Robert Wrubel wrote:
>
> I'd say intellectuals are concerned with "facts" before ideas.
There is no such thing as a pure fact: the facts are, essentially, created by theory. If the cow goes dry, it is because a witch put a spell on it. That is, really, a fact, and if you depend on facts in 1650 then you have to believe that your neighbor is a witch when your cow goes dry. It is a new theory, not new facts, that undercuts that fact. This vicious circle of the theory creating the facts that confirm it can be broken only by events, practices, which demand a new theory, and hence a new way of parsing the world to derive facts from it. Facts are a dime a dozen and utterly meaningless in themselve. A failure to recognize this is _one_ of the chief forces which generate ideology (or common sense understanding of cause).
Facts are what young Americans dont have a lot of,
Nonsense. Young americans are overloaded with facts, as is everyone else; it's just that the facts they know don't match _your_ ideas of what a fact is.
Carrol