The Role of Weeds in Human Affairs

Abstract

I have chosen to begin with the proposition that more energy is expended for the weeding of man's crops than for any other single human task. Because it is one of man's principal occupations, the burden is intricately woven into the fabric of his family and community life and to lift it from the tangled skeins of his existence so that we may examine it, or judge it, is well nigh impossible. In the writings of Aristotle, there are these words which seem appropriate to the task ahead, “The search for Truth is in one way hard and in another easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully nor miss it wholly.”