COMMENT on Sonnet: Two Paths to Enlightenment
Positor wrote:As natural philosophy progressed
And rigorous procedures were evolved,
The method of hypothesis and test
Bore fruit, and age-old mysteries were solved.
But metaphysics was beset by gloom;
It had no clinching arguments to hand.
The brisk, no-nonsense views of David Hume
Competed with Kant's theories, dense but grand.
Plain realism clashed with the sublime,
And still produced no obvious advance –
A pass that has continued in our time
With charlatans from Germany and France.
For knowledge, then, and practical appliance,
The brightest brains prefer careers in science.
I like this a lot. I just plain like the sonnet form, especially when put to good use like this. The account of history has the qualities of truth and conciseness that make the final couplet forceful.
Nice work.
You had the choice of brains vs minds, and you chose the former, which has alliteration on the B.
But had you chosen minds you would have a nice chiming repetition of the long I vowell:
the br
Ightest m
Inds prefer careers in sc
Ience
You probably thought of it both ways, it's a trade-off. You might reconsider though.
I actually think that my mind is more than just my brain. What makes my mind is partly the other people around me, the daily discussions available to me, the secure environment, diet, exercise. If you kept my brain the same but changed my circumstances I might be LESS bright and I might have different PREFERENCES including if I were younger about career-related stuff. I think of my mind as a PROCESS that is mostly supported by the organ of my brain but is also sustained and determined in part by other stuff.
So I would say that my mind is what would prefer careers in science, and people in science, rather than my brain.
But brain is OK, the final couplet is strong either way. This way you get the alliteration so maybe that's best.
For me the postmodern deconstructionists who treat science as another mythology or "hegemony" or something---they are the charlatans I think of. But there were also the densely abstruse 19th century German metaphysics guys. You might mean them. Who was it who spoke of "the accursed fecundity of metaphysics"? I'm a bit sketchy on my hist. of phil. (to say the least.) It might be those other charlatans that you were referring to.