SHORT STORY: An Unusual Visit

The Professor had clearly instructed his students to write an essay, a critical essay on Gaston Bachelard’s Notion of Epistemological Obstacle. There was no place for opinion. He defended Science over anything else in his life. Science had been placed in a pedestal that dismissed Art and Psychological studies and female intelligence for which he made his subtle remarks. His discourse was clear and concise. In talking to his students he was a serpents’ charmer. The class was taking place in Spanish, a language that differentiates between male and female nouns. “La Ciencia” was a woman, a terrifying being, so unpredictable, and unexpected.
When reviewing all the collected essays, he didn’t know what to say. He thought about grading it with a zero, assigning a failing grade; and suggesting the Faculty’s Dean about the removal of this student.

And this is what he found...

The Appointment

It is not easy to schedule an appointment with Science. This is probably something a good psychoanalyst knows. However, the one who does it obeys to the great destiny required in their moralization process.

The world’s suffering had evaporated, and then, condensed in the clouds; it got released in an impetuous current. Drops of ignorance were pouring and tickling her umbrella while Science walked through the stormy rain wearing a fur coat and camping boots on the streets of an intellectual city.

She walked and walked and her pace was rushed. She was a little late for the appointment settled over the phone. Science knew it was mandatory for her to mutate if she wanted to give the world a different destiny. But mutation was not her problem because she belonged to a mutant species.

How could she ask better to gain more self-knowledge?

Undoubtedly, it would be through a process of rational interpretation in order to locate the facts in its historical plot and exact place; and through that symbiosis produced in the experience-reason axis –maximum source of risk but also of success—.

Trascending was her desire. She would trascend through the works of her mind and the limits of common experience. She could be liberated from the bondages of what has been historically demonstrated as the Truth. She would also perform an intellectual-affective cleansing: Specifying, rectifying, and diversifying.

The anchylosed state of her self-knowledge was something she certainly could not afford. That inner system that tended –as any other system—to close itself and become static. Then, she felt annoyed by the itching in her chest.
Lately, she had been somatizing the effects that cause close mindedness or any other defense mechanism such as avoidance or denial. This was the main reason why she agreed on the appointment. She knocked on the door. And before the door was opened, she suffered a temporal paralysis in her right lobule.
Paralyzed she was. Yes. Could it be some sort of hysteria?

Afterwards, and like every scheduled appointment in the Palace located in the Saint James Plaza, she entered the room at 12:00 sharp. She took her fur coat off, closed the umbrella and cleaned her boots taking away the street mud traces. She lay on the divan staring at the ceiling, at the popcorn details that illustrated diverse shapes.

The free-association method was a good beginning, Ideas were taken from the facts crossing her mind, spinning one concept with each other as if they were silk threads.
Which thinking system would keep the inserts of all those ideas? There was silence for some brief minutes and then she continued.

“How can I think well and properly?”

La Mujer del Divan - Pedro Lira

“How could I get rid off the interfering sensibilities, needs and instincts as lower forms of the psyche? How to get rid off the impure set of basic intuitions?

“How to avoid the conformism produced by clear and useful ideas, the answers given without asking, the familiarity of some ideas fully loaded of analogies, images and metaphors?
“How could I avoid the conservative spirit that impedes inquiring and questioning in order to keep the accepted answers?
“How would I put aside the avidity for unity and certitude?
“How to desincrustate everything that has been encrusted by the passage of time and that ultimately hinders progress and development?
“Which words to use? Which words could be used that were not designative or explicative or limitative in the narration of the historical facts?
“How was it feasible to avoid the temptation of staying in basic observations and the dilapidation of images in a picturesque, concrete, natural, and easy way?
“Is it conceivable to comprehend incomprehension?
“Is it possible to suppose that an experimental culture must be acquired?
“I am Science and I am not empty. I am old, I have experience, and the age of my prejudices. If I access myself, I can rejuvenate spiritually.
“Is it possible to accept an abrupt mutation even though it can contradict a past and what it has told? “I should recover my formative spirit. Yes, I should do that. I want to keep searching.
“Which inner obstacles obstruct Knowledge? That handsome man. Which pieces of knowledge have I acquired wrongly, imprecisely or incorrectly? What does block Spiritualization? How to change my experimental culture?
“Soy Ciencia, ¿Tengo inconsciencia?... I am Science, do I have unconsciousness?
“I have erred many times and because of it, I know that the bipolarity and dialectics of my mistakes, born in the polemic attitude of my thinking, hinder my understanding. How to place mistakes in a hierarchy? And if the nature of my mistakes and epistemological cysts is confuse and polymorph; what would happen if arranging a surgical procedure to remove them once and for all, the removed mistakes would take with them some vital organs from my own vital essence? How can order be established to describe thinking disorders? How to avoid the rupture between observation and experimentation? How to avoid mathematical thinking being in the middle of the way of the moral quality of thinking?
“Again, how is it possible to avoid the rupture between observation and experimentation? How to avoid mathematical thinking being in the middle of the way of the moral quality of thinking?
“Why does mathematical thinking interposes and interferes, if considering its intermittency it does not know periods of mistakes? …”

***

There was a longer silence than the previous ones and the appointment was almost over, but before waking up from the divan, she asked for the first time:

“Who Am I?”

That afternoon, Science went out looking for the nature of the irreflection and error psychology, taking glances at pedestrians and window shopping in museums and libraries and fashion stores. The fur coat was folded on her right arm and the closed umbrella was hanging from her wrist.
Now , she was not walking that fast, there was no need to hurry up because she had finally realized that the sun had been unclouded and that it was brightly shining.