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.So we can see that theenquirer s self-questionings are indeed unlike the pupil-questioningsof the teacher just in the fact that they can be only experimentally posed.His very questions are themselves, so to speak, questions  on appro query-questions.They have no assured heuristic strategy behind them.Butthey are also unlike the absolute novice s self-questionings, since theyreally are experimentally posed.He poses them, anyhow partly, in orderto find out whether or not they are the right questions to pose, that is,whether they are going to be heuristically rewarding or unrewarding.Theenquirer is not saying didactic things to himself; he is experimentallysaying questionably didactic things to himself.All of Socrates questions tothe slave-boy were pedagogically well chosen, and asked in a well-chosenorder, since Socrates already knew Pythagoras theorem.But Pythagorashimself, in first excogitating this theorem, had had no such guide.He gotto his destination not by following signposts, but by experimentally andunconfidently following, often up blind alleys, experimentally plantedsignposts of his own, each with its warning question-mark inscribed on it.He had to find out by persevering trial and frequent error which of hisexperimental query-signposts would and which would not be misleadingsignposts, if read without the queries.In short, I suggest that at least part of the thick description of whatle Penseur is trying to do in saying things to himself is that he is trying, bysuccess/failure tests, to find out whether or not the things that he is sayingwould or would not be utilisable as leads or pointers.They are not point-ers, but only candidate-pointers; and most of them will have to be turneddown after examination.Somewhat as my school-boy parodist was notwinking but parodying winking; and somewhat as my stream-jumper wasnot trying to get across the stream, but to find out whether he could jumpit; so, I suggest, in his pondering, reflecting, deliberating, etc.the thinkeris not guiding himself anywhere, but trying to find out whether this orthat track of his own making would or would not qualify as a guiding, asopposed to a mis-guiding or non-guiding, track.Of course in real life the things said by the teacher to his studentswill not all or mostly be questions.He will suggest corollaries, counter-examples and reminders; he will predict difficulties and diagnose thesources of difficulties; he will reproach, command, exhort, advise andCHAPTER 37: THE THINKING OF THOUGHTS 509warn and all as instructive pointers in what he knows to be the rightdirection.So, while he, the teacher, is, in solitude, preparing his lecture-to-be, he will be thinking up, and critically thinking about, possiblelecture ingredients of these and lots of other didactically well-qualifiedand well-directed kinds.Correspondingly, though now a slice higher upin the sandwich, le Penseur, in saying things to himself, will be mooting andsuspiciously examining not only questions, but also objections, warnings,reminders, etc., only not didactically as already certified instructive point-ers, but experimentally to find out whether or not they would be or couldbe profitably followable pointers.It is their didactic potencies, if any, thathe is trying to find out, by testing their very hypothetical promises againsttheir mostly disappointing performances.So he says the things that he saysto himself not, so to speak, in the encouraging tones of voice of theteacher or the guide who knows the way, but in the suspicious tones ofthe unoptimistic examiner of their credentials as potential didactic leads.The pioneer, having no leader s tracks to follow, makes his progress, ifhe does make any progress, by studying the fates of the tracks that hehimself makes for this purpose.He is taking his present paces not to get tohis destination since he does not know the way but to find out where,if anywhere, just these paces take him.The paces that had taken him to thequagmire would have been a traveller s bad investment, but they were, ona modest scale, the explorer s good investment.He had learned from theirfate, what he had not previously known, that they would have been andwill be a traveller s bad investment.It was for such a lesson, positive ornegative, that he had taken them.He had, so to speak, taken those pacesinterrogatively and incredulously.But when he has finished his explor-ations, he will then be able to march along some stretches of some of hisold tracks, pacing this time not interrogatively but didactically.He will beable to pilot others along ways along which no one had piloted him anddelete some of the queries that he had inscribed on his own, originallyhypothetical signposts [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]