{"id":4821,"date":"2018-01-28T15:44:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T15:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/01\/28\/on-making-a-splash-and-making-a-dent\/"},"modified":"2018-01-28T15:44:08","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T15:44:08","slug":"on-making-a-splash-and-making-a-dent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/01\/28\/on-making-a-splash-and-making-a-dent\/","title":{"rendered":"On Making a Splash and Making a Dent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">Years ago an acquaintance wrote me about a book he had published which, he said, had &quot;made quite a splash.&quot; The metaphor is unfortunately double-edged. When an object hits the water it makes a splash. But only moments later the water returns to its quiescent state as if nothing had happened. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">Perhaps it would have been more in the spirit of self-promotion to say that his book had made quite a dent. A splash is ephemeral and what makes it sinks. A dent, however, lasts and the denting object remains in sight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">On second thought the first is the more apt metaphor given the quality of the book in question. It captures both the immediate significance of an event and its&#0160;long-term insignificance.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Years ago an acquaintance wrote me about a book he had published which, he said, had &quot;made quite a splash.&quot; The metaphor is unfortunately double-edged. When an object hits the water it makes a splash. But only moments later the water returns to its quiescent state as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it would have &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/01\/28\/on-making-a-splash-and-making-a-dent\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;On Making a Splash and Making a Dent&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,544,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-ambition","category-human-predicament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}