Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

The Universal In The Particular

The Universal In The Particular

Isn’t that the goal of every writer – every artist – to communicate the universal in the particular.

You take what you know (in your way), through your medium, and you try to communicate a universal truth as you see it.

It could be:

  • A poem pointing to the nature of motherhood
  • A painting expressing the passage of time
  • A book explaining the reference point needed to explain evil
  • A sculpture highlighting a selfless sacrifice
  • Maybe a drawing of a flower, to simply document the beauty of the day

But you see it through your worldview, in your place and your time.

Isn’t that all art is?

One editor said that the historical novel I’d submitted had “too much integrity and not enough sex” (what do you do with that information?), but the complaint I heard most often was that my work was “too regional.” For years, I responded with anger and tried to argue my case. “Look, all writing is regional, isn’t it? We all have to come from somewhere. There was nothing magic about Shakespeare’s hometown. Dante was Italian, Goethe was German, Dostoyevsky was Russian, and I’m from rural West Texas. We write about where we are and try to find the universal in the particular.”

-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)

Scientific Truth Advances This Way

Scientific Truth Advances This Way

Scientific truth is not always as easy to pin down as we think.

This is not always the case, but let me give you an example.

Dark matter (black holes) out in space is not observable. We see how other observable masses nearby act, and we make inferences about that which we can not see.

If a new method were developed to explain how dark matter behaves, this would more likely lead to a decade long argument over methods than a revolution within the field of physics.

Or said better: Scientific revolutions are often slower than we assume.

Over time, as the new method becomes more accepted, more professors and researchers clinging to the old method would begin to retire and eventually die.

I have seen the same in the social sciences. Discovering a new “truth” does not often change people’s minds. It leads to an argument over procedure.

Years ago, I heard my dad say it this way:

“Science often advances one funeral at a time.“

Exactly.

As physicist Max Planck once observed, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die.”

-Adam Grant, Originals

Sterling Terrell