Why Photography Matters by Thompson Jerry L

Author:Thompson, Jerry L. [Thompson, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780262316873
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2013-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

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This last question is a broad one, and trying to answer it directly will tempt us to generalizations as dangerous as they are sweeping—even though generalizations can sound or read reassuringly abrupt and forceful: to the modernist taste. More about that soon enough; for now, as a way of beginning to consider this Big Question, consider a very small thing: the mathematical procedure for calculating the square root of a number. Fifty years ago, every student learned to do the long version of this calculation. No one today performs that algorithm; inexpensive calculators and now universally available computers have taken over that function. No one any more does it step by step. Few even remember how.

Fewer still remember how a square root came to have that name, or what a root or a square was before we all began to speak glibly about “square roots,” a mathematical short cut useful in solving problems with practical applications: what will be the dimensions of a quarter-acre-square building lot? We use the concept without thinking about where it came from.

Our understanding of words like truth and beauty is similar. We use them and assume everybody who hears us knows what we mean by them. And everybody does—in a general way. But it is precisely the generality of this understanding that limits—one might say blocks—our discourse from really understanding anything. The words we depend on have become something like the Black Boxes technologists speak of. A Black Box is a discrete assembly, a device that does something you need done: problem goes in one side and solution comes out the other. You don’t know (or care) how it works, so long as it does the job, solves the problem at hand. (That it may also be doing other things, too, is not something we usually concern ourselves with at the time the Black Box comes into wide use.) An external hard drive is one kind of Black Box, an electronic one; a psychotropic drug is another. A dumpster is a third.

Present-day life depends on a lot of Black Boxes. If Socrates wanted to go from Athens to Piraeus, he walked, step by step, on bare feet, we are told; not even the technology of shoe-making was taken for granted. Today we would enlist a couple of tons of steel, plastic, and electronics, a construction so complex no one alive can explain how every single component part works, let alone why.

According to the testimony of Plato, whenever anyone in conversation mentioned words like knowledge or virtue, Socrates was likely to turn the conversation to figuring out exactly what those words actually mean. He couldn’t resist unpacking the Black Boxes, examining accepted notions to see what they actually meant. The phrase go into it a little further turns up frequently. Sometimes—often—his attempts are destructive: participants in the conversations (or dialogs, as they are usually called) end by having to admit they really can’t say exactly what the disputed word means. But

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