Re:The Most Misread Poem in America
by wpietri on Friday September 11, 2015 @02:25PM
(#10205326)
I agree the engineer/scientist move of dismissing all softer things as "horse shit" is regrettable. The older I get, the more I appreciate the sorts of subtlety I would have previously called nonsense. Especially so as I become better at introspection.
On the other hand, I think that an allergy to overextended metaphors and other woolly thinking is a handy bias in an engineer. And a lot of the flights of literary analysis would be much more palatable to we more literal-minded if it were framed as, "When I read X I enjoy thinking about it as Y" rather than "X is Y". Yet another case where a little E-Prime [1] would prevent a lot of argument.
On the other hand, I think that an allergy to overextended metaphors and other woolly thinking is a handy bias in an engineer. And a lot of the flights of literary analysis would be much more palatable to we more literal-minded if it were framed as, "When I read X I enjoy thinking about it as Y" rather than "X is Y". Yet another case where a little E-Prime [1] would prevent a lot of argument.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime