Provisional Forms

"The world consists of colors, sounds, temperatures, pressures, spaces, times, and so forth, which now we shall not call sensations, nor phenomena, because in either term an arbitrary, one-sided theory is embodied, but simply elements. The fixing of the flux of these elements, whether mediately or immediately, is the real object of physical research. As long as, neglecting our own body, we employ ourselves with the interdependence of those groups of elements which, including men and animals, make up foreign bodies, we are physicists. For example, we investigate the change of the red color of a body as produced by a change of illumination. But the moment we consider the special influence on the red of the elements constituting our body, outlined by the well-known perspective with head invisible, we are at work in the domain of physiological psychology. We close our eyes, and the red together with the whole visible world disappears. There exists, thus, in the perspective field of every sense a portion which exercises on all the rest a different and more powerful influence than the rest upon one another. With this, however, all is said. In the light of this remark, we call all elements, in so far as we regard them as dependent on this special part (our body), sensations. That the world is our sensation, in this sense, cannot be questioned. But to make a system of conduct out of this provisional conception, and to abide its slaves, is as unnecessary for us as would be a similar course for a mathematician who, in varying a series of variables of a function which were previously assumed to be constant, or in interchanging the independent variables, finds his method to be the source of some very surprising ideas for him.

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... we certainly shall wonder how colors and tones which were such innermost parts of us could suddenly get lost in our physical world of atoms; how we could be suddenly surprised that something which outside us simply clicked and beat, in our heads should make light and music; and how we could ask whether matter can feel, that is to say, whether a mental symbol for a group of sensations can feel?"

- Ernst Mach (1838 - 1916)
Popular Scientific Lectures

Omni Inter-Accommodation

"In short, physics has discovered
That there are no solids.
No continuous surfaces.
No straight lines;
Only waves.
No things.
Only energy event complexes.
Only behaviors.
Only verbs.
Only relationships,
Which, once discovered,
Can be kept track of
and employed
By both the integral brain
And the extracorporeal computer
But may never be discovered originally
By those physically limited tools.

And the why-for and how-come

Of omni-interaccommodation

Of all the known family

Of weightless, eternal, generalized principles —

Thus far discovered

By scientific observation

To be metaphysically governing

In elegant mathematical order

All Scenario Universe’s

Interrelationships, transformations and transactions,

Without one principle contradicting another —

Are all and together

Absolute mystery."

- R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983)
Intuition

I Am an Atom in the Universe

"At this moment I have knowledge of,
in the living reality, that I am an atom in the universe
that has access to infinite possibilities of development.
These possibilities I want, gradually, to reveal.
...
Those granted the gift of seeing more deeply
can see beyond form, and concentrate on the
wondrous aspect hiding behind every form,
which is called life.
...
The more we discover the wonders of nature,
the more we become aware of ourselves."

- Hilma af Klint (1862 - 1944)

Beauty for Ashes

"It would be idle to deny that there is in autumn - the fall of the year - an irrepressible note of decadence; it is echoed in a whisper by the rustle of falling leaves. Beneficent in their life, for all the plant’s wealth is due to them, they are beautiful in their dying. They have worked themselves out, for it is hardly a metaphor to speak of the industry of the leaf; supplies are running short, the sun’s rays are fewer, the first shock of frost has come, and the leaves must die. But before they die they surrender to the plant all that they have still left that is worth having. There is a retreat of particles down the leaf-stalk into the stem. Thus the leaves fall virtually dead, almost empty except of waste. They are like empty houses from which the tenants have flitted, breaking, and burning some of the furnishings as they went, leaving little more than ashes on the hearth. But nature is ever generous of beauty, for the dying leaves have a literal ‘beauty for ashes.’ [...] Climb the hill above the village, and watch the sun set over the withering woods. Look out over the sea of gold, mingled with fire, and broken by dark rocks which you know to be pines. Accept the withering but see also the harvest-fields; even on the bare boughs there are buds. Hear the birds pass overhead, quite a Babel of good-byes, but many at least will return. Watch the seeds drift off the dead plants as the wind sighs along the hillside, and know that the race continues. Look death in the face, and see that he is kindly and wise. Wait till the cows are driven home lowing, till the sheep are herded off the exposed moorland, till the colors pale in the brief twilight, till the birds that remain cease to sing, till the lamps are lit in the cottage windows. Wait on till the curfew tolls, till the lights are put out one by one, - then know the rest and silence of autumn."

- J. Arthur Thomson (1861 - 1933)

Perpetual Becoming

"Evolution is never-ending. But who can perceive the secret processes of Heaven and Earth? Thus, things that are diminished here are augmented there; things that are made whole in one place suffer loss in another. Diminution and augmentation, fullness and decay are the constant accompaniments of life and death. They alternate in continuous succession, and we are not conscious of any interval. The whole body of spiritual substance progresses without a pause; the whole body of material substance suffers decay without intermission. But we do not perceive the process of completion, nor do we perceive the process of decay. Man, likewise, from birth to old age becomes something different every day in face and form, in wisdom and in conduct. His skin, his nails and his hair are continually growing and continually perishing. In infancy and childhood there is no stopping nor respite from change. Though imperceptible while it is going on, it may be verified afterwards if we wait."

- Lieh Tzŭ (c. 5th century BC)
Taoist Teachings from the Book of Lieh Tzŭ

Emergent Order

"The infinite variety of forms which we observe in the realm of organic life not only delight our senses with their beauty and diversity, but also excite our curiosity, in suggesting the problem of their origin and connection. [...] The unity of the organic structure, which expresses itself everywhere in the fundamental features of living things and in the chemical composition and constructive power of their plasm, is also seen in the laws of symmetry in their typical forms. [...] In the protists … the constructive force of the elementary organism, the individual cell, determines the symmetry of the typical form and the special form of its supplementation; but in the histons … it is the plasticity of the tissue, made up of a number of socially combined cells, that determines this. [...] All the various fundamental forms that can be distinguished and defined mathematically are found realized in the graceful flinty skeletons of these unicellular sea-dwelling protozoa. [...] The great majority of organic bodies show a certain regularity both in their outer configuration and the construction of their various parts, which we may call ‘symmetry’ in the wider sense of the word. [...] These two branches of investigation have the common aim of detecting an ideal law of symmetry in the bodies they deal with and expressing this in a definite mathematical formula."

- Ernst Haeckel (1834 - 1919)
The Wonders of Life

Borrowed Ascent

"The growth of climbers, even more than all other plants, is upward towards the light. In the shade of the forest they rarely or never flower, and seldom even produce foliage; but when they have reached the summit of the tree that supports them, they expand under the genial influence of light and air, and often cover their foster-parent with blossoms not its own.

Here, as a rule, the climber’s growth would cease; but the time comes when the supporting tree rots and falls, and the creeper comes with it in torn and tangled masses to the ground. But though its foster-parent is dead it has itself received no permanent injury, but shoots out again till it finds a fresh support, mounts another tree, and again puts forth its leaves and flowers.
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Mr. Darwin has now shown us the marvelous interdependence of every part of nature. Not only is each organism necessarily related to and affected by all things, living and dead, that surround it ... [The the natural world is a system of] complex relations and mutual interdependence, which link together every animal and vegetable form … into one grand organic whole."

- Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913)

Passing Forms

"How sensible I am to the restless change which rules the world. To appear, and to vanish—there is the biography of all individuals, whatever may be the length of the cycle of existence which they describe, and the drama of the universe is nothing more. All life is the shadow of a smoke-wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyph traced for an instant in the sand, and effaced a moment afterward by a breath of wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface of the great river of being—an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But this nothing is, however, the symbol of the universal being, and this passing bubble is the epitome of the history of the world."

- Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821 - 1881)

Spiritual Correspondences

"The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world...
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...all things that have existence in nature … are correspondences...
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...nothing can subsist from itself."

- Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 - 1772)
Heaven and Hell

Passing Forms

"I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones,
‘To Him we shall return.’"

- Rumi (1207 - 1273)