HOW and WHY

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Sat Sep 25 21:43:30 EDT 1999


At 08:21 PM 9/25/99 -0400, Jim West wrote:

>In short, George, questions can really be answered simply most of the time
>for two reasons:
>1) you will take one persons word above another nearly every time.
>2) you will most likely adopt the response most similar to yours.

In cognitive psychology, we learned that one of the measures of a good 
theory was the capacity to surprise. A good model of Greek grammar should 
jolt you awake sometimes when you realize that a passage really doesn't 
seem to mean what you have always thought it means, and perhaps does not 
seem to mean what a trusted authority thinks it means. Working through the 
how and why allows us to be surprised and change our minds.

If we want to answer questions by appeal to authority and by relying on 
what we have thought all along, there is really no need to go to the 
trouble of learning Greek.

Jonathan



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