Even magnificent conceptual edifices rest on unstable, fluid foundations

Evidence

One may certainly admire man, a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling up an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. His construction must be like one constructed of spiders’ webs; delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1289

Categorization

• FICTION: The spiders’-web-on-running-water image could seed a metaphor system for a fictional world where knowledge systems are beautifully fragile constructs.
• XREF: Evokes the fragility of colonial knowledge systems that the chapter’s reading purpose centers on — epistemic ‘commonsense’ as delicate web over unstable ground.
• STORYSTEM: A frameless quote — likely Nietzsche or similar — where an encyclopedic ‘dome of concepts’ is built on running water suggests a narrative about an archivist/scholar whose entire conceptual order collapses when the foundation shifts.