Questions Make the Frame

suzanne langer on the importance of the questions we ask.

A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems than by its solution of them. Its answers establish an edifice of facts; but its questions make the frame in which its picture of facts is plotted. They make more than the frame; they give the angle of perspective, the palette, the style in which the picture is drawn—everything except the subject. In our questions lie our principles of analysis, and our answers may express whatever those principles are able to yield.

—Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key

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