Toromoreno 1

Rodrigo Toromoreno

Professor Catherine Brown

ROMLANG 681001 F09

September 11, 2009

Of the Voyages Made by the Scholarly Mind and Its

Encounter with Questions

It is hardly a feat of the imagination to envision a quest that moves forward; for

the most ubiquitous maritime and terrestrial narratives of exploration often schematize

their voyages in this fashion. The majority of the explorers that embark on ventures often

seek to physically corroborate a story that they have heard, weather this includes locating

the presence of a legendary king (as in the case of the sixteenth century Portuguese

mariners and Prester John according to Charles Boxer [15-23]) or the existence of a

fortune (a lucrative South American city in Fransisco Pizarro’s situation). Regardless of

the varying punctilios of each expedition, they unanimously resolve to move towards an

(apparently) extant goal knowing already what awaits them and how to obtain it. A quest

that moves in reverse, however, is not as easy to fathom. This is the quest of the question.

When assaying a topic of investigation, the question is the story one is seeking to

validate with empirical proofs. The assiduous investigator then works against a

chronological schema to understand how to unlock the clandestine narrative contained

within the query; at which point lacunae, instead of meticulously delineated plans, guide

ones aspiration to discover from the beginning precisely the development of the idea that

now manifests itself as a question. Said gaps also authorize the researcher to fill these

voids in a manner that coincides with the nature of the question; if the inquiry, for
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example, is phrased in the form of “what is…?”, one option is to begin the quest through

an ontological or metaphysical analysis. The question, accordingly, specifies to a degree

the mode in which it can be answered.

This demarcation of ways to address the question, nonetheless, is anything but a

rubric. Returning to the metaphor of expansionist travel for the sake of lucidity, the value

and breadth of the ‘discoveries’ made by foreign explorers primarily depends on whether

they remain at the littoral of the ‘New World’ or display the temerity to trek into the

depths of the land. Similarly, the lover of knowledge can opt to take the approximation

suggested by the question (surveying only what is at shore) or endeavour to detour in

their examinations (crossing rewarding, albeit uncharted, terrain) in order to broaden the

depth of their research to other fields (of study). The difference between both tactics is

evident in their respective outcome: those who address the quandary according to the

former methodology hinder themselves because they unfold less of the subjacent

narrative of the question than those who apply the latter practice. The retrocessive quest

to find the possible facets of each underlying narrative is therefore truncated for those

who dare not sustain alternate considerations.

Specifically because the ‘backwards’ enterprise of the researcher promises

multiple paths to the revelation of each question, the conduits can also stray one too far

from their original trajectory. Extremely adventurous explorations outside the

immediately obvious approaches to each inquiry may cause some to accidentally become

nomadic drifters in the perilous lands of oblivion, which, in the world of scholarship,

results in academic pedantry. To prevent this, the original question becomes tantamount

to the North Star used by navigators as a celestial guide to avoid any type disorientation,
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obliging the sailor and the scholar to always direct one’s mission in the direction of one’s

gaze.

Ultimately, questions mark a reverse movement into the recondite recesses of its

own narrative or the narrative the question itself seeks to communicate. This way, as the

point of departure and the point of return, the answer (the product of the quest) and the

question will always correlate to reveal a common and cogent narrative.And whilst the

inverse structure of each voyage may operate in the style stated above, the personal

merits for originally embarking on the quest of the question is much more capricious.

From a nascent whim to a implacable obsession, the purpose of surfacing the concealed

story of every question primordially lies beyond the ambit of the empirical and in the

realm of the relative: researchers/travelers are tacitly concerned with disseminating their

stories through their work, whatever these may be. Yet, the undeniable allure of a

forward-moving expansionist journey for the explorer or of an inverted investigation for a

restless scholar will both display that the contours distended are chiefly those pertaining

to the mind more than those of the paper.

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Bibliography

Boxer, C.R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire: 1415-1825. New York: Knopf, 1969.