Krutch describes the beauty of snowflakes and crystals with delight and admiration. He describes their diversity and forms and says that only with a microscope he manages to understand what beauty means by looking at crystals. They capture his spirit and amaze his imagination, and it is not for nothing that he uses the metaphor of God and transcendent experience in general when describing crystals (Krutch). Even though crystals are subjected to chemical experiments and are associated, in general, with a scientific worldview, their beauty stands out from the ordinary human understanding of beauty. For Krutch, collodion is related to everyday life and immanence.
People belong to the world of colloids, followed by a different model of perception and description of the world around them. Krutch often contrasts living and non-living, natural and unnatural. In his understanding of life, it is not the scientific idea of life that is important, but spiritualization. That is why colloidal people rely on facts while at the same time being closed in them (Krutch). Their world picture seems to contain fragments, and living beings are perceived as scenery and details. This world picture is the most mechanical and lacks a certain spirituality. This thinking is based on facts and evidence while being locked into them. Speculative thought is akin to philosophical, especially the Hegelian model, also similar to the idealism of Immanuel Kant. Theoretical thinking is trying to break out of the intrinsic experience, striving for God, for new patterns of beauty, love, feelings.
Evidence-based thinking works at the level of facts, and the worldview, in this case, is built on empirical data. Often, such people cannot think abstractly or do not see their point. Abstract concepts are reduced for them to ordinary and concrete examples. It is difficult for the worldview of such people to understand and talk about issues of justice, happiness, or love since these are abstract concepts. The speculative worldview is based on a conceptual categorical apparatus on which it is easy to discuss general issues: beauty, time, space, past, and other non-material phenomena. In addition, the speculative worldview is good at explaining social practices.
Work Cited
Krutch, Joseph Wood. “The Colloid and The Crystal.” The Best of Two Worlds, 3rd ed., William Sloane Associates, 1953.