2011 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT? [1]

richard_foreman's picture [5]
Playwright & Director; Founder, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater
Negative Capability Is A Profound Therapy

Mistakes, errors, false starts — accept them all. The basis of creativity.

My reference point (as a playwright, not a scientist) was Keat's notion of negative capability (from his letters). Being able to exist with lucidity and calm amidst uncertainty, mystery and doubt, without "irritable (and always premature) reaching out" after fact and reason.

This toolkit notion of negative capability is a profound therapy for all manner of ills — intellectual, psychological, spiritual and political. I reflect it (amplify it) with Emerson's notion that "Art (any intellectual activity?) is (best thought of as but) the path of the creator to his work."

Bumpy, twisting roads. (New York City is about to repave my cobblestone street with smooth asphalt. Evil bureaucrats and tunnel-visioned 'scientists" — fast cars and more tacky up-scale stores in Soho.)

Wow! I'll bet my contribution is shorter than anyone else's. Is this my inadequacy or an important toolkit item heretofore overlooked?