I learned the theory of fox vs. hedgehog today. It was popularized by Isaiah Berlin in an essay named "The hedgehog and the fox", and the concepts was attributed to an Ancient Greek poet Archilochus, who said "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing".
Berlin expands upon this idea to divide people into two categories: hedgehogs see the world through the lens of a single idea and foxes live centrifugal than centripetal lives and believe the world is inherently complex therefore it cannot be boiled down to a single idea.
At first I thought myself for sure a fox, but then I realized it wasn't that simple (still a fox thought). On one hand my trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural background taught me not to squeeze complex reality into any single unifying theory; on the other hand perhaps this kaleidoscopic view itself, or should I say, my determination to see the world through the kaleidoscopic lens is something very hedgehogy.
In other words, I am a hedgehog in fox's clothes.
No comments:
Post a Comment