Original Thought

                                        CAPTION: An artist drawing an artist being interpreted by an artist drawing him.
                                                                     WHO STARTED IT?

The idea of original thought is one that has often plagued my mind.  Have I ever had an original thought?  Or has every errand belief and judgment been inspired by someone or something else?  Our brains our like sponges, and the way in which we express ourselves differs per individual.  For artists like Van Gogh, they paint, and for authors like Lewis Carroll, they write stories using their gift of vocabulary.  But having seen a painting, or read a story, those persons ideas are now in my head.  How can anything I associate with my experiences be considered my own?

In the case of the The Hunting of the Snark, it can be claimed that Lewis Carroll took inspiration from The Voyage of the Beagle.  But the idea that I expressed in class comes back to me, with question of where Carroll's inspiration ended and his "original thought" ended.  There are clearly differences in the way in which the stories are written, as well as the core concepts meant to be expressed.  So in the case of the Snark, Carroll must have gotten the rest of his themes from his experiences, which inspire the rest of his works as well.  

Experiences create parameters around our ability to conceive.  In his "Methods and Meditations" Descartes presents his Dream Argument asserts that there is little difference reality and a dream.  For how do you know which is which?  We claim to know reality based on our five senses, for they provide us with evidence that what we see and hear, feel and smell, touch, is in fact real.  But in dreams, we also see, we can also smell, we can also touch.  But dreams happen entirely "in our head" without the body doing anything.  So the senses can be deceived, and the only truth we can establish is that we are "thinking" creatures.

"In fine, I am the same being who perceives, that is, who apprehends certain objects as by the organs of sense, since, in truth, I see light, hear a noise, and feel heat. But it will be said that these presentations are false, and that I am dreaming. Let it be so. At all events it is certain that I seem to see light, hear a noise, and feel heat; this cannot be false, and this is what in me is properly called perceiving, which is nothing else than thinking."

My roundabout point is that there are certain things we know as true, which is where I abandon my agreement with Descartes.  For example, I know that this is an ice cream cone, and not a dry erase marker:

I also know and can imagine, although I have never seen one, what a dragon looks like.  I can imagine, although I have never experienced it, what drowning would feel like.  These are all things that I have "experienced" in my life.  I have read about dragons and swallowed water down the wrong tube.  But one cannot imagine something one has never experienced.  If a child has never heard of a dragon, has never had one described, does not know that they exist, it is my thought that they will never have a nightmare of one.

If a child, a fabulous monster, could picture and dream of another fabulous monster, without ever having heard of one, I believe this would be the very first original thought in a long while.