Actually, any mind, educated or otherwise, can do that. I assume there is a context from which Aristotle’s statement takes some meaning.Darlene wrote:It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
What is the original source of the quotation from Aristotle? What was the context in which it originally was expressed? Was it a response to Plato? If so, what was the exchange between the two men about? Was it about the military aspirations of Alexander the Great? As any C student in a freshman English class knows, a few words taken out of context never have a self-evident meaning. Presumably, any mind, educated or not, can consider a thought. What differentiates the erudite from the fakers is their understanding of the context and what they do after the “entertaining” is over.
That suggests what is sorely lacking in a mindless regurgitation of material from a book of quotations. If creativity is conceiving something that does not already exist, where is the creativity?