Between Something and Nothing

“Now, I am going to tell you something.

I don’t know what heading it comes under, 

and whether or not it is relevant here,

but it must be relevant at some point. 

It is not anything new, but I would like to say it. 

There is a beginning. There is no beginning of that beginning. 

There is no beginning of that no beginning of beginning.

 There is something. There is nothing. 

There is something before the beginning of something and nothing, 

and something before that. Suddenly there is something and nothing. 

But between something and nothing, 

I still don’t really know which is something and which is nothing.  

Now, I’ve just said something, 

but I don’t really know whether I’ve said anything or not.” 

- Chuang-Tzu (4th century BC)

Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters

Expressions of Deep Order

"If biologists have ignored self-organization, it is not because self-ordering is not pervasive and profound. It is because we biologists have yet to understand how to think about systems governed simultaneously by two sources of order, Yet who seeing the snowflake, who seeing simple lipid molecules cast adrift in water forming themselves into cell-like hollow lipid vesicles, who seeing the potential for the crystallization of life in swarms of reacting molecules, who seeing the stunning order for free in networks linking tens upon tens of thousands of variables, can fail to entertain a central thought: if ever we are to attain a final theory in biology, we will surely, surely have to understand the commingling of self-organization and selection. We will have to see that we are the natural expressions of a deeper order. Ultimately, we will discover in our creation myth that we are expected after all."

- Stuart Kauffman

(1939 - )

Limited in Time and Space

“A human being is part of the 

whole called by us a universe,

a part limited in time and space. 

He experiences himself, 

his thoughts and his feelings,

as something separate from the rest,

a kind of optical delusion 

of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us;

it restricts us to our personal decisions and our

affections to a few persons nearest to us. 

Our task must be to free 

ourselves from this prison by

widening our circle of 

compassion to embrace

all living creatures and the 

whole of nature of its beauty.” 

- Albert Einstein

(1879 - 1955)

Perception, Structure, Order

"When we observe something, then we reach for it; we move through space, touch things, feel their surfaces and contours. And our perception structures and orders the information given by things into determinable forms. We understand because this structuring and ordering is a part of our relationship with reality. Without order we couldn’t understand at all. Thus in my opinion the world is not raw material; it is already ordered merely by being observed.

Order is a necessary condition for anything the human mind is to understand. Arrangements such as the layout of a city or building, a set of tools, a display of merchandise, the verbal exposition of facts or ideas, or a painting or piece of music are called orderly when an observer or listener can grasp their overall structure and the ramification of the structure in some detail. Order makes it possible to focus on what is alike and what is different, what belongs together and what is segregated. When nothing superfluous is included and nothing indispensable left out, one can understand the interrelation of the whole and its parts, as well as the hierarchic scale of importance and power by which some structural features are dominant, others subordinate."

- Rudolf Arnheim

(1904 - 2007)

What is an Object?

“...Consider an object ...  what is an object? 

Philosophers are always saying, 

'Well, just take a chair for example.' 

The moment they say that, you know they 

do not know what they are talking about any more. 

What is a chair? 

Well, a chair is a certain thing over there ... 

Certain? How certain?

 The atoms are evaporating from it 

from time to time - not many atoms,

 but a few - dirt falls on it and 

gets dissolved in the paint; 

so to define a chair precisely, 

to say exactly which atoms are chair,

 and which atoms are air, or which atoms are dirt, 

or which atoms are paint that

 belongs to the chair is impossible. 

So the mass of a chair can be defined only approximately.

 In the same way, to define the mass of a single object is impossible,

 because there are not any single, left-alone objects in the world.”

- Richard Feynman

(1918 - 1988)

Arbitrary Slices

“They will say: ‘Well, it’s a hexagon,’ but it isn’t a hexagon, and a rectangle which isn’t a rectangle. By describing what it nearly is but isn’t quite, they get a sort of description out. The division into parts is of course purely arbitrary. They could have sliced it anyway they wanted.”

- Gregory Bateson (1904 - 1980)

An Ecology of Mind

That It Is

"The mystical is not

how the world is,

but that it is."

- Ludwig Wittgenstein

(1889 - 1951)

To Dream the World

"We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false."

- Jorge Luis Borges

(1899 - 1986)

Chasing Ideas

“The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.

It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray. 

At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing. But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.”

- Terence McKenna

(1946 - 2000)

A Sea Boundless and Measureless

“The hidden well-spring of your soul

must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;

And the treasure of your infinite depths

would be revealed to your eyes.

But let there be no scales to

weigh your unknown treasure;

And seek not the depths of your

knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, 'I have found the truth,'

but rather, 'I have found a truth.'

Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.'

Say rather, 'I have met the soul

walking upon my path.'

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line,

neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself,

like a lotus of countless petals.” 

- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

The Prophet