How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [152]
The truth, then, insofar as it can be found-the solution to the problem, insofar as that is available to us-consists rather in the ordered discussion itself than in any set of propositions or assertions about it. Thus, in order to present this truth to our minds-and to the minds of others-we have to do more than merely ask and answer the questions. We have to ask them in a certain order, and be able to defend that order; we must show how the questions are answered diferently and The Fourth level of Reading: Syntopical Reading 323
try to say why; and we must be able to point to the texts in the books examined that support our classification of answers.
Only when we have done all of this can we claim to have analyzed the discussion of our problem. And only then can we claim to have understood it.
We may, indeed, have done more than that. A thorough analysis of the discussion of a problem may provide the groundwork for further productive work on the problem by others. It can clear away the deadwood and prepare the way for an original thinker to make a breakthrough. Without the work of analysis, that might not have been possible, for the dimensions of the problem might not have been visible.
The Need for Objectivity
An adequate analysis of the discussion of a problem or subject matter identifies and reports the major issues, or basic intellectual oppositions, in that discussion. This does not imply that disagreement is always the dominant feature of every discussion. On the contrary, agreement in most cases accompanies disagreement; that is, on most issues, the opinions or views that present opposite sides of the dispute are shared by several authors, often by many. Seldom do we find a solitary exponent of a controversial position.
The agreement of human beings about the nature of things in any field of inquiry establishes some presumption of the truth of the opinions they commonly hold. But their disagreement establishes the counter-presumption-that none of the opinions in conflict, whether shared or not, may be wholly true. Among conflicting opinions, one may, of course, be wholly true and all the rest false; but it is also possible that each expresses some portion of the whole truth; and, except for flat and isolated contradictions ( which are rare in any discussion of the kind of problems we are dealing with here ), it is even possible that all the conflicting opinions may be false, 324 HOW TO READ A BOOK
just as it is possible for that opinion to be false on which all seem to agree. Some opinion as yet unexpressed may be the truth or nearer to it.
This is another way of saying that the aim of a project of syntopical reading is not final answers to the questions that are developed in the course of it, or the final solution of the problem with which the project began. This is particularly true of the report we might try to make of such syntopical reading. It would be dogmatic, not dialectical, if, on any of the important issues that it identified and analyzed, it asserted or tried to prove the truth or falsity of any view. If it did that, the syntopical analysis would cease to be syntopical; it would become simply one more voice in the discussion, thereby losing its detached and objective character.
The point is not that one more voice carries no weight in the forum of human discussion on important issues. The point is that a different type of contribution to the pursuit of understanding can and should be made. And this contribution consists in being resolutely objective