Uncleftish Beholding
While reading something completely unrelated to this post, I was reminded of the essay Uncleftish Beholding, and thought I would share it with you.
For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.
You can find the full text here.
Essentially, it is atomic theory, explained in the Germanic subset of English. To the degree that that is possible, at least.
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August 19th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
It’s no accident that Poul Anderson wrote that — he was a science fiction author who was one of the first people to write about the idea (now somewhat clichéd due to overuse in films) of how time travel could result in alternate histories — no doubt the idea of how English would have developed without the Norman Conquest appealed to him.