Haha! I used to be a genius too: Amazingly easy at 16. A trivial challenge at 22 as a full fellowship student at the Univ. Chicago. After 30 it got a little harder and after 40 almost impossible, by which time I was surrounded by dozens of 4.0 GPA students and fellow faculty from Ivys but not a single one of them was a genius. Naturally, I was surprised to be the only former genius I ever knew, except for a pal who, like me, quit school at 16.
Genuine acuity of intellect and genius requires a huge faculty (your meaning intended) for associative thinking that reveals how seemingly unrelated notions can be perfectly suited to a recognized goal Once the goal is perceived the means can be discovered. That's just letting the signified reveal the sign, eh? Elementary? Of course. Not so elementary for hordes of mainstream 4.0 GPA folks. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: Tom McCormack <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sat, May 19, 2012 6:00:21 PM Subject: Re: On Roy Harris 2 0f 2 On May 19, 2012, at 5:47 PM, William Conger wrote: > It just kills me to have to say, sadly, with deep remorse and downcast eyes > that I wonder why people who have never published in linguistic theory are so > much smarter field than those who have. Maybe it's like sports when the > spectators are always better players and coaches than those actually on the > field playing the game. William -- I wouldn't begin to put myself in a class with Harris about Attic Greek, Indo European, the Zero Copula status of Chinexe, Indonesia, etc. That sort of thing is what i Have in mind when I say "linguistics". But the Harris topics I've been attacking have all been philosophy of language, of mind and ontology. I was a shallow lout in college, but I did manage to get the first 4.0 GPA in my Ivy League college since before WWII, and I was a philosophy major, so I brought some equipment to the job. And I've now spent a good part of the last ten years reading in the areas of philosophy pertinent to Harris's topics in this discussion. I feel qualified in equipment and "learning" to comment on Harris.
