I know, my thread titles are getting more verbose by the day, but please bear with me and don't turn away - with a yawn - just yet. This is a quickie, one of the very few quickie threads I've allowed myself. I'm actively restraining my overindulgent propensity to strain out sentences
"Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas"
- Lord Acton (1907) "Essays on Liberty"
The "
pedigree of ideas" is the history behind ideas. Acton is explaining how the one brave enough to forage into intellectual history - the field that studies the origins and development of ideas - may be in for some unwelcome surprises; they may well find that an idea they value highly came from their political opponents or a worldview they wouldn't conventionally expect or want it to arise from, for instance.
Experience tells me that there is a lot of truth to this notion.
Do you agree?
