Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours or light to make her pictures, a master of shih chooses textures of knowledge - various ideas, myths, abstractions, and theories - to create a way of seeing the world. The aesthetics and beauty of knowledge - this was shih.
- David Zindell, The Broken God, 1993
|