Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry

This is an interesting complement to Thomas Kuhn's book, but it is not about paradigm shifts. If I were to compare its spirit to another text, it might be Tillich's The Protestant Era. It is as Dr. Vernon Gras used to say, "an attempt to eff the ineffable": to trace, or gesture toward, an evolution, or movement of consciousness (in the spirit of "moving over the face of the waters", or glyphs to that effect) - to disregard the [provisionally] terminal proposition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

This book is like really, really rich chocolate cake - it will require a long time to digest - and a couple more future readings. This is one of those instances - and it might just be my lack of comprehension and a density to all things philosophical - but there were many paragraphs I had to read over and over and only then did I have even the faintest idea of what Barfield might have been getting at.

My briefest explanation - and this does not do it justice - would be that it is firstly a treatise on the evolution of human consciousness and secondly could be considered - in part - a study in the history of ideas, religion, language, philosophy, anthropology, theology, imagination, iconoclasm and so much more all rolled into one.

That show more being said it is not entirely backward looking but also future looking. It could be seen as a kind of prophetic word to humankind in general and the church - the nursing mother as Barfield puts it - in particular. Over all it definitely cultivates some serious beta-thinking on behalf of your entire mass of grey cells. show less

A hoary classic, decades younger than Empson's "Seven Types of Ambiguity" but well worth reading. Perhaps the first serious examination of what's now called a paradigm shift.