Bricolant?

The writings of Jacques Derrida introduced me to the term bricolant, a French word meaning "puttering," "tinkering," "fiddling," or "throwing things together." The French thinker likened his own work to that of a bricoleur, (a handyman or do-it-yourselfer) tinkering with words and concepts, rather than bricks and wood.

Derrida would chisel away layers of meaning, occasionally nailing two concepts together, to form a "non-concept," such as his invented word, "differance," the result of substituting an "a" for the second "e" in the French word difference, which means both "deferring" and "differing." The hybrid differance, plays with the interaction of deferral and difference in meaning, showing that words are often defined by demonstrating their differences from other words, hereby deferring the ultimate meaning in an endless chain of differences, showing that ultimate meaning is forever deferred. The mathematician Kurt Godel did much the same with respect to formal proof in mathematics, demonstrating an inherent incompleteness or inconsistency in any formal system of logic except the most trivial.

As finite beings in an infinite universe, this should be no surprise. Those of us who are believers, however, look beyond the paradoxes, the conflicting meanings, the mind games that the universe seems to play. In admitting that we are incomplete, even flawed, we find salvation.

It is in that admission that we find meaning in our own individual lives. My writing will tinker with just that quest. Playful at times, serious at others, sometimes building, other times chiseling away, this blog will examine how philosophy and theology impact individual lives and cultures here on Earth.

I am, as are we all, a bricoleur.

The definition of bricolage, bricoler, and bricolant were checked with the following reference:
http://www.wordreference.com/fren/bricolant.
An excellent introduction to Derrida’s thinking can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff%C3%A9rance
Those intrepid souls who would like to discover the contributions of Kurt Godel can find a primer at this Web address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorems#Meaning_of_the_first_incompleteness_theorem