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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:03.352)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Esther Lightcap-Meek, Independent Scholar and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Geneva College. And we're talking about her book, Loving to Know, Introducing Covenant Epistemology. Dr. Meek, wonderful to have you on today.
Esther Lightcap Meek (00:20.497)
Thank you. It's great to meet you and to look forward to this conversation.
PJ Wehry (00:25.902)
Dr. Meek, why this book?
Esther Lightcap Meek (00:29.706)
to carry my brain around in?
You know, one of the great things about writing books is it helps you remember things you would have forgotten otherwise. And then they also books kind of mark where you were in your thinking at certain points. loving to know is a key one in that it was my best attempt at a formal proposal for my innovative account about knowing. So it's a big fat book because
PJ Wehry (00:41.038)
Mm.
Esther Lightcap Meek (01:04.789)
I call a bunch of conversations with different thinkers and writers to make the case for my thesis that the best paradigm of knowing is the interpersonal covenantally constituted relationship best typified by the redemptive encounter. And when I say relationship, mean between the knower and the yet to be known.
I don't think I'm an odd duck. I may be an odd duck because I talk about it, but I really believe everybody ponders how we know. And I just had a really severe dose of it, such that it turned into a life quest. so I really feel that what I call my epistemology is covenant epistemology. And so the subtitle of Loving to Know is Introducing Covenant Epistemology.
That's where I just kind of said, OK, this is meek with regard to knowing. Here's what I think is going on with knowing. And my first book had been longing to know, I guess you know this, which is introducing, it was the philosophy of knowledge for ordinary people. And that's in a way an application and also an entree into my work, longing to know.
is for people considering Christianity who have questions about knowing or things having to do with knowing like faith and doubt and certainty and skepticism and all those kinds of things which had been me. what what longing to know is is an application of my epistemology that was developing to the question whether we can know God. So loving to know kind of grew grew out of that but prefaced it to.
PJ Wehry (03:03.288)
You did the application first.
Esther Lightcap Meek (03:06.331)
That particular one, that, like I had two questions as a 13 year old. you know, I knew, I knew my Bible pretty well in the tradition I was in and have been a believer, Christian believer all my life, but I still had the question, how do I know that God exists? And then I had this other question that nobody, I didn't tell anybody I had these questions, but the other was,
I had no proof there was a world outside my mind. I just presumed that the things I was certain of were the ideas in my head. And precisely because of that, they were blocking my access to the real. And there's no way you can have an idea that's outside your ideas. There's no way you can stand outside it and say, OK, does this idea go with this?
PJ Wehry (03:56.077)
Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (04:01.915)
this piece of reality. And you know, I knew it seemed strange, but it just seemed problematic. And a big deal seemed like a big deal. So first, I thought my questions were sin. And then when I was exposed to in high school to thanks to my mother, to the new works of Francis Schaeffer, I found out that my ideas, my problems were philosophical.
And that responses to them had shaped whole cultural epics across the disciplines, which fired my imagination for the interdisciplinary. But then it took me some years to find that you could study philosophy, that you could actually study major in it. And at that point, it took me 12 hours to change my life and just say, I got to do this. These are the most important questions. So I have not looked back since that day.
PJ Wehry (04:52.11)
Hmm.
Esther Lightcap Meek (05:01.072)
You
PJ Wehry (05:01.698)
Yeah, I I I visited a college I think when I was 13 and I heard a history professor say every educated person has read Plato's Republic And then I found out later he had never finished it. He'd only read part of it, which I thought that was like 10 years later I definitely felt betrayed but So at the age of 14, I read a good chunk of Plato's Republic. I have to confess I still haven't finished it I always get bogged down the part where he's arguing about whether or not women should wrestle naked and I just
I like it's like 20, 30 pages. I've gotten past it. But after like it just takes so much out of me. I like, don't care. Like this is such a weird question. But so my dad, my dad has a tendency to exaggerate stories. So he always tells people that I was reading Plato at nine and like dad, 14 and nine are not the same. I was reading Plato at 14, but you're. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's human. It's and he's a good storyteller. And that's part of the reason why.
Esther Lightcap Meek (05:53.519)
I just exaggerate like that too.
Esther Lightcap Meek (06:00.605)
Hello?
PJ Wehry (06:00.91)
But so your story resonates with me. It was Plato at 14. It was my poor parents, very devout Christians. in my bedroom reading Nietzsche at 16. And my mom's like, I just have faith that God's gonna guide and direct you. And I could tell that, you know, that's her faith, you know, like it's being tested. I'm like, but you don't know really, like Beyond Good and Evil is really good, mom and dad.
Okay, you know, but so I hit like this. Anyways, your story resonates with me. I really appreciate that. One of the things that really resonates with me as well is that you have a real concern for the for philosophy to step outside into what you call kind the everyday ordinary world. And so if you could if we could talk a little bit about what you think the current state of
philosophy is and how it's interacting with the everyday. I look at Europe, I look at someone like Jurgen Habermas being able to speak to politics. I've had Richard Kearney on and he was able to be part of the negotiations during the Irish Troubles in the eighties. And, but we don't, don't see that in the United States. I don't see philosophy having that kind of presence. And so if we could talk a little bit about that and I love to
Esther Lightcap Meek (07:04.817)
Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (07:13.533)
Mmm.
PJ Wehry (07:23.712)
your encouragement to people for half understanding, but I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. I love that idea of half understanding. I'm walking through that. What'd you say?
Esther Lightcap Meek (07:29.949)
You five million questions.
PJ Wehry (07:35.474)
I know, I know. So let's just let's I know I was getting ahead of myself. My apologies. I'm excited about all of it. The when you talk about good. Yes.
Esther Lightcap Meek (07:41.629)
Let me say three things that you seem to have raised. One is I always write books that my hope is that they're for everybody. So I think inside our language, be it philosophical or religious, is bad manners.
You know, it's impolite. And I feel like it's disrespectful. Now, I also feel, you know, this is my particular agenda. so and then see, I've all I have all have felt and partly it's because of my wider life experience. I'm a mother and a grandmother. and you understand what I'm saying. But I had to talk to
people outside of the ivory tower. it just again, it just seemed to me that
I need to find a way to do that. And then part of the, you know, I don't know whether this came before or after, but this premier scientist turned philosopher, Michael Polanyi, is the guy that did my philosophical work on it. And he gave me a way to see this is how knowing works everywhere, which was because of my love of the interdisciplinary, you know, I've...
thought this was pretty cool. that that kind of set me up as somebody that would like to talk to the people in the street. Because, you know, you know, I've realized, you know, I'm really glad you feel some resonance, resonance with me, PJ. But I'm saying everybody in modernity does, right? They all not have been sitting on their bed at 16 reading Nietzsche, but
Esther Lightcap Meek (09:43.623)
there's some way that we're all kind of hamstrung by defective presumptions about knowing that are endemic in modernity. So I have to say humbly, I really admire people that speak into.
politics and all of that, but I'm just doing the best I can to speak into the house, the household. And I feel as if, if we're talking about knowing and you've kind of inhaled some defective presumptions about knowing, that's toxic to absolutely every conversation.
PJ Wehry (10:11.128)
Yeah. Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (10:34.397)
And so if my job is what I call epistemological therapy or philosophical therapy to fix those things that have been like they've been covered over because everybody denies philosophy as useless, right? So they're not even admitting that they're philosophical. I got a lot of work to do and it's just, you know, the beginnings and quite frankly.
I think philosophy is about beginnings and that's the most exciting and important thing. So I hope I responded to your question.
PJ Wehry (11:08.93)
Yeah. it was a great response to a very broad and vague set of questions. So I appreciate it. No, it's that's great.
I just had my daughter who were homeschooling and she loves manga and comics. And so I had to read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, which I learned about from a friend of mine who did her PhD in English and it was used as a graduate textbook for her. And yes, now it's written.
Esther Lightcap Meek (11:40.061)
Really? So, I'm like my 10-year-old grandson,
PJ Wehry (11:44.878)
Well, there are some adult elements in it, but it's written as a comic. And so I gave it to her knowing that she'd probably only get about 30 % of it, but 30 % of that kind of text is just... What I'm prefacing here is your discussion of half understanding and...
Esther Lightcap Meek (12:10.501)
That was the thing.
PJ Wehry (12:11.566)
It immediately, but immediately made her more curious because because she reads so many much so many comics. She's she felt the need to read it again. And so I think she's going to reread it. And she was talking to me, she wasn't getting the terminology right, but she was thinking about it because she experiences it so much. And one of the things that I tried to tell her is that if you go deep enough in anything, you start learning about everything and
What I what I've felt like if for instance, I do sourdough I bake sourdough you start learning about like bacteria if you start I haven't gone quite that deep but like I've started to scratch the surface You're like, this is like this is chemistry, right? Like organic chemistry and it's the same thing too I I had read the book and it was really important for my the way that I got to learn about web design When I for my for my work
I didn't realize it came easily to me because I had read this book on comics, but it's all about how the eye works, right? And so just encouraging people the curiosity side of it and that it getting excited about when it's difficult because you're no, well, not difficult for difficulty sake, you know, we've touched on that, but when it's difficult, it's a lot to wrap your around in your brain because that means you're onto something.
Esther Lightcap Meek (13:36.029)
Okay, stop right there because you're talking about what I wrote my dissertation on and it's so cool and it does go with half and understand. Okay, so listening to you.
is wonderful because you're touching on the fact that when you're onto something, vistas start to open up. So possibilities, right? And that's the same sort of animal as what I have in mind by half understanding. It's just that the half understanding is on the near side of the discovery and the possibilities are on the far side of the discovery, OK?
So if you think about your knower yet to be known relationship, when you're moving toward a half hidden something or other you're trying to discover. I mean, just taking that sentence, that's a sentence that modernist epistemology has no account of, that you could have a be on the way to something that you do not yet know. There's no account for that.
And Michael Polanyi said, you know, if modernist epistemologies is right and knowledge is information, no scientific discovery could ever happen. But it does.
PJ Wehry (14:58.998)
Right, because what are you looking for? Right, if you don't, yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (15:01.725)
He was just sobbing he was good at it. Right? So that's a clue. And by the way, the word clue is a clue too, because a clue is a half understanding. In fact, it could be like you're barking up the wrong tree entirely, but you knew you were onto something. Right? So what happens in advance is you actually kind of grope your way toward what you have understand. And so
PJ Wehry (15:19.181)
Yes.
Esther Lightcap Meek (15:31.217)
that you have to credit that that was Polanyi's word. Otherwise, you wouldn't move toward the discovery. And, you know, you can be you can be half wrong. So there's kind of this aura like you can you can say, OK, you know, there's something significant about the bloodstain on the rug in the hall. you know, it's a clue.
PJ Wehry (15:58.742)
I don't know what it means, but it's not good. Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (16:04.425)
And then this is what I loved about Michael Polanyi's writing and his magnum opus is called Personal Knowledge. And it was his Gifford lectures in the late 1940s. The book came out in the mid 50s. And he said, this is a scientific discoverer talking. He's like the only person I ever read.
who talked this way. And this is what I wrote my dissertation on. He said, by the way, you know, you've made contact with reality, which, know, water, mean, you know, that falling on my ears was like water of life in the desert. Anybody used the phrase contact with reality. You know, you make contact with reality if you have a sense, an unspecifiable sense of
You can even have an inexhaustive range of indeterminate, that means you can't say what they are, future manifestations.
PJ Wehry (17:09.666)
Mmm.
Esther Lightcap Meek (17:11.451)
Now, now, OK, that's loaded and it's loaded with a lot of indeterminacy, but it's a promise. And it's a promise that you can feel like you've connected because of possibilities. Right.
So I think that goes a little bit with what you said about the deeper you go, the more it opens out.
PJ Wehry (17:33.87)
Yeah. Yeah. You only need start like, uh, at one point you have to focus in on a discipline, but when you go really deep into a discipline, you start realizing it needs to be interdisciplinary, right? There's like this constant, uh, and that's part of reason why this isn't a philosophy podcast. mean, you have to choose a category. So I, I, that's the closest I could get, but I think of it as interdisciplinary. I've had master sculptors on that fiction writers on because
If you're going to, for instance, do philosophy of art, you have to talk to the practitioners, which I mean, you wouldn't think that that would be controversial, but for some people, some philosophers it is. Something you good.
Esther Lightcap Meek (18:18.365)
the deeper you go, the more philosophical you get. if you're studying any discipline, if you're going to do it properly, you have to get down to the philosophical presumptions that structure the discipline to be what it is.
PJ Wehry (18:31.854)
Yeah. And something you said though, and this is, uh, I wasn't familiar with Palanye before I got into your book, but I'm reading, uh, I already worked my way through Charles Taylor's, the language animal and one of the people that he references, and it's interesting because I don't think he knew Palanye, but around the same, I think the fifties into the sixties, there was a Russian psychiatrist called Vygovsky. I don't know if that name rings a bell, but
Esther Lightcap Meek (18:56.983)
Remember that reference on his part.
PJ Wehry (19:00.002)
So he has this idea of the proximate zone and Taylor appropriates that into language and the creative constitutive aspect of language. that same way, differentiates humans is that when we use language, we recognize that it has these untold possibilities behind it. So for instance, when a child sees a forest, they know that there's something behind the forest. When they see a horizon, they know there's something behind the horizon.
which is, mean, obviously just like parallel thinking between Vygovsky from a psychological standpoint and Polanyi from an epistemological standpoint. So I don't really have a question there. That's just like such an interesting.
Esther Lightcap Meek (19:40.221)
I would like to say that Charles Taylor knows Michael Polanyi, but has not has not done him credit. Because back in the day, Polanyi invited him and several other famous people like Alastair McIntyre into conversations organized by philosopher Marjorie Green and saw these people as having work that might, you know, come into conversation.
PJ Wehry (19:44.749)
Okay.
okay.
Esther Lightcap Meek (20:09.885)
And sadly, Parth Taylor does not acknowledge that, nor do the, and that includes Thomas Kuhn, who misrepresented Polanyi. So there's a lot of stuff back there that Polanyians are not real happy about.
PJ Wehry (20:15.906)
Okay.
PJ Wehry (20:24.748)
was not familiar. Sorry, I was not trying to dig up old beef, you know.
Esther Lightcap Meek (20:30.799)
including if you read my book, Contact with Reality, which is my dissertation made a little less embarrassing, I hope, than publishing. I take them on because Taylor and Dreyfus write a book together called Retrieving Realism.
PJ Wehry (20:51.364)
Familiar with it, yes.
Esther Lightcap Meek (20:53.059)
And they say, yay, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. They have one measly reference to Michael Polanyi. And you can tell because of the mistake that they added it later, because they didn't change the IBID that came after it. Right? So I'm a little put out with them. And I did part of my work on my dissertation on Merleau-Ponty, who is wonderful.
But at the end of Contact with Reality, I say, it's just not the realism, the exuberant realism that Michael Polanyi had. So I do take Charles Taylor on in that book, in my book, Contact with Reality.
PJ Wehry (21:39.544)
Yeah, good to know. I didn't even got to stumble right into that. That was exciting.
Esther Lightcap Meek (21:41.405)
you
Esther Lightcap Meek (21:46.065)
There's all kinds of history, let me tell you.
PJ Wehry (21:48.334)
yeah, yeah. mean, this is the stuff that you don't get in the books per se, right? And this is one of the joys of having the conversation. Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (21:56.039)
or meeting the people. Well, I do think that Polanyi Journal, which is called Tradition and Discovery, and you ought to go to the website. It's helpful that it's updated recently. There's very cool things happening, lots of old essays of Polanyi's and stuff like that. let's see what else I got to say about that. I've lost my train of thought at the moment, but it's worth looking at.
Yeah, what was I gonna say? well, if I'll interrupt.
PJ Wehry (22:28.322)
No worries. Yeah, yeah, go for it. So I did want to ask and I'm not, I want to really get into the meat of the book, but I loved maybe as a way to preface the whole of the book, you start out with a story about Bandit. Can you tell, do you mind kind of sharing how Bandit is a paradigm for knowing?
Esther Lightcap Meek (22:46.327)
Phil. You are so cool.
Yeah, I'll go get my picture. I have to get my picture. I have to get my book anyway, so excuse me.
PJ Wehry (22:57.204)
Absolutely. Yeah, I have the Kindle version. I apologize.
Esther Lightcap Meek (23:12.241)
Dear Bandit, I was just thinking about him today. So there's him on my shoulder.
Can you see him? It's not a very good picture, but it's like one of the few that I have because, you know, I wasn't wielding a camera. was carrying a bird around. So, And yeah, so Lovington. This is my old copy of Lovington though. So.
PJ Wehry (23:23.734)
Yes.
PJ Wehry (23:31.499)
Yeah, yeah.
PJ Wehry (23:43.618)
Yes, I often will show it at the beginning, but I thought showing my Kindle would be a little ugly. apologies.
Esther Lightcap Meek (23:48.283)
Yeah.
Yeah, well, it's a lot safer on Kindle, but it's way more fun in print, I think. So in any case, all of my books, there's some story. So longing to know it's all about my auto mechanic and also my student Michael is through that, too. But but then loving to know it's banded. And so I'll try to tell you a little bit of the story, but not a long one. But but the
point is I inherited him from a student and he couldn't fly and my student was graduating. And so I ended up taking him and about the time my rabbit died and he moved into my rabbit cage. But, you know, my first thought was I'm so close to this bird, you know, I physically close. And then then I thought the next week I thought what's wrong with my little bird? You know, my little bird can't fly like the other little bird.
But then what happened was I was all of a sudden scrambling to try to figure out how to take care of this bird. And I hadn't learned much from my former student that was helpful. So that was in May. And so I learned all the things that I say in the book. I learned about how you take care of a cedar waxwing. mean, cedar waxwings are group birds. I was his group. only calmed down when he was looking right into my face. And so he spent, you know,
just looking at me. I couldn't take a shower without him freaking out. I took that bird, why didn't it be able to see me? So, you know, I learned he needed 80 % fruit and 20 % insects. I was scavenging the neighborhood to find fruit. He loved little fuchsia berries, you know. I'd make him this mini fruit salad every morning. And then I don't have it anymore. I know it's somewhere, but I carried him around.
Esther Lightcap Meek (25:50.019)
stick, you know? So all I wouldn't need to do to recover him out of the rabbit cage was stick the stick in there and he would hop right on that and I could wave it around and he was just fine on that stick. Well, he did did heal and apparently what he was missing was feathers and when he got the feathers back he flew away, which you know was wonderful and sad all at the same time.
So the you know, I say at the beginning of that at the end of that story in the intro of loving to know, you know, this is all about loving to know, you know, and and, know, why you need a good epistemology to make sense of it is what this book is about. so and see part of what I was doing like in loving to know, you know, there are so, so many wonderful things that I've called from other people and
PJ Wehry (26:27.405)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (26:35.49)
Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (26:47.417)
And I in God's kindness come up with that are just enchanting, I think. And, you know, but one of the lines as far as inviting the real that I love is you have to learn if in the know or yet to be known relationship, you have to start to learn to live life on the terms of the yet to be known. Now, where in modernist epistemology do you hear that uttered? You don't.
but it's an everyday occurrence, right? So, and that's what we're doing. If you're taking piano lessons and sitting yourself down on the bench for year after year after year after year, you're living life on the terms of the yet to be known. I have some beloved great nephews who are prodigies like my sister was, and one of them this year won the concerto competition.
PJ Wehry (27:47.642)
wonderful.
Esther Lightcap Meek (27:48.573)
Now how many years of living life on the terms of the yet to be known does it take to invite the reality of a concerto? You know?
PJ Wehry (27:59.694)
It's a lot of work.
Esther Lightcap Meek (28:00.669)
It is a lot of work, right? Right, right. So we do that all the time. And so what I wanted to do in Loving to Know is say, look, let's talk about the knower yet to be known relationship.
and see that the paradigm is a relationship. Knowledge isn't information collection. It's actually, I love this line, it's communion with the real. There's something better than comprehensive information. More three-dimensional, more objective, more worth living for. This is the good life. We're made for this, for communion with the real. We're called to be lovers of the real.
And we're seeking communion with the real. think that's exquisite. I just think that's so beautiful.
PJ Wehry (28:49.262)
Let me ask, I don't know if this is a difficult question or not. And I think I understand how you'd respond, but I can't fully articulate it. When we talk about the yet to be known, you say that's not in modernist epistemology. How is the living in the reality of inviting the real, living in the reality of the yet to be known different from a hypothesis?
Esther Lightcap Meek (29:17.581)
say forming a hypothesis, crafting experiments, all that is essential, perfectly legitimate. What it isn't is a paradigm of knowledge.
PJ Wehry (29:30.592)
Okay. Can you explain on that? Yeah. If you don't mind.
Esther Lightcap Meek (29:31.441)
So don't make the science experiment the paradigm. Don't make information collection the paradigm of knowing. It's something that you do cheerfully, subsidiarily, we haven't used that word yet, as part of your groping toward a half-understood vision. And what the paradigm of knowing is, is this relationship between
You know, this growing relationship between the knower and the yet to be known. You know, the other stuff that we've kind of said is knowledge. So we live in the information age. So if you ask your neighbor, you know, what knowledge is there going to say information and they're going to see it as collection. The trick is that as a paradigm actually disconnects you from reality. So if they get past that, even if they're self-describing that way,
They're doing something else that's better. So it's nothing wrong with information. What's wrong is with it as a paradigm of knowledge.
PJ Wehry (30:43.478)
Even as you're talking about Bandit, you are loving him in order to, that's how you know better is because you loving him. And you're caring for him. I think that's a synonym there, but I see why you use loving because loving is broader than just care. And what you were doing with Bandit, a lot of it was caring for him, but loving is that broader, covers some of that.
Esther Lightcap Meek (30:50.823)
care of that person. That's right. I was committed.
PJ Wehry (31:12.062)
subsidiary awareness that I think caring doesn't necessarily have to have. It often does because caring and love are very similar, but I can see how that's different. And I think that leads to you talk about this mutual healing would also, and that instance seems to be a mutual healing, is there also a mutual flourishing when you talk about communion with the real?
Esther Lightcap Meek (31:26.139)
Mm-hmm.
Esther Lightcap Meek (31:33.373)
Yeah, absolutely. And see, when you get to doorway to artistry, which is your assignment, PJ, I say, you know what? All that wonderful stuff and loving to know about inviting the real. Reality invites first.
PJ Wehry (31:41.293)
Yes, there you go.
Esther Lightcap Meek (31:55.099)
So reality shows up and says, here I am. And it says, welcome.
And so it's inviting me first, to which I respond hospitably. I mean, it's hospitably welcoming. And I respond with the etiquette. That's where the, you know, the epistemological etiquette comes of behaving like a good guest should. So, I mean, Bandit fell into my life. That was my invitation.
And I did not go looking for him, but he enraptured me. I mean, before I ever saw him, when my student was talking about it, about bandit, I fell in love head over heels. just, that just, Yeah. So reality came looking for me. And then I was one desperate bird caretaker.
PJ Wehry (32:55.416)
Hahaha
Esther Lightcap Meek (32:56.125)
I was what the heck to do with this bird? And everybody thought I was crazy. But I was living life on the terms of the yet to be known.
Esther Lightcap Meek (33:10.107)
You
PJ Wehry (33:11.822)
And so what is the connection between this yet to be known and subsidiary awareness?
Esther Lightcap Meek (33:18.927)
Okay, so Michael Polanyi, let me just say in addition to being a premier scientist was also a polymath. mean, talk about interdisciplinary writing and there's way far better scholars, Polanyi scholars than I. And what I particularly latched onto are the two things. One is the contact with reality thing that I read the dissertation on.
I have kind of a reputation among the Pallani Society as being the reality lady. But also, I liked his account of knowing, which simply put was to say that all knowing is subsidiary focal integration. he, maybe it's page 45 in personal knowledge, it comes out through all his work in tacit dimension, maybe it's more developed. But what he's saying,
And maybe the best statement of this is by that philosopher, Marjorie Green, all knowing is two level in structure from two. And so you rely on clues to focus on and shape a pattern. So in relying on your clues, what that is he calls subsidiary because you don't attend to it, you attend from it.
Any example of a skill is an example of subsidiary focal integration. So let's talk bike riding. You know, your felt sense of keeping your balance on the bike, right? That's subsidiary awareness. It's not subconscious. Could be, but it's not. You can't all be subconscious and, it's not unconscious. And it's not motor memory if by that you mean some sort of mechanical thing.
You have to be aware subsidiarily of your balance or you fall off the bike. Right. So it's integral to the pattern of the performance of bike riding. But where your focus is, is down the road. So, you know, you turn into this subsidiary phenomenon, unfolding phenomenon as you move toward and into and reality opens up to you.
Esther Lightcap Meek (35:38.991)
And there's if you're learning a skill, there comes this aha moment where you know, you have to start by focusing on stuff. But if you keep focusing on like your bike, you're never going to ride. So, you know, when when my father I tell the story, I think I'm loving to know when my father. Wanted to teach me to ride a bike. He took me to the back of the hill at our back by our yard.
all the grass, you know, had had borrowed a bike too big for me, did not believe in training wheels, but so merry about it. He put me on that contraption and pushed me and yelled, balance. Well, what does that even mean? How am I supposed to know what it feels like? And I'm sure he did that because he thought the only way she's going to get this is if she does it.
PJ Wehry (36:14.316)
Ha ha ha.
PJ Wehry (36:24.556)
Hahaha!
Esther Lightcap Meek (36:35.613)
And maybe you should be doing it by the end of the hill. So what and you know, somewhere I don't remember the bottom of the hill, but at some point in your your attempts to bike ride, right. All the things that you were fixating and focusing on that don't add up have to come to be something you subsidiarily indwell. And you get that feel.
of keeping your balance riding on a bike. And then you say, I'm a bike rider. And then you see the possibilities open. So the world starts to come to you in so many bike paths when you realize you can do it. Reading is a great example to learning to read. And any sort of skill is subsidiary focal integration. And Polanyi would say all knowing is skilled. It's all skilled. So, you know, I remember when I was a chemistry major, I had to learn, I had to learn.
PJ Wehry (37:16.483)
Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (37:30.491)
how to titrate and I had to learn, you all this stuff about the equipment, you know, was part of getting on board subsidiarily. You know, the whole skill of setting up a science experiment and all those kinds of things, that's all subsidiary. And that's actually what makes information sing is that it needs to be put at the subsidiary. If you focus on it, reality disappears. It's a myopia, which is why we're so messed up in modernity.
Esther Lightcap Meek (38:02.917)
I'm preaching at you.
PJ Wehry (38:04.078)
no, I love it. I got pulled in by that last statement and I had a previous question and now I'm... now I lost it. No, that's really helpful. You mentioned that his definition of knowledge is, and I lost the last word, I apologize, was trying to write it down here, subsidiary focal integration.
Esther Lightcap Meek (38:22.877)
integration. And what that means is it ain't linear. So it's not like you can take all the information and add it up and come up with a sum. In fact, it you kind of lurch into it backwards. And you know, the moment of insight, there's a reason everybody in the world uses the word inspiration.
You know, it's it come it breaks in an act of grace and deliverance from beyond. And you say, or you say Eureka. And then what happens is and this is in longing to know longing to know is really the best presentation I give of subsidiary focal integration. So I always made my students read that first before they read loving to know. But, you know, it's it.
There's a chapter that says integration transforms the clues. So it's when you get to the pattern that then you can look back and make sense of what you are now subsidiarily in dwelling, like keeping your balance. So.
PJ Wehry (39:37.358)
Yeah, and I think as part of this subsidiary awareness, I love that you have messed with the form of your book. Like I'm not familiar with anyone else using it. You use what are called textures. Can you talk about why you felt the need to use textures and what they are?
Esther Lightcap Meek (39:51.227)
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for noticing that. Well, I'm I'm disputing the claim that knowledge is information. So I can't write a textbook full of information. What I do is create an event that changes you. And also all my books are events. And and so what I was thinking of was text and textures.
PJ Wehry (40:07.48)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Esther Lightcap Meek (40:21.305)
And I had in mind a very kind of loose weave that was very PC. You know, I don't know if you know that word. You're in you're in marketing. probably do not. You may be too young for the word. But but in any case, so these textures, they're not systematic. They're just kind of stuck in there. They just go at it differently or they're that, know, the formal word is excursus. That's the formal.
But I liked the text and textures. so the textures can be standalone pieces or, you know, by the way, pieces, you know, that sort of thing. So just kind of breaking it up. So and then create kind of creating a sense that you're moving toward insight, which I think, you know, it's not the case for my books and it shouldn't be the case for any books.
that you're just collecting a bunch of information. You know, it should be an event. So somewhere in there, I quote somebody saying, Martin Buber said, you have to learn how to be addressed by a book. Right? Well, see, address is the language of interpersonal relationship.
PJ Wehry (41:43.192)
Yeah, since you mentioned Martin Buber, is there a connection between the from and the to and the I and the thou?
Esther Lightcap Meek (41:54.641)
That's a good question.
Esther Lightcap Meek (42:05.349)
Well, I'm going to start with the word encounter. So with I and thou, that's encounter, right? So how I came to connect Michael Polanyi's subsidiary focal integration with that and that there is a part of the argument is in.
It's, I guess it's in the Polanyi chapter in, in loving to know about connect, you know, how did I get from Michael Polanyi's subsidiary focal integration to covenant epistemology? And what I would say is this, when you have an aha moment and you know, you've made contact with reality. What I was saying in longing to know was it's like reality walks in and takes over.
it's like it was contacting you first. It doesn't answer your questions so much as explode them. And it feels like encounter. So it's like you come directly face to face, to eye with reality. And so that's encounter-esque. So that's the best I can do. Obviously Michael Palagni, like Martin Buber, he's Jewish.
He's in the 20th century that really was hitting the theme of the interpersonal and the interpersonal and actually the covenantal would have been kind of natural for them as Jewish people. You know, that would have been in their DNA somehow.
PJ Wehry (43:46.246)
I mean, that makes perfect sense. mean, when you look at that, certainly the Torah is governed by the covenant. So that would make perfect sense to me. When you talked about the excursus, is it? I don't know if you've read any Kierkegaard, but that's how I felt reading Kierkegaard is that I never, always, it was always fun. It was always interesting, but I always had no idea where he was going until about three quarters of the way through the book.
And all of sudden I was like, oh, that's why we're here. I was like, wow, I wondered where we are going. And so there's that.
Esther Lightcap Meek (44:21.072)
or not.
PJ Wehry (44:22.158)
I mean, he's one of my favorite authors. So that's I, I always love that that aha moment where you're like, and so the idea of coming at it, I mean, he always seems to come at it from a sideways angle. And where and I think a difference is that you come at it kind of straight on and then the textures come, you know, as you even talk about the war and the wolf, the weft and the weave, what I don't know. I'm not gonna pretend I know. Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (44:47.441)
Yeah, whatever. you know, I taught logic for 45 years. So there's a special star in my crown in heaven. Let me just tell you. I kind of have to make an argument.
PJ Wehry (44:58.403)
Yeah
PJ Wehry (45:06.254)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (45:07.165)
Because you know thesis and premises to support the thesis, you know, I don't know how else to write a book But so there's always an argument present too. That's the other thing But is there's always gonna be an argument, but hopefully it's not Hopefully it's good But winsome and part of reason for the winsome is is you know
Another thing that Palani said was, you know, you don't bring people along by giving information. What you actually have to do is give them maxims. You have to speak maximically. So you've got to, in addition to me, how I translate that as an author is I, yes, I have to make an argument, but I also have to write some sentences that make the readers feel it.
like bodily feel it and change their body feeling. So that's and and and so also you know that's connected to my idea of saying that look a book is an event and it's meant of transformation. How do I know you've gotten the point of the book. You're a different person.
PJ Wehry (46:19.053)
Yes.
PJ Wehry (46:27.884)
I think that's why I thought of Kierkegaard because that's how his books feel as well. It definitely feels more like an event than a journey than it does an argument. can, okay, that's very contained. You can take it or leave it.
Esther Lightcap Meek (46:35.665)
Yeah.
Esther Lightcap Meek (46:44.157)
Yeah, yes, right. No, this really gets in and kind of effects some stuff. when I, you know, I was blessed to teach a bunch of students this over my years at Geneva College and watch them change, watch them transform. And one obvious transformation is they all started to smile from ear to ear.
You know, because they and they realized this is what they had been doing all their lives and it just put a bunch of things together for them. And it was it was really transformative.
PJ Wehry (47:20.558)
I want to be respectful of your time. I do feel like this is a question I normally ask guests, it feels especially after PO after our discussion today. Besides reading your excellent book, besides buying and reading your book, what's one thing that someone who has listened to this podcast should do or should think about over the upcoming week?
Esther Lightcap Meek (47:46.491)
Yeah, that's a nice question and actually easily answered. You know, take any person you will. First of all, they're stuck in modernist epistemology and need a fix. Second of all, the fix is subsidiary focal integration. So what you need to do is learn it and see and apply it throughout your life to things that you're doing.
And so subsidiary focal integration needs to haunt you. and the you know, the more you see it and see that you're doing it, that's going to that's going to change your defective your your presumptions about knowing, because look, modernist epistemology presumes that knowledge is explicit certain information. Well.
That's not what keeps you on a bike. If it were explicit certain information, you'd fall off the bike. There's no way you can be an athlete if you're not wearing and indwelling all the stats. You know, I mean, to watch football is to watch subsidiary focal integration every Sunday afternoon. Just it's college Saturday, high school Friday. It's all subsidiary focal integration.
So that's what you need to kind of work on. And you want to see that you have been doing it all your life. This is not taking you out of your comfort zone. It's restoring you to yourself. And artistry, the creative act is subsidiary of vocal integration too. So that's part of what I'm saying in doorway to artistry is look, this is how, this like it's knowing.
Right? So I would say that's the one thing. And if I got to do a workshop with you, that's what I would be workshopping is subsidiary focal integration. would make you think of a simple example, riding a bike, learning to read, learning a new language. I'm sure if I made you do it, PJ, you'd be talking about marketing. You'll be talking about web design and all that kind of stuff.
Esther Lightcap Meek (50:10.093)
And that involves subsidiary focal integration. And then you start to see that stuff you rely on is not verbal. It's bodily indwelled. And even authoritative words, know, your teachers, know, you have to indwell that. had to learn to indwell my father's word balance, subsidiarily. So I'd say...
PJ Wehry (50:34.571)
or fall down.
Esther Lightcap Meek (50:35.805)
Read Longing to Know. Read Longing to Know. That's a good on-board of subsidiary focal integration and then go on to other wonderful things. Yep.
PJ Wehry (50:45.26)
Yeah, and practice it. And I love you. had a little sneak. It's kind of like at the end of an episode, you know, they have a sneak peek of the upcoming one. I love the plug for doorway to artistry. But thank thank you, Dr. Meek. Wonderful to have you on today and a great answer.
Esther Lightcap Meek (50:58.717)
It's good to hear from you. Yeah, hello to everybody and get in touch.