Tuesday Otium | straws for premises...gossamers for deductions

"In the study of Ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for deductions."

A.N. Whitehead
from Adventures of Ideas (1967)

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Guercino)
Et in Arcadia ego (c.1618–1622)