Another Neighbour

One of my former neighbours wrote a book which turned out, in a rare surprise for him, to be a bestseller. The title of the book was A Brief History of Time. This was the same neighbour who used to speculate on whether God existed or not, pointing out that Gödel had famously proven that He ought to exist but not proven it well enough to show that He indeed existed.

Sometimes, you wonder whether the dinner conversations and suchlike that whirl around you in your younger years actually shape your older years to such a great extent. All I can say is that. if anything, listening to such things makes you curious about particular things if you are already a curious child.

The first step is therefore to bring up a child to be curious. Then he will look for answers both within and without. And he will develop methodologies for finding those answers. Later, he will develop methodologies for evaluating those answers, and even methodologies for evaluating methodologies. If you happen to be able to provide examples and exemplars, then the child is on his way to having a lot of useful experiences.

Bear in mind, however, that the form of the answer can be physical as well as conceptual, spatial as well as numerical. There are many questions, and their answers come in many shapes, sizes, sounds, smells, savours and sensations.

All I can say is the study of falconry and of falcons can sometimes be of inestimable value in a later life bereft of both. You never know what might turn up, that will turn both salesmanship and hunting into a single word, and make a singularity out of many things.