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" Technical knowledge, divorced from what it is supposed to be knowledge of, yields only the illusion of understanding. It's like being able to reel off the locations in a baseball field -- first base, second base, third base, home plate, left field, right field, center field, pitcher's mound -- without having the slightest clue as to how they function in a game. You can talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk. "
― Stanley Fish , How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
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" My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain sense of all thou sayest, but thou art also (Lord, I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy dimunition), thou art a figurative, a metaphorical God too, a God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so retired and so reserved expressions, so commanding persuasions, so persuading commandments, such sinews even in thy milk, and such things in thy words, as all profane authors seem of the seed of the serpent that creeps, thou art the Dove that flies.
(Donne, Devotions 1624, as quoted in Fish, How to Write a Sentence p 142) "
― Stanley Fish , How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
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" In his great book How to Do Things with Words (1962), J.L. Austin considers the apparently simple sentence "France is hexagonal." He asks if this is true or false, a question that makes perfect sense if the job of a sentence is to be faithful to the world. His answer is that it depends. If you are a general contemplating a coming battle, saying that France is hexagonal might help you assess various military options of defense and attack; it would be a good sentence. But if you are a geographer charged with the task of mapping France's contours, saying that France is hexagonal might cost you your union card; a greater degree of detail and fineness of scale is required of mapmakers. "France is hexagonal," Austin explains, is true "for certain intents and purposes" and false or inadequate or even nonsensical for others. It is, he says, a matter of the "dimension of assessment" -- that is, a matter of what is the "right or proper thing to say as opposed to a wrong thing in these circumstances, to this audience, for these purposes and with these intentions. "
― Stanley Fish , How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
