Words to Live By: Scholarly Quotations as Proverbial Theory

"He who walks with me shall walk from crest to crest: You will need very long legs. " Nietzsche Theory and Practice As bemoaned by some practitioners, "theory" is simply too impractical and too easily detached from real world relevance or application. The world of theory, such critics suggest, often becomes lofty and removed or perhaps too abstruse, erudite, and dense, and, as such, it remains at considerable remove from the sticky, gummy interactions of everyday life. Even the word itself, "theory," in the mouth of its critics can be said in an accusatory tone, e.g. "probably just a theory," or "that might be fine in theory, but in the real world things are different. " This also means that abstract and theoretical systems, even ones that well account for various types of order in and throughout human interaction, may fail to be applicable to our daily lives. If ideas cannot be removed from their original theoretical context, if they cannot live outside of their indigenous textual domain, then such insights seem to be extremely limited. Such "lame abstractions," as William James might say, "fail to be cashed-in-on. " On the other hand, serious theoreticians and academicians often maintain that practice bereft of theoretical reflection remains mostly tacit habit and uncritical encumbrance of one's tradition. Uninformed and mismatched strategies built through "just doing it" too easily fail to appreciate and take advantage of the resources available via theoretical reflection. Without the service of theory, the theorist maintains, people in their quotidian practices can remain blind to and unaware of solutions to daily problems as well to alternative life possibilities. The twin concerns addressed above, when taken together and then reevaluated, seem to offer not so much a problem as an opportunity. Both scholars and practitioners alike might accordingly focus their attention on those abstract ideas that best lend themselves to quick and useful application in everyday life practices. Calvin O. Schrag, in his book The Resources of Rationality (1992), offers a provocative lead in this direction when he suggests that we consider "provisional and case-oriented maxims for assessing what is to be believed and what is to be done in particular situations. " (1) Recognition of recurrent situations, the ability to abstract "things-to-look-out-for," and cultivated skill at strategically summing up a situation within a sentence or two, all of these capacities refer to insight, foresight, and commemoration. Taken together, they bear the stamp of a rationality that is already operative in everyday life. Such rationality offers critical and evaluative distance yet is not overly suspended within larger philosophical and theoretical contexts. It offers and traffics in something similar to cultural wisdom by proverbial advice. And it is precisely these types of ideas in their specific employability, that I wish to further consider here. Some Exemplars The dual demand for what John Dewey (1925/1988) has aptly called "reflection efficacious in action," (2) has already been addressed in communication scholarship where scholars have examined anecdotes and proverbs. Lee Thayer tells a marvelous story to illustrate the potential pitfalls of overly reflective and literal considerations, especially with regard to metaphorical anecdotes. His story both exemplifies the potential utility of anecdotes, and additionally, it criticiz overly theoretical reflection that loses sight of utility. He states: "Listen closely. You must tell me what is wrong with the following question: Why is it that a bad apple put into a barrel of good apples turns them all bad, but a good apple put into a barrel of bad ones doesn't turn them all good? " After a good deal of critical thought and consideration, including many scientific explanations regarding the relations among fruit decay, methane production and fruit ripening, we remained unable to discover what he thought was wrong with the question. …