What is Order?

“What is order? 

We know that everything in

the world around us is governed

by an immense orderliness. 

We experience order

every time we take a walk.

The grass, the sky,

the leaves on the trees,

the flowing water in the river,

the windows in the houses along the street,

all of it is immensely orderly. 

It is this order which makes

us gasp when we take our walk.

It is the changing

arrangement of the sky,

the clouds, the flowers, leaves,

the faces round about

us, the order, the dazzling

geometrical coherence, together

with its meaning in our minds. 

But this geometry which means

so much, which makes us feel

the presence of order so clearly,

we do not have a language for it.”   

- Christopher Alexander

(1936 - )

Poetry, Prophecy, and Religion

“The greatest thing a human soul 

ever does in this world is

see something and tell what 

he saw in a plain way.

Hundreds of people can talk 

for one who can think.

But thousands can think for

 one who can see.

To see is poetry, prophecy, 

and religion, all in one.” 

- John Ruskin

(1819 – 1900)

Direct Experience

“To the vast majority of people 

a photograph is an

image of something within 

their direct experience:

a more-or-less factual reality.

It is difficult for them 

to realize that the

photograph can be the source 

of experience, as well as the

reflection of spiritual awareness 

of the world and of self.” 

- Ansel Adams

(1902 - 1984)

Complete Consciousness

"Complete consciousness is present

to us at all times, every moment, 

but we reject it in order to 

maintain our prejudices, our ideas. 

But sooner or later we will 

relinquish our ideas in favor of response... 

Life is consciousness of life itself."

- Agnes Martin

(1912 - 2004)

Creating Distinctions

“In the sky, there is

no distinction of east and west;

people create distinctions

out of their own minds

and then believe them to be true.” 

- Gautama Siddharta

(563-483 B.C.)

Music of the Eyes

"Perhaps art is just taking out

what you don't like

and putting in what you do.

There is no such thing 

as Abstraction. 

It is extraction, 

gravitation toward a 

certain direction... 

It is nearer to music, 

not the music of the ears, 

just the music of the eyes."

- Arthur Dove

(1880 - 1946)

Perspectives and Realities

"What prohibits me from treating my perception as an intellectual act is that an intellectual act would grasp the object either as possible or as necessary. But in perception it is 'real'; it is given as the infinite sum of an indefinite series of perspectival views in each of which the object is given but in none of which is it given exhaustively."

- Maurice Merleau-Ponty

(1908 - 1961)

Edge of the Sea

"The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the senses of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time that I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings...

There is a common thread that links these scenes and memories–the spectacle of life in all its varied manifestation as it appeared, evolved and sometimes died out. Underlying the beauty if the spectacle there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of that meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to this riddle is hidden.

It sends us back to the edge of the sea, where the drama of life played its first scene on earth and perhaps even its prelude; where the forces of evolution are at work today, as they have been since the appearance of what we know as life, and where the spectacle of living creatures faced by the cosmic realities of their world is crystal clear." 

- Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)

The Edge of the Sea

Feeling of Wonder

"This oceanic feeling of wonder

is the common source of 

religious mysticism,

of pure science and

art for art's sake." 

- Arthur Koestler (1905 - 1983)

Goethian Wholeness

"In following Goethe's approach to scientific knowledge, one finds that the wholeness of the phenomenon is intensive. The experience is one of entering into a dimension that is the phenomenon, not behind or beyond it, but which is not visible at first. It is perceived through the mind, when the mind functions as an organ of perception instead of the medium of logical thought. Whereas mathematical science begins by transforming the contents of sensory perception into quantitative values and establishing a relationship between them, Goethe looked for a relationship between the perceptual elements that left the contents of perception unchanged. He tried to see these elements themselves holistically instead of replacing them by a relationship analytically. Ernst Cassirer said, 'the mathematical formula strives to make the phenomena calculable, that of Goethe to make them visible."

- Henri Bortoft (1938 - 2012)

The Wholeness of Nature