Reply To: Year 9 (Grade 8) Interdisciplinary Signature Work Inquiry @ Blanchelande College

[Darryl Toerien Keymaster]

G.K. Chesterton in Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Foreword to Pandæmonium, 1660–1886: The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, by Humphrey Jennings (1985/2012),

The World is not perishing from lack of wonders, it is perishing from lack of wonder.

Also, Frank continues

Progress is not motivated by money. Progress comes from those who are happy to embark on a course of action without quite knowing where it will lead, without doing a feasibility study, without fear of failure or too much hope of reward.* The engine of of innovation is reckless generosity…National identity is not a settled thing—it’s not a typical dish or a national costume. A nation is what Philip Larkin would call ‘a frail, travelling coincidence’—a ragtag of people on a journey together…

*C.S. Peirce (1955),

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason—that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think [judging according to the weight of evidence]—there follows one corollary…Do not block the way of inquiry!