I’d say most of us consider ourselves curious people, right? But how curious are we really? How much of our lives do we live comforted by the beliefs of language which are based on theory? How much of our everyday lives, both inside and outside of the classroom, are controlled by the beliefs that we have which are all based on theory?
In Interdisciplinarity, Moran talks about how it is regarded as common sense that we use language as a way of expressing ourselves and our relationships to others and the world. As members of the Geneseo community, we can all definitely agree that language is useful in this sense. Language allows us to feel comfort in knowing that we can always communicate with others around us. According to Moran, language “allows most people to get up in the morning and and live their everyday lives without constantly questioning the nature of individual identity or external reality.” Moran then says “Within academia, disciplines are a similar form of common sense, allowing us to keep doing what we do without continually speculating about its purpose, limits, and ultimate worth.”
So, how curious are we really? How often do we strive for comfort? How often do we strive to feel that we are contributing to a certain discipline, when we may in fact know very little about it? Maybe disciplines, in themselves, are simply a way of distracting us from the identity crises that we would otherwise be having. Maybe seeking to gain a lot of knowledge about one discipline is limiting in a sense. Maybe the act of picking up a book and reading is sometimes almost instinctive- taking us back to the comfort and peacefulness of our own minds. Maybe we need to speculate more, and think about the ways in which theories regarding language, itself, conform us to some particular system of ideas within our discipline.