Changed my pants, as I had spilled a morsel of my fast break on my lap earlier, an event that had gone unnoticed. Now back to the drawing board as we used to say at work, because much of our instruction did relate to drawing, also known as draughting, which at times continued after hours at the pub!

Yesterday I mentioned that Els returned my call and we tried to come to a description of her home computer connectedness to the internet. She mentioned having some expert coming over, so I decided to send her an email with my data to inform him. But, I have to let her know there will be such an email, because Els is computer shy. That deed is done and my intended email has her full approval!

Last nite John phoned that their weeping Birches have the mite this year, as I suspected when I saw the discoloured leaves last Saturday. It was considerate of him to call and I discussed my plan with him to arrange a stocking exchange between Annie and her cousin.

In my dreams over the last two weeks I confront scenes of much confusion, out of which I have to free myself. No panic, just much effort. I put this down to my writings over the last weeks, in which I am trying to achieve some clarity about long held conviction on my part, which run counter to some established opinions. See further below in his regard. Dreams like this just clarify the state you are in at time.

Yesterday’s writing on concept formation and naming by early humans to come to a description of their experience world reads as intended at this time. Building on that idea of concept formation through experience I want to explain a position that is an alternative to the position of ancient Greek philosophy.

Plato held that there were ideal forms in a perfect state of being that found expression through a process of becoming in our mundane – below the moon – word. As I explained yesterday my view is that humans learned to form these ideas in the experience of daily living from time immemorial, naming those concepts by using words for them.

Yesterday’s mentioned examples of such words were mountain, river and forest. Food would be a more abstract word, once removed from food items such as roots, apple or mouse. The formation of abstract words came slowly as we can learn from word like flock and herd for birds and cattle respectively. Another example of concepts and words evolving through experience are the alphabets of sounds and much later the names and symbols for numbers.

Plato’s way and our modern understanding, both order this world of human experience, with the resulting interpretive frameworks adapted according to time, place, people and circumstance.

Now that we know this type of development from modern research and studies, we can formulate an insight that differs from that of Plato and is in effect the reverse. We can conclude that the abstract concepts emerged later from the more concrete earlier notions. For example the word trees more abstract than the word Birch, while it in turn is an abstraction in that each Birch tree differs from any other. The Birch Tree is an abstraction standing in for the ideal form that Plato had in mind.

I would like to say that I am not looking for a right or wrong here, but rather for a way to understand how we humans created order out of the chaos of human experience. This chaos came about for humans as they learned to develop their potential for conscious awareness and as their reliance on the less efficient habits, customs and instinct slowly diminished.

Plato’s way and our modern understanding, both order this world of human experience, with the resulting interpretive frameworks adapted according to time, place, people and circumstance.
<10:15am and 10:54am~