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“Still, education is what foundationally supports philosophy, so I will focus my attention on educational aspects that I think should be promoted----this includes helping students learn the logic behind why something is true, use things that have been memorized to apply them in tasks involving critical thinking or real-world problem-solving, improve modeling skills, explain why skills are important to learn, instead of forcing people to remember them, and---” “Please, stop it, Martha.” “Wait--what?” “Luke 10:41.” I looked for my One Year Bible, searching for Luke 10:41, which said, “But the Lord said to her, ‘My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these DETAILS.’” (The emphasis on “all these details” was Dad’s, not mine.)”

“One recent example of my fear of ambiguity was the instance with the beaten slave. Completely aware I was bluffing, I insisted that Ken Lar misinterpreted the Bible verse he quoted, but again, I was bluffing. I thought that that Bible verse was ambiguous. It could have actually been used to justify slavery, but I always thought that God was a pacifist, so I tried to comfort myself with the theory that God was forced to accommodate slavery because the world had gone corrupt, but then again, that verse described slaves’ submission as a way that helps them “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior,” so there is still a possibility that God would actually approve slavery. But still, the passage describes slaves to be faithful and to not steal and argue, which have been commands for Paul’s followers, who were not slaves. The passage could have been encouraging slaves to try to follow the path of God the way free people do. Still, if I recall correctly, in Leviticus it mentioned that the Israelites, right after being released from slavery in Egypt, were allowed to buy slaves from nations surrounding them, and it even said that the slaves could be the Israelites’ PROPERTY!!!! But then, I have heard of many African American pastors who use the Bible to support equality. But could it all be a scam? Who knows? That was ambiguity in its biblical form. There was even more ambiguity associated with that incident, because after thinking about that controversial passage, I wondered whether or not I was screwing my chances in Heaven for thinking like that. The Bible says that you shouldn’t lie, and by thinking like that, I was being honest with myself, but people died for blaspheming God, and if thinking those thoughts was considered blaspheming God, then who knows?”

“For example, in the example with Terry and Chester, a person who was just beginning to meet the two could come up with the conclusion based on those two axioms, which a friend revealed to him/her. The person might try to come up with a solution to Terry’s hatred of Chester’s voice, and decide to teach the two characters American Sign Language, so Chester wouldn’t have to speak, but the person might later on discover that Terry seems to be functioning normally when Chester talks during casual, everyday conversations. It’s not that the person’s logic was incorrect; the conclusion was logically valid and logically followed the two axioms. It’s just that the axioms were accepted and assumed to be true. In reality, when the friend of Terry and Chester was referring to Chester’s “voice,” the friend was talking about Chester’s singing voice, not Chester’s actual voice, and the phrase “Terry hates everything Chester likes” could have been used hyperbolically, meaning that Terry does not literally hate everything Chester likes. The person came up with a logical conclusion, but the axioms were just immediately accepted as true; the person was not evaluating or verifying the information, nor was the person analyzing the multiple meanings behind the axioms. With critical thinking, however, there are a few stages that are required before making a conclusion: there is remember and understand, so to understand information, a person would need to see if the information makes sense or is plausible. For example, if a person was learning about the properties of matter, he/she should be able to understand that it makes sense for liquid to have faster moving molecules than solid matter, because it does not have a definite shape unless it is put into some container, or he/she might try to scroll through multiple sources of information to fill any gaps in understanding and confirm information. Unlike logic, which immediately accepts axioms as true to create a conclusion, a person must look at information with a critical eye in order to truly understand it in critical thinking. In addition, I think there is more skill and effectiveness behind deeply thinking about information (critical thinking) than trying to discover information (logic.) When it comes to thinking about the information (critical thinking), a person would have to understand the information’s real-world application (apply), the components of the information (analyze), the significance of the information (evaluate), and what can be made out with that information (synthesize.) Logic is an objective approach to trying to discover valid information, and it is highly important, but there is that lack of deep thinking when it comes to logic alone. A person would need critical thinking to verify the axioms and see the significance of the conclusion. Logic itself cannot view the significance of the conclusion Terry hates Chester’s voice, because it is meant to discover information based on axioms, not evaluate and make something out of information. With this, I do find that critical thinking is more important and has a higher range of skill than logic.”

“Subjects such as history have less of that problem solving relationship. Because history is driven by human nature, one cannot merely hypothesize what happened; one must, unfortunately, resort to memorization. To analyze history, one must memorize a fact, but STEM enables students to analyze the logic behind a STEM occurrence or phenomenon throughout. STEM is a subject of problem solving. STEM is problem solving.”

“A parabola opens at a certain direction, allowing for infinitely many points to reside inside the area from which it opens. As a student, I do not like to specialize in a single discipline; specialization seems unfulfilling in my own mind. Hence, the graph of a straight line is not an appropriate analogy to the depths of my curiosity. A line only goes in one direction, and unlike a parabola, a line cannot encase that infinite amount of white space on a coordinate plane—it can only pass through it. Rather than being like a rigid line, I try to be more open to a wider variety of academic subjects. I do admit—a parabola still opens in a certain direction, and of course, my interests are still skewed toward particular subjects. However, the open curve of the parabola can still encompass infinitely many points as the graph extends, the same way my curiosity can still expand to multiple different subjects. This is why I see myself more in the curvaceous parabola than the rigid line.”

“Suppose every life was written as a storybook; assuming this was true, the only storybook each person would completely know is their own. I know my own story, as I own my own thoughts and my own consciousness. Hence, I have not finished reading the books of other lives, because I am still writing my own. Therefore, since I live in and am the main character of my own book, I appear to be at the center of life itself. From my vantage point, I’m at the center of the world—I have not finished the stories of others, because I’m at the center of my own. This is why I compare myself to the midpoint formula: the midpoint does not begin a line nor end the line, but rather becomes a part of it—from an individualistic vantage point, I am a part of or even at the center of life itself.”

“And another thing can be a sensory misinterpretation of reality. For example, I used to make a lot of art projects when I was younger, so I had a stash of colored pencils. I would often look for a black colored pencil to outline everything, but it would take longer for me to find a black colored pencil, because a lot of the pencils would look dark, so I would assume they were black until I picked them out and saw the label; a colored pencil that I could mistaken to be black can be dark purple or dark brown instead of black. During those incidents, I was misinterpreting the reality of those colored pencils. That’s why one might say, ‘I thought this pencil was black, but in REALITY, it was purple.’ I suppose the other five senses might also work. For example, the human ear cannot hear at very low frequencies nor very high frequencies, and if a person is isolated in a room with no sound except for a sound that is being played at a very low or very high frequency, then that person will think that there is no sound, but in REALITY, there is. This type of misinterpretation of reality can be known as a sensory anti-reality.”