Page 15 - The Irony Board

Into the Mind

Axiom attic

Antique assumptions
Brought down to the light
May be worth something
If reappraised right.

As the titular word-play implies, old ideas (acquired, perhaps, in
childhood) are often stored far away from day-to-day exposure and
consideration. But if those ideas were accepted originally as self-
evident, not requiring any test against experience, it is either
dangerous or wasteful to neglect them: dangerous because chains of
association may lead from faulty archaic axioms to conclusions
currently held; wasteful since, if valid, they may have been
overlooked in more recently-formulated notions. They need to be
revalued in the light of reason, and kept or discarded accordingly.
Gluckman’s exposure to cultural anthropology in his college days
may have led him to understand the variability of content and
malleability of infantile receptivity of such fundamental
psychological entities.

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