David Kolb

Photo of David A Kolb

Too Many Topics?

I have a very wide fund of knowledge about many issues, disciplines and cultures, nonetheless I have some niche interests, rather narrow and by writing about them in a blog maybe I’d find out whether they are shared at all.

This means that the blog will contain posts on different topics and I will need a good index system or tagging system so people can follow. The topics are not simply diverse — their mixing and crossing that I find exciting.

I have been hesitating to start the blog because I am unsure which of my varied interests I wanted to follow up on. Architecture? The history of philosophy? Modernity vs. tradition? Science and philosophy? Language issues? Japanese language and culture? Math, logic, astronomy, cosmology? Hegel and Plato? Sf and fantasy? And so on. My recent reading convinced me that choosing one is the wrong tactic. What I want to share is not one of those topics but the activity of inquiring what it is like to be a person with those interests trying to come to grips with a world that is changing its categories and structures, its politics and art, its modes of communication and knowledge about the cosmos.

For this it’s not so bad to be 82, with a lifetime of background in different fields. My puzzlement is going to be different from that of a teenager coming into the world freshen open. Whether that teenager would be interested in what I have to say I have no idea. But somebody may be interested in watching me try to piece together old and new. It is the title of this blog. (So also some things borrowed from traditions and history, plus blue sky ideas.)