On the question of journalistic practice, De Botton is at his most interesting on the job of the foreign correspondent – "interesting" in that the same paragraph can combine a nicely expressed insight into a problem with a monstrous stupidity as its solution.
He would have many more crisply expressed insights into the workings of power in Britain and the world.
Art originating in an idea must be judged by how cogently it has expressed insights about that generating theme, and here "Lipsynch" disappoints.
They expressed insights that seemed to evolve or coalesce during the conversation.
Franklin's famous kite experiment did indeed express original insight about the nature of electricity as a single "fluid" with positive and negative charges; but when Franklin reported it in The Pennsylvania Gazette, he did not mention that he was the experimenter and did not attach his name to the article.
Not surprisingly, therefore, many languages have proverbs which express this insight, emphasising the 'first step' as the one that counts.
An informal way to express his insight is that no claim to knowledge of matters of fact ought to be thought of as definitive because in all of our inductive reasoning (or inferences) we presuppose that the future will be the same as the past.
She revives an older technology, a technology with a humanism that gives her the vocabulary she needs to express her insight.
For example, Rodowski et al. (2008) describe a case in which as a child aged, she was able to express emerging insight that her obsessive symptoms were products of her own mind.
They express the insights of the most penetrating minds and compassionate spirits of human history.
"The Sound and the Fury, or at Least the Fury," by Randy Kennedy (Coping column, Dec. 19), expresses great insight.
