which critical thinkers must tread upon. Throughout the text, it is also suggested that pretext, text, and context are all important in thinking about things. To be honest, I didn't really like how Dr. Lane brought up this issue. I felt that he complicated what should have been a simple matter with some of his examples. However, I might just be missing a larger picture that he wants his audience to see.

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