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What I find most striking about this class so far is how it encourages me to really question what is being presented- and through that questioning to continuesly develop my own notion about the distinctions between literature and science, and determine which differences are results of limitation in our societal understanding and which are inherent in the subjects even if they took their most ideal form. I think both differences exist, and for me determining what falls under the second catagory dominates my internal dialogue on the material. It is, you could say, my crack, what I use to filter information presented in class and outside.

One of the things that continues to surprise me is how much other course work tends to remind of of the topics and discussions in these classes- I've actually devised a symbol for my notes on readings, regardless of what class they're originally for, that indicate relevance to what we bring up in discussion. My most recent find was in a packet on they mystical experiece in a portion that compares and contrasts the historian and the mystic in a manner I feel is related to the designations of scientists and literaries. "The historian "calms" the dead and struggles agains violence by producing a reason for things (and "explanation") that overcomes their disorder and assures permanence; the mystic does it by founding existence on his very relationship with what escapes him. The former is interested in difference as an instrument to make distinctions in his material; the later, as a plit inauguration the question of the subject." (Michel de Certeau, The Mystic Fable). I feel that the model of the mystic here is one you see in many writers and even some critics- think deconstructionism which, in according to a simplified definition, has failed if it makes logical sense.