Coherence Betrayed: Samuel Johnson and the "Prose of the World"

Abstract

In Dictionary Johnson defines as a sticking together of things, an interconnectedness or dependency apprehended as a pattern of relationships among separate entities, parts of entities, or bits of information. His definition incorporates ideas of texture and consistency that suggest an organic quality in experience perception of which is essential for our awareness of order, meaning, and value. is a precondition for meaningfulness extent that meaning is a function of contexts rather than singularities. Johnson purposefully cites Pope's Essay on Man support his definition, relating idea of coherence doctrine of plenitude: Where all must full, or not coherent be,/ And all that rises, rise in due degree. Pope associates coherence with both fullness and appropriateness, an extensive but harmonious diversity, a numinous order infused through rich variety, divinely created and sustained. Incoherence, by contrast, entails incompleteness and fragmentation, flux of uncoordinated data, random information unsubordinated any organizing idea. Yet, as Johnson details various senses of in its nominal, verbal, and adjectival forms, complex semantic tensions in word begin surface. To cohere is to hold fast one another, as parts of same body. Coherence means the relation of parts or