Saturday, February 02, 2013

What could be more humbling to a fact then to learn that it has been selected for our attention by a metaphor, an image, or a fiction?

--- law professor Pierre Schlag, in blog post Facts (The), 28 January 2013

Lots of good stuff - read the whole post. The quote in context:
Facts are frequently presented as “the-real-story” or “the bottom line.” One is no doubt supposed to conclude from this that “facts are facts”—that they are the veritable bedrock of truth. But notice that this doesn’t make any sense. Notice that the “bottom line” is an accounting metaphor. . . . Now, it’s not that these metaphors, images or fictions turn facts into non-facts. But still, I ask you: what could be more humbling to a fact then to learn that it has been selected for our attention by a metaphor, an image, or a fiction?