The Truth of Signs

[rwx]

I think this quote from The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco best sums up my Indexing and Abstracting class. Also, for many current intents and purposes (intensive porpoises) life generally

"I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs . . . I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe."

"But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . ."

"What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless . . . The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away."

I love this class, incidentally. Life is also failing to suck at the moment.

Comments

[mskala.livejournal.com]

The idea of thoughts being a ladder you use to reach truth, then throw away as meaningless, is something Ludwig Wittgenstein is famous for; I'm sure Eco was making a deliberate reference.

[rwx.livejournal.com]

yes