A JOURNAL OF DISCOVERY

"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" - Saunders Lewis.

Thanks to Sze Zeng (Singapore) for that quotation. He also said some kindly positive things about the work I've been involved with on post-crunch economics. The Lewis quotation rings very true with me, though more so in the arena of the written word, where I probably feel most at home. (Well, OK, I can talk for Britain, too ... but radio and TV soundbites are not me, because I like to unpack ideas with others rather than flash them and instantly move on.)

I recall also a delightfully honest (and typically convoluted, but illuminative) quotation from David E. Jenkins, I think from his very fine 1967 Christology book, The Glory of Man (SCM Press), where he says something to the effect of, "I'm not at all sure that I know what it is that I think I am trying to say about this, even as I reflect on writing it." And then there is autodidact lyricist Jon Anderson's injunction: "Look in the light of what you're searching for", which contains the idea that the object of our attention may effect our way of seeing. This is true not just in physics, I find.