Interpretation should present a bounded whole rather than any single part

Evidence

A cardinal purpose of interpretation, it seems to me, is to present a whole rather than a part, no matter how interesting the specific part may be. It will be observed that I say “a” whole, not “the” whole. “The” whole soars into infinity, and the time we can spend with our listener or reader is all too brief. A friend of mine said to me, “The tourist has three limitations—of time, of absorptive capacity, and of money.” Truly: so it becomes the more important to make of his contact an appreciation of a whole rather than of any part. — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 306

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘whole versus part’ principle as a named interpretive aim with its own boundary condition (‘a’ whole, not ‘the’ whole).
• CANDY: The tourist’s three limitations—time, absorptive capacity, money—is a quotable neat formulation.
• XREF: connects to: Boredom in talks stems from unconnected facts, not from the whole-making which prevents cliché — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 308; A single whole picture can explain a desert’s ecology to outsiders — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 312; Structural interpretation reads the gaps rather than the unified whole — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 1394

Broader Connections

• Structural interpretation reads the gaps rather than the unified whole #contradicts (0.90) — Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, 1394