From idea to prototype

A thought only really lives until it has reached the boundary line of words; it then becomes petrified and dies immediately; yet it is as everlasting as the fossilized animals and plants of former ages. Its existence, which is really momentary, may be compared to a crystal the instant it becomes crystallized.

As soon as a thought has found words it no longer exists in us or is serious in its deepest sense.

I read this passage from Schopenhauer’s “On Authorship and Style” over and over again. It confused me. In my mind, the good writer (and Schopenhauer is a good writer), has the humility to know that his thoughts are a mess and uses the act of writing and re-writing to have a look at them, get them in order and weed out the faulty pieces. That’s not what Schopenhauer seems to be saying, though.

The context of the paragraph doesn’t help much. In the passage before this one, he distinguishes between form and matter by writing of the man who is always interesting to talk to and the man who is only interesting when he has special knowledge of the subject at hand. In the next paragraph, out of nowhere, he drops the above. Next, he veers off into the multiple virtues required for a bit of writing to last through the ages. All fine, but what does the passage above mean?

Thoughts die as soon as you put them into words? Really?

On the one hand, I agree. The more I read of philosophy lately the more I find people mistaking ideas that make sense when you put them into words with ideas that reflect reality. Language is the best tool we have for making sense of this world, but it’s insufficient. Socrates can say that big things were always small once and live things always end up dead, but that doesn’t make it true when he forms the corollary: therefore, live things must come from the dead. It might sound logical to him. In fact, it might be logical, but that doesn’t make it right. He sure as hell hasn’t proved it. It’s just babble.

On the other hand, I think Schopenhauer’s letting his ego show. I could be misreading him here. His argument seems to say that inside his mind his thought is perfect and clear, but when he tries to put it into words it starts to fail and the words can’t quite capture the mountain stream-like clarity of the subtle notion inside his skull.

Schopenhauer might like to believe that he had captured the whole universe in that head of his, only lacking the tools by which he could give us an insight into that exquisite picture he held inside, but I doubt it.

In case you’re beginning to suspect that I’m reading him wrong (and I might be), I’ll offer one more passage:

A hypothesis that has once gained a position in the mind, or been born in it, leads a life resembling that of an organism, in so far as it receives from the outer world matter only that is advantageous and homogeneous to it; on the other hand, matter that is harmful and heterogeneous to it is either rejected, or if it must be received, cast off again entirely.

Most of us have had this experience when we sit down to write: you feel like you’ve got your subject, your thesis, your argument all together up in your head, but as soon as you try to write, it starts to break down. It’s not because your writing has failed to reflect the perfection of your thoughts. It’s because your brain just isn’t big enough to see your thought clearly on its own. You’re juggling up there. Once you start setting those balls on the table, breaking the thoughts down, putting them on paper, you start to see that they aren’t so perfect as they might have seemed. It is frustrating, but it’s misguided to believe you had it right upstairs and somehow spelling it out has messed it up.

You just aren’t there yet.

Engineers understand this much better than writers. Engineers know that they might see a good and perfect new machine in their head, but once they start drawing it out they realize all the little mechanical problems they’d not foreseen when it existed as a mere concept in their mind.

Then, they build a model of the thing. That’s when they find new problems to fix, inefficiencies to refine and parts they just don’t like now that they get a look at it in 3-D.

Then, they build a working prototype, and the fun has just begun.

That’s why I think Schopenhauer is mistaken. As good as he is, I think this passage reflects Schopenhauer’s own overconfidence. You might even call it hubris.

Words reflect reality poorly. True. That said, putting ideas on paper enables a writer to look at his thoughts in pieces and weave them, rather than trying to hold them all together in his head at once. As shallow as language is, our own minuscule perceptions and minute inetellects are even worse. Just as ideas make progress through the history of literature, so, too, does the act of writing itself clarify one’s own thoughts.