July 07, 2008

Practice / Theory

...when I gave a lecture in the sociology department of LSE on the Black-Scholes-Merton scam, they told me that the previous lecturer, Phil Scranton, made the same talk on the jet engine: we were using it while nobody truly understood the theory. They needed the original engineers to make things work. Theory came later to satisfy the intellectual bureaucrats. But that’s not standard history.
Meanwhile, the universe sits outside my skin, doing everything in ways beyond my comprehension.

I sit quietly, doing nothing. Learning more by observing one crumpled paper closely than all attention paid to a book.

If I return to reading it's because I lack the energy / insight to truly see what is around me.

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