Focus II

 

The etymology of the word 'focus' really challenges my thinking. 

Consider that most people today - the younger, the more likely - use focus as if the original literal sense is the focusing of a camera. But that's a figurative use, once removed, of the long-ago meaning of hearth or fireplace, and by extension 'fire' itself, where the family and their life comes together, and then used again figuratively as a verb - to focus.

All this, before the camera, but not before lenses, telescopes, microscopes, and spectacles.

So, how do the notions - the concepts - of focus and lens relate, historically, and semantically?

Then, so what? What does it matter?

One way of practicing the epoche of phenomenology is to refrain from conceptualizing, for the purpose of perceiving the non-conceptual. Remove concepts and categories, and see what you get, see what's left over. That widens your view, paradoxically.

So, imagine thinking without the words focus, blur, lens, concentrate, and see if that widens your view of consciousness.