thinking. . . .

I remember early days of dissertation research, saying "You haven't even begun to have fun until you've thought about thinking. That'll get you crazy!"

The 'who is it that's actually thinking', the 'how is it that we know what we know' and its close relative: 'how do you know you know what you think you know?!'

Right.

I lay awake last night, and the thought came that the dissertation process is like utilizing a good search engine. I value Google to the extent that it gives me access to what I want, without requiring me to dig through all sorts of other stuff first. I realized that I was in danger of piling on information, rather than discriminating the results.

This has been helpful, because even though the stuff I'm worried about not including in my writing is relevant (in that it talks about what I talk about) it is not the best example of what it is I want to talk about. Going back to the Google analogy, it would be on page 4 or 5, and there was really good stuff on page 1. Ergo: no need to go through all that!

The king has been saying this all along. This morning, he was kind enough not to say "I told you so." He said "I'm glad you've come to that realization for yourself." There's a difference, I'm sure.

I just can't put my finger on it. . . .