Acceptable Interpretations - Mark Denil

Acceptable Interpretations
Mark Denil
The painter John Constable’s observation that “we see nothing truly till we understand it” and CS Lewis’ character Ransom’s that “you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are” both point to the well-established fact that interpretations create the very facts that prove them.
Once we have accepted an artifact as a map, we have already situated it against a horizon of other maps—maps that, by definition, have interpretations. It is our juxtaposition of this new map with the map horizon that points us to an acceptable interpretation—‘acceptable’ being a key term that will vary for every individual and individual map.
What constitutes an acceptable interpretation? How do we know one when we encounter it? How do we read a map?