Outside Context Problem
The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation wa...
notes Intellectuals Must Craft Their Minds Through Study
君子曰：學不可以已。青、取之於藍，而青於藍；冰、水為之，而寒於水。木直中繩，輮以為輪，其曲中規，雖有槁暴，不復挺者，輮使之然也。故木受繩則直，金就礪則利，君子博學而日參省乎己，則知明而行無過矣。
1 [Translated] The noble person says: Learning must never cease. Blue comes from the indigo plant, yet it is bluer than indigo. Ice is made from water, yet it is colder than water. Wood as straight as a plumb line may be bent into a wheel that is as round as if it were drawn with a compass, and, even after the wood has dried, it will not straighten out again because this is the way it has been bent. Thus wood marked by the plumb line will become straight, and metal that is put to the whetstone will become sharp. The noble person who studies widely and examines himself each day will become clear in his knowing and faultless in his conduct.
Thinking About Aliens Stretches the Imagination
The virtue of thinking about life elsewhere is that it forces us to stretch our
imaginations. Can we think of alternative solutions to biological problems already
solved in one particular way on Earth? For example, the wheel is a comparatively
recent invention on the planet Earth. It seems to have been invented in the ancient
Near East less than ten thousand years ago. In fact, the high civilizations of Meso-
America, the Aztecs and the Mayas, never employed the wheel, except for children's t... notesThe possible life that could evolve in other environments is an imaginative treasure chest.
(TODO: The wheeled organisms described here appear in the Amber Spyglass by Pullman)
Ancient Greek Perception of the Ocean
To the ancient Greeks the ocean was an endless stream that flowed forever around the border of the world, ceaselessly turning upon itself like a wheel, the end of earth, the beginning of heaven. This ocean was boundless; it was infinite. If a person were to venture far out into it--were such a course thinkable--he would pass through gathering darkness and obscuring fog and would come at last to a dreadful and chaotic blending of sea and sky, a place where whirlpools and yawning abysses waited... notes