Art, Science, and the Nature of the Meritorious

Abstract

The proper context of any idea is the succession of imagination. In any field of inquiry, the appropriate and productive logic of an idea’s illumination, its sequencing a germination, its instance an ignition, its methodology is light. The grappling of an authentic thought is an excitation—its potency to instigate its ambiance, for an idea of authenticity when found departs the flow of rumination that led to it, argued it, excused it. The idea becomes an amplitude, incorporates its initial focus into a heightened range of realization. The point made on first reading seems almost beside the point, just one example of a much broader and at times awful range of implication. The idea appears to apply to and disclose far more than could have been intended, like pure ore of insight happened in a field—or else there is genius here. The thought reveals itself to be a truth in principle, depthless in what it imports. In its delving lies the worth.