What is exemplary sensibility, mirrored as a bricolage of selectivity? A selector can’t say, perhaps, because that’s likely self serving. But the question is appealing: What is the essential character (the “nature”) of a given project-ive domain (a bricogeny)? What genealogy of a bricolage (the domain of constellating work) can be reflectively reconstructed to model inquirial work?
If this seems obscure, consider the interest of Robert J. Sternberg and associates in rigorously researching giftedness, creativity, insightfulness, and wisdom—which might be considered here as a developmental sequence about leading intelligence.
Inevitably, selectivity is—at least implicitly—prospecting the character of its own valuing. I do that by associating intelligence, mind, and humanity as belonging together. Yet, I’m no idiosyncrat here. The inquirial appeal of brightness, giftedness, “Einsteins,” etc. traces back to divining “genius” (first rationalized as channeling gods), modernly exemplified by researchers overtly pursuing leading mindedness (mindality, I prefer); e.g., Howard Gardner, Extraordinary Minds; Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought; or Harold Bloom, Genius; and the insatiable industry of interest in creativity. We want to know human nature in terms of our best and brightest.
So, I feel I’m in good company by having my own constellations to proffer, making no claim to originality of sensibility, but participating in a long-standing tradition of prospecting the “nature” of leading minds (which might be a fair capsule of the original appeal of philology—and philosophy, of course).
Pursuing my constellations will get specific as Cycle 4 of this website, cohering.net (post-2017; play and explorations prior to 2018 have genealogical interest for me,
to be appropriated into current play and explorations).
But the value of highlighting my inquirial engagement abstractly here—as if I’m called to warrant myself—is that constellating as such can be interestingly in question, too, as part of inquiry (analogously as creative process may be thematic in creative products, which is common in “Art”).
In other words, among domains of interest is the topic of emergent domainity itself, in terms of any particular focus on emergent bricolages, constellations, or domains. My sense of domain is not standard disciplinary areas of academic studies (though that will be derivatively vital—derivatively). My interest in domains is especially relative to constellating appealing works as belonging together in emergence of new regions of inquiry.
That may seem trivial: “He’s verbosely referring to the fact that all inquirers make choices. So what?” But I’m not anticipating a rationalization for eccentric selectivity; rather, enstancing an interest in emergent domainity as topic of inquiry—focusing on selectivity as generative appeal, relative to any gravitational topic (secondarily) and relative to works primarily about inquiry as such, creativity as such, and discursive formation as such. The notion of emergent domainity can be a primary interest in curiosity about the persistant appeal of works selected, along with their direct pertinence to standard topics that they overtly detail.
Yet, a nebulosity of the difference between “unwittingly” (secondarily) informing reflective inquiry and being primarily about self-reflectivity of inquiry (or creativity or discursive formation) would be part of open-mindedness about inquiry itself: open to discovering implicatures not standardly anticipated. That includes welcoming that appropriative pretenses fail to be fruitful, part of how learning never ends.
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