The Contemplation of Things

I was reminded of a wonderful quote this week. I was watching a PBS documentary about the photographer Dorthea Lange who had a copy of it hanging in her studio-

The contemplation of things as they are
without error or confusion
without substitution or imposture
is in itself a nobler thing
than a whole harvest of invention.

-Francis Bacon

Because the popularity of the quote seems to rely on the fact that Lange had it in her studio, it is most often to be found in connection with photography today. What if we change the word “are” at the end of that first line to “were”? Then I think we might just have a quote that a genealogist could hang on the wall. I often find webs and tangles of information that are worth contemplating. Isn’t that our goal in some sense—to think and contemplate our way through strange and seemingly impossible bits of evidence to find the solution and know what happened? We don’t work toward what we wish had happened. We shouldn’t assume what usually happened. We shouldn’t produce a “whole harvest of invention.”

The more one researches, I think the more one is forced to conclude that it is not uncommon for our pasts to differ from what we thought and what we were told or simply to contain details beyond what we could have imagined. I find those discoveries to be wonderful, like wiping the frost from a window and getting to really see what is outside. It might not be what one expected but it will be something far more interesting than the frost.

One final Francis Bacon quote-

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.