Minutia

[Annette Bethke]

I don't have access any longer to the article this message is referring to but I think we can understand the point of the message anyway. This came across the ALHFAM list serv.

"Can we ever grasp, or convey to others, the full scope of what we DON'T know, and probably never can know, about the people and activities of other times and other cultures? I suspect not. That's no reason to stop trying, but it's a cause for profound humility, regardless of how much time and effort we and our institutions may have invested in research. The boom boxes, cutoff trash bags and '70s cassette tapes that Chuck describes in his "first-person interpretation" of seed corn cultivation would not be likely to appear on anyone's list, or in any museum's collection, of "Agricultural T&E," yet they obviously had a role to play
in daily farming lives and activities. One can only wonder how many
equally pertinent objects and understandings are missing, and were never documented, from times prior to the late 20th century and from cultures farther removed from our own personal experience."

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Minutia

Hallo!

"Can we ever grasp, or convey to others, the full scope of what we DON'T know, and probably never can know, about the people and activities of other times and other cultures?"

IMHO, what is lost... is lost (avoiding the temptation to use a glass half empty, half full analogy...).

On the Past Imperfect's Sliding Scale of Imperfection, as with infinity we can never "get there" to convey what we do not know.
What we do, to some degree or extent based upon where our Mental Pictures place us on the Sliding Scale of Imperfection, (and if that is actually indeed important to that Mental Picture or not), is what we presume and belief to know.
At least assume and presume to "know" based upon research and documentation delving and sifitng into the scraps, bits, and pieces of the jig-saw puzzle of what what believe to be true about Life in the Past- until new research and documentation moves that Hinge Point forward and corrects what was held as right when it was not.

IMHO, still, if did nothing because the glass was not full or we could not reach some percentage of the 100% we can never get to... we would be, should be, in a different hobby.

(Not an excuse or justification for "low percentages," just the observation that like the speed of light, if Einstein is correct, we can never get there. ;) )

Curt
Heretic