On My Mind V

I only understand what I am doing after I have written the article or book and it is published. In time, I see just what I was up to, and what I have accomplished. Rereading my earlier work is a revelation. What was written under the influence of a structure and an idea, now is seen as a wholly different achievement than I had intended.

            When in my research I go out and photograph, I am shooting what catches my eye, but almost always under a deliberate program. Years later, when I go through my archive, as expected I see more in individual photographs (as we all do when we look again), and see differently under the various topics (topics I had not originally thought of) than I once could have imagined. To see clearly what is going on, I need another’s eye and sensibility, working in retrospect, and surely in actuality soon after I have made the photographs.          

            From the opposite perspective, authors may not appreciate what they are up to more generally, or they have a mistaken notion of their agenda. So, to ask, What is actually going on?, and, Why is that significant or important?, is at the core of listening and reading.

            The scholarly world, a world of scholia (marginal annotations), is a dense geography of explicit and sometimes unstated reference. Again, What is the author up to in terms of this web, this geography? Nothing stands on its own, although I may have to discern the unstated location and links so I can see what’s up from an Olympian perspective.

            It is the prepared mind, my preoccupations and ongoing work, that makes what I am reading relevant or not, surprising or not.

            I get bored, sometimes lost, sometimes unable to see what is going on. I need to read more carefully, or find those passages that are in the end essential. I may need to let go of the piece, and return to it when I am rested or with a different agenda in mind. Perhaps, I need to look elsewhere for statements that are clearer for me, so that when I read again, I see what is being said.

Reading the Inscrutable

When I am reading mathematics or in French or in German or a Google translation of a German text, the strategy must be very different than when I am reading scholarly work in my native language.  I know I won’t get it all, or perhaps much of it. Still, Can I figure out the main idea or the author’s strategy?, where by “figure-out” I mean a speculative leap that is supported by what I can get so far. What I miss is likely important, but perhaps my guess will be useful nonetheless.

            I am looking for hints, descriptive or narrative passages, for stuff I do recognize. Maybe by working on several related articles, I will understand more. Might I get anything at all? Are there questions I might ask a native expert that will open up the material for me, my guesses helping to formulate those questions? Perhaps my question is totally off-base, but being told that is actually helpful and guides me further.

            Moreover, you have to go back for a second look, rereading, or in the case of images, an actual look, to find out if what you thought was there was actually there, to see if your idea of what is being said is actually being said, and to find stuff that you have missed.

            I won’t pass an examination on what I understand, at least an exam that is specific about details. At best, I will tell an expert what I think is going on and they might confirm or improve my speculative guesses.

            Now, my French is not too bad, and I can do a passable translation, dictionary in hand. My German is weak, so recently I used a Google translation into English of a reflective paper by a mathematician. I was constantly guessing what was going on, but I had the sense that I was not too far off the mark, in part because I knew something substantive about the subject matter from my earlier reading of the author’s other work. Still, it was challenging and tiring to figure out what was presumably in English but often had German syntax and curiously-translated terms. I did get some idea of what was going on.

            As for mathematics well beyond my training, I will go through a paper in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society looking for paragraphs that give away what is going on, although that giving-away might be more technical than I can use. From whatever knowledge I have and from past reading, I may have an idea of what is going on, and so I am testing my understanding with what I expect. I am unlikely to understand the transition from one line to the next, or the notation, or even the basic ideas. But, somehow, I am reading at the 5% or 1% level. I am not faking it. I am getting a taste and a chance to see what’s up. I am seeing what I might learn. Better put, I get ideas from my reading, although the ideas may well be totally off the wall, a misreading of the mathematics.

            In all these readings, I try not to be concerned with my misreadings or misunderstanding; for if I  panic I won’t try to figure it out at all. Being calm in the face of ignorance allows me to go forward, skip around, and maybe take home something I find useful. Even if my guess about what is going on is wrong, I am enriched with ideas that prove useful, as long as I don’t credit the source since my misreading may have been way off.