A Squire’s Trial

16
- Precisely. Philosophers, and their children – ideologues –
are all so concerned with their limited models of the world,
that they miss how far they’ve trailed away from reality. Even a
child can observe the world around itself – without guidance –
and gain better knowledge of it than philosophers, with their
abstract formulas.
- I suppose so, though I’m no good at philosophy, so I can’t
really be the judge here.
- Well, let me give you one example straight out of antique
philosophy. There was a Greek man, Zeno, and he wanted to
show other philosophers the absurdity of their abstract thinking,
so he put to them several paradoxes that showed a conflict
between their reasoning and reality. One of them was that of
the mythological hero, Achilles, and a simple tortoise. He told
them simply, that Achilles would never catch the tortoise, because
by the time Achilles catches up to where the tortoise
was, the tortoise would have already made its way to a new
point. And by the time Achilles got to that point, the tortoise
would already be elsewhere again, and thus Achilles will never
catch the tortoise. It certainly does sound reasonable, but we
both know that it just isn’t true.
- Yeah, I get it now. Seems rather obvious, though, that a
man can catch up to a tortoise.
- But in the abstract world detached from reality, you can
come up with many such seemingly sensible formulas.
- Right, I see now what you mean in general, all lies are from
people, but truth comes from nature.
- Well, we could indeed leave it at that, but nature is also a
manifestation of truth, rather than its source.