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Quote by Nan Shepherd

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The Living Mountain

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Nan Shepherd

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“Take a clever boy, who knows nothing about the principle of internal combustion or the inside of an engine, and leave him inside a motor-car, first telling him to move the various knobs, switches and levers about and see what happens. If no disaster supervenes, he will end by finding himself able to drive the car. It will then be true to say that he knows how to drive the car; but untrue to say that he knows the car. As to that, the most we could say would be that he has an 'operative' knowledge of it - because for operation all that is required is a good empirical acquaintance with the dashboard and the pedals. Whatever we say, it is obvious that what he has is very different from the knowledge of someone else, who has studied mechanics, though he has perhaps never driven a car in his life, and is perhaps too nervous to try. Now whether or no there is another kind of knowledge of nature, which corresponds to 'engine-knowledge' in the analogy, it seems that, if the first view of the nature of scientific theory is accepted, the kind of knowledge aimed at by science must be, in effect, what I will call 'dashboard-knowledge.”

Knowing
Book:Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry
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“There is another way that longing comes to expression. It is in a sense of wonder or adventure. It is right to distinguish this, as Palmer does, from selfish curiosity: this is a longing for the real that implies my readiness to engage it, and that for its own sake, and for the sake of the wonder of what will transpire when knower and known meet in creative communion. Palmer says that “knowledge contains its own morality, that it begins not in a neutrality but in a place of passion within the human soul.” Indeed, to rekindle the longing to know is thus to invite the real. But now this starts to lean toward the active side of desire." (from "Loving to Know: Covenant Epistemology" by Esther Lightcap Meek)”

KnowingEpistemologyReformed Theology
Author:Esther Lightcap Meek
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