Concentrate on the Best

Sturgeon's law is usually expressed thus: 90% of everything is crap. So 90% of experiments in molecular biology, 90% of poetry, 90% of philosophy books, 90% of peer-reviewed articles in mathematics—and so forth—is crap. Is that true? Well, maybe it's an exaggeration, but let's agree that there is a lot of mediocre work done in every field.

A good moral to draw from this observation is that when you want to criticize a field, a genre, a discipline, an art form . . . don't waste your time and ours hooting at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone. This advice is often ignored by ideologues intent on destroying the reputation of analytic philosophy, sociology, cultural anthropology, macroeconomics, plastic surgery, improvisational theater, television sitcoms, philosophical theology, massage therapy, you name it.

Let's stipulate at the outset that there is a great deal of deplorable, second-rate stuff out there, of all sorts. Now, in order not to waste your time and try our patience, make sure you concentrate on the best stuff you can find, the flagship examples extolled by the leaders of the field, the prize-winning entries, not the dregs. Notice that this is closely related to Rapoport's rules: unless you are a comedian whose main purpose is to make people laugh at ludicrous buffoonery, spare us the caricature.

—Daniel Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking

Painting: Angelica Kauffmann (1740-1807), Phryne Seducing the Philosopher

The Admission and Omission of Details

Foolish critics often betray their ignorance by saying that a painter or a writer "only copies what he has seen, or puts down what he has known."

They forget that no man imagines what he has not seen or known, and that it is in the selection of characteristic details that the artistic power is manifested.

Those who suppose that familiarity with scenes or characters enables a painter or a novelist to "copy" them with artistic effect, forget the well-known fact that the vast majority of men are painfully incompetent to avail themselves of this familiarity, and cannot form vivid pictures even to themselves of scenes in which they pass their daily lives; and if they could imagine these, they would need the delicate selective instinct to guide them in the admission and omission of details, as well as in the grouping of the images.

Let any one try to "copy" the wife or brother he knows so well,—to make a human image which shall speak and act so as to impress strangers with a belief in its truth,—and he will then see that the much-despised reliance on actual experience is not the mechanical procedure it is believed to be.

George Henry Lewes, The Principles of Success in Literature

Painting: Claude Monet, Pathway in Monet's Garden at Giverny