Dewey and Roses

Dewey argues that one needs to understand something, one must understand how it relates to the world around it, how it works. I find this an interesting idea; it is, I admit, how I like to think about the world. Nonetheless, I am not sure that it is always the best approach to a topic. I did not understand all the foreign languages Thaddeus Phillips spoke, I did not understand all the international interactions that played into his show, and I have not been out of the country since I was very young, yet I understood his work and enjoyed it immensely. Someone once posed an idea: “You can take a rose, dissect it, discover how it grows, why it flowers, what makes it so red and so sweet smelling. And when you are done, surrounded by shredded petals and stems, ask yourself this: is this still a rose?” While there is a certain amount of depth and interest to be discovered in the connections behind a work, at what point is it better for a viewer to let the connections go?