C.S. Lewis on Opaque Explanation
The Abolition of Man (1943), chp. 3.
There are
progressions in which the last step is sui
generis — incommensurable with the others — and in which
to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous
journey. ... Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains
things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you
cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have
explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing
through'
things for ever. The whole point of seeing through
something is to see something through it. It is good that the window
should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is
opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to
'see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then
everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an
invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to
see.
Filed in...

Comments
No comments yet. Be the first to comment.
Lest they devolve into the infantile comments on display at YouTube and elsewhere, comments require registration and are moderated, not for point of view but for quality. » Register or » Login