I am reading a book by Umberto Eco called Kant and the platypus, or should I say that I am trying to read it. It is a collection of essays on cognition and semiotics and it is a sign of my desperation to find reading material that this is currently the book that I am reading when I get into bed each night. Admittedly, it does the job.

This book is very much like the platypus it discusses. The platypus, which is equally comfortable on land or in the water, has a beak like a duck, webbed feet like a frog, claws like an otter, fur like a seal, a tail like a beaver, lays eggs like a reptile and suckles it young like a mammal. I understand each of its parts, but put them all together and you have something that does not even have a proper name. Platypus, how embarrassing.

Back to Kant and the platypus (talk about combining embarrassing names) - it is made up of a number of words that I understand (as well as some that I don't), but when these words are put together, I don't understand the nature of the creature I am reading. I am reading in the hope of understanding, feeling that something beyond my comprehension must be good for me. I offer as an example the following paragraph on page 90:

"Some would be tempted to say that Aristotle would have found himself in an even more awkward position, because, since he would have been convinced that a platypus had to have an essence independent of our intellect, the impossibility of finding a definition for it would have disquieted him all the more. Kant, the confuter of idealism, would also have known very well that if the platypus offered him a sensible intuition, then it was and therefore could necessarily be thought; and no matter where the form that he conferred upon it sprang from, it had to be possible to construct it."

Tonight I am going to begin reading Winnie-the-Pooh again.

1 May 2002

Dion Marc Delport

Comment on this article in my Guestbook

Back to Dion's Home Page