STRUCTURE
Structure
relates to an arrangement in accordance with set parameters. It puts into order
what appears at random. The sanctity for a structure comes from its utility and
ease of understanding or transaction. It is a response to a need of a development
that is natural. For example, grammar is a structure abstracted from usage.
Grammar codifies usage and has no relevance isolated from usage. Usage dictates
grammar and not the other way around. A person who emphasises a structure on
its own merit is dubbed a stickler or a pedant.
Structure
has been useful for progress and organization of society and propagation and
advancement of knowledge. Structure by itself does not promote the content. For
example, a school is a structure, with classes as sub-structures. But, a school
attains sanctity from teachers and students. There have been some who disliked
the idea of school. In India, still a large number do not go to school, but it
is from a cultural lag and economic unaffordability. The few like Tagore have
been wizards and creative geniuses, but that is a rarity. Schools have not been
shut because a great artist could grow without it. This truism is not evident
in some walks.
Almost
everything in our life follows a structure. We have an internal structure that
is organically formed. We have unravelled a good deal of it, but mysteries
remain, the disconcerting example being cancer. The order we have evolved is an
extension of the order we have observed.
Just
like physical structures, we have mental structures. We behave, think and
operate from those structures. The structures of all individuals are not
congruous, except to the extent of shared evolutionary traits, and sometimes
shared social beliefs buttressed by examples that are specific to certain cultures.
Now, in this light an objective view is a Utopian objective. We can delayer,
but I suspect some unknown layer forms in the space created as ‘nature abhors
vacuum’. For all practical purposes, we do not have the capacity to dismantle
the structures in our minds; the mind (compared to a monkey) hops from one
position (branch) to another. That is why rationalism is also a belief in a
structure based on reason (many rationalists are very inconsistent even in
terms of reason, rare indeed is a rationalist like Russell) and reason is by no
means all settled and a sure guide to understanding. Scientists do make guesses
transcending reason and are vindicated; a new theory is born; and it goes on
like that.
The
point I am labouring at is that structure facilitates organized life
(thinking), but is a limitation in understanding as the structure shuts vistas
outside it. While we should strive for knowledge keeping aside interferences,
we must constantly question the conclusions raking up the basics from which they
were arrived at.
It
is not that clarity would be elusive, but that certainty would be
illusive.
