Thoughts on Obsessive Disambiguation

Lots of reasons for the obsession in every aspect of our culture to disambiguate. Obviously it's tech-related, but how? In really broad strokes, something like: Tech-accelleration in the 19th century led to specialization, which led to extreme-specialization, which led to obsessive specialization, which eventually destroyed the general virtue of the "renaissance man" (in practice at least). Instead we hold in high esteem the specialist (the expert). The expert is the one who can dissect an issue. Thus we hold as a virtue the act of dissecting, and we think the person who cannot do it is incompetent, or at least less specialized and therefore less knowledgable. As a consequence we hold disambuation in the highest regard. And the fact that it is of often of great value can also mislead us into thinking it is always of great value. But of course it is not always appropriate. You can't dissect a body without killing it. How much of the life in great literature is destroyed in English 101? But how else can we do it? (Like de Zengotita's Justin's Helmet Principle.) So where does this even matter? Everywhere. It is procrustean to force every aspect of life (theology, philosophy, ethics, literature, scientific journals, everyday conversations, child-rearing techniques, standards of beauty, etc.) into one ideal degree of disambiguation--the maximum possible. In fact, it is life-threatening in the broadest possible way. Even within one particular branch of thought there are varying degrees of appropriate disambiguation. Aristotle was right: "It is a mark of an educated person to look for precision in each kind of inquiry just to the extent that the nature of the subject allows it."