from Part One - Dialogues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
June 1
Daedalus: Congratulations. I wasn't sure you would make it this far, but you're graduating, let's see, tomorrow, isn't it?
Icarus: Yes it's tomorrow afternoon. And I have very mixed feelings. It's time to join the real world. But I'll miss our talks. You've taught me a lot.
D: No, I'm quite sure I haven't. In fact, no one has ever taught you anything.
I: I know, you think I'm insufferably arrogant. But the fact is that you've taught me an awful lot; things that are very important to me.
D: Of course you're insufferably arrogant. But that's not what I mean. I think I haven't taught you anything. Nor have I tried to. Nor has anyone. I've put some information and ideas out, and you've taken what you've been ready to learn when you've been ready to learn it. Some of it you've taken, and some of it you haven't yet.
I: I think I've understood it all.
D: Of course you do—people understand what they want to understand, or are ready to understand. So we usually think we've got the whole picture no matter how what percentage we're missing. I recall a seminar with a brilliant man who spoke about a world of musical thought that was largely new to me. I wrote down everything—what I understood, what I believed, what I didn't believe, what I didn't understand—I just wrote it all down.
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