Serendipitously discovered significance of boundaries

I commend serendipity to you. “They were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” So says Walpole about his Princes of Serendip. Going about one’s business in such a way to catch the happen-stance and valuable. Just think, how many valuable things have come to you like that?

Here’s one that happened to me recently. Here goes some running sentences in the literary present:

I’m sitting down with my journal out of emotional compulsion no plans no good thoughts, what to write. I just want to express something meaningful, and not just to me. I always write like this, to no one and everyone – who will read this? I want it to be meaningful to them too. Yes, I want to meet them where they are at and speak something useful to them. I want to write to persuade everyone in the whole world. But what? It must be objective and fair and not say too much besides. But sometimes we need to hear unfair things to shock us. But unfair things also sound bigoted. Stop. Just write. Write what? I don’t want to limit this; I want this to meet any person anywhere with any set of beliefs in any emotional condition with any background when read on any occasion. Why are you thinking all this about a journal entry, no one will ever read it. You will. And what will I think then? I don’t want to be embarrassed to read what I wrote. Well make sure then that you don’t write something stupid you’ll hugely disagree with later. Wait, am I right now deciding what to write based on the tastes of my not-yet self? What a strange thing. Look, it’s been 10 minutes, am I going to write or what? I can’t think of anything…

That actually happened. If you missed the main point in that, here it is: I didn’t know what to write because I wanted it to connect well with the person reading it (me or other) and I didn’t know how to fit my audience because I didn’t know who they were or if they existed.

Ok, now that I write this out it’s all sounded very very strange. But it taught me something nonetheless. Here it is: the imagination dies without boundaries.

It is boundaries that enliven and make possible the imagination. In the absence of boundaries, the imagination has no limits, thus nowhere even to start, and therefore no chance of progressing. When I was trying to write my journal entry I wanted these boundaries: the condition of my audience. Would someone read this after losing a loved one? When young? Old? Man? Woman? Angry? Me when I know a lot more about this subject? Way in the future when I will sound archaic? Because I could not answer the question I could have no boundaries. I couldn’t progress because progress means forward and I couldn’t tell which way that was. The man on earth has two main boundaries: gravity and the ground. Gravity keeps him from going too high; the ground keeps him from going too low. If it weren’t for gravity he may fly off to the sun if he wants, and to China without the ground. (What China would be without the ground, I don’t know.) The man floating in outer space does not have these boundaries, but which man is immobile?

This was a serendipitous discovery made in the course of failing to write a journal entry. I didn’t know where to start because I didn’t have any boundaries. Without boundaries, my imagination shriveled, not grew.

Some material examples of this principle:

• Games
  
  Basketball games without sidelines, fouls, or clocks is not a basketball game. The rules of chess are what make the game.
  
  
• Physical motion
  
  Without something to push off of, you can’t move.
  
  
• Art
  
  Photographs don’t compete with drawings because they have two different sets of boundaries. The boundaries of art are amazingly complex, but whatever they are they make great art great.
  

Some immaterial examples of this principle:

• Words
  
  Words must have boundaries on meaning. Without boundaries, communication is impossible.
  
  
• Fictional stories
  
  Without boundaries on plot, setting, characters etc., a story cannot happen.
  
  
• Math
  
  High math is probably the best of all examples to show how well-used, skillfully-navigated sets of boundaries lead to progress.
  
  
• Journal entries.
  

Here’s a suggestive note to end on: what does this mean for epistemology? If there is no “perspective from nowhere” (that is, without boundaries), then doesn’t this explode objectivity? Doesn’t it prove some form of foundationalism? If we apply this theory to babies, it seems we find exactly what we should expect: their brains are essentially useless because they have no boundaries, and their usefulness increases proportionally to their intake and acceptance of the boundaries of language, behavior, physics, vision, etc. But wait… if they’re making progress they must have some boundary to start with. Is this boundary explained as the limit of the senses and a pre-configured rational brain?

Actually, let’s end with Lewis:
“But you can not go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You can not go on ’seeing through’ things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ’see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ’see through’ all things is the same as not to see.” From Abolition of Man

So I commend serendipity to you, and boundaries. Now that I’ve set some boundaries on this discussion, what does your imagination tell you about the implications of this principle?

I swear the next thing I write on here will be devotional.