007 — Pub-licity

Ancient Greek poetry, modern woodworking and the pub.

“…a Fox knows many things, but the Hedgehog knows one big thing…”

This is how Isaiah Berlin translated Archilochus’s famous fragment from archaic Greek.

I don’t know Greek so I have no idea how accurate it is. It’s also sometimes given as: “The Fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has just one, but that is the best one of all.”

The Hedgehog’s one, best trick? We know what that is: defensive spines, which trump the Fox’s inquisitive nose.

On the whole, I prefer Berlin’s translation, and his interpretation. The knowing of many things, or just one big thing, marks “one of the deepest differences, which divide writers and thinkers — and maybe humans in general.”

There are, he contends, two types of people.

“Those (Hedgehogs), on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system … in terms of which they understand, think and feel … and, on the other side, those (Foxes) who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory…”

I. Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox, 1953.

This …