Words Critical to the Revolution

In 1937 Meher Baba said to the press in India, "I have come to bring about a revolution in man's thinking, the slowest of all revolutions." – The Awakener Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 2, p. 6

I believe my idea of Evolution of Perception is part of that revolution. Though I'm not totally sure where it fits into it, I believe several of its main concepts will play a critical role in it in the future. But in the decades I've spent trying to get across my idea to others, one of the greatest stumbling blocks has been people's lack of understanding of certain words. As odd as it seems, a general understanding of those words is essential to that revolution I'm trying to help start. 

One of those words is "perception," but I have already written extensively on it. A cursory check in an abbreviated modern dictionary will mislead one as to its full meaning. A look at the Oxford Unabridged dictionary is necessary. There is no replacement for this word used in its full original sense.

In addition, the phrase "read into," as used by John Dewey in The Psychological Review in 1896, is another. Dewey described what he had no formal name for, but called the "historical fallacy" in that article, as follows:

A set of considerations which hold good only because of a completed process is read into the content of the process which conditions this completed result. 

– Dewey

In conversation after conversation, I have found that people are either unfamiliar with this phrase or can't grasp the way it is used in the above sentence. Again, just a cursory looking up of the meaning of this phrase "read into" in Google will not give the intended sense. A Google search produces: 

The phrasal verb "read into" has multiple meanings, including: 

1. To think something has meaning or importance that is not likely or reasonable: For example, "You're reading too much into her remarks". 
2. To believe that an action, remark, or situation has a particular meaning or importance, often when this is not true: For example, "Don't read too much into her leaving so suddenly - she probably just had a train to catch". 
3. To give your own meaning to something rather than what was intended: For example, "I think you're reading too much into his comments - he's not trying to trick anyone".

None of these are what Dewey meant. What Dewey meant by "read into" in his 1896 article where he describes this critical fallacy is closer to the concept of projection. 

In his 1918 book Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler uses the phrase "projected on" precisely the way Dewey is using the phrase "read into." 

Darwin himself had remolded the evolution-ideas of the 18th Century according to the Malthusian tendencies of political economy, which he projected on the higher animal-world.

– Spengler

Dewey is using the phrase "read into" in just the way Spengler is using "projected on," to mean taking a concept from a context where it belongs and applying it to one where it does not. 

So let me say how John Dewey, an American, is using the phrase "read into" when describing the historical fallacy. In English, we often speak of someone imagining something where it really isn't. We think something is present in a situation that it isn't. Often it can't be for certain logical reasons. For instance, we read of a vision of a spinning wheel in Ezekiel, and we conclude he is seeing a flying saucer, a concept that only first appeared in the 20th century. We are not reading about a flying saucer sighting in Ezekiel, but rather we are reading our concept of flying saucers into the words in Ezekiel. We are projecting the UFO concept onto Ezekiel. That is how Dewey is using the term 'read into' and Spengler is using 'projected on.' 

In the case of the historical fallacy, someone commits this fallacy when he reads into a supposed process something that comes about only as a result of that process.

When I say this is critical to the revolution in thinking Baba referred to in 1937, I am referring to the central importance of fully grasping the historical fallacy, a flaw in thinking that is preventing us from progressing. And until we can see how certain things can be read into conditions where they cannot exist, we can't understand this ancient fallacy.