Ethereal Substances

"To hear never-heard sounds,
To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible
Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances
That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul."

- Dejan Stojanović (1959 - )

Atoms of Space

"It all starts from the idea that space—like matter—is made of discrete elements. And that the structure of space and everything in it is just defined by the network of relations between these elements—that we might call atoms of space. It’s very elegant—but deeply abstract ... And what we’re seeing here is the emergence of space and everything in it by the successive application of very simple computational rules. And, remember, those dots are not atoms in any existing space. They’re atoms of space—that are getting put together to make space. And, yes, if we kept going long enough, we could build our whole universe this way ... all this is built from pure computation. But like fluid mechanics emerging from molecules, what emerges here is spacetime—and Einstein’s equations for gravity ... Our computational rules can inevitably be applied in many ways, each defining a different thread of time—a different path of history—that can branch and merge ... But as observers embedded in this universe, we’re branching and merging too. And it turns out that quantum mechanics emerges as the story of how branching minds perceive a branching universe."

- Stephen Wolfram (1959 - )
How to Think Computationally about AI, the Universe and Everything

Uncanny Witchery

"November — with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes — days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines."

- Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874 - 1942)

The Fundamental Field

"Since the various aspects of [cymatics] are due to vibration, we are confronted with a spectrum which reveals patterned, figurate formations at one pole and kinetic-dynamic processes at the other, the whole being generated and sustained by its essential periodicity. These aspects however, are not separate entities but are derived from the vibrational phenomenon in which they appear in their "unitariness". Even though one or the other may predominate in this or that phenomenon, we invariably find these three elements present. In other words, the series we have formulated is in reality confluent in homogeneous activity. It is not that we have configuration here and organized pattern there, but that every effect of vibration bears the signature of configuration, movement and a play of forces. We can, so to speak, melt down our spectrum and observe the action of its various categories as a continuous play in one and the same entity. If we wish to describe this single entity, we can say this: there are always figurate and patterned elements in a vibrational process and a vibrational effect, but there are also kinetic and dynamic elements; the whole is of a periodic nature and it is this periodicity which generates and sustains everything. The three fields - the periodic as the fundamental field with the two poles of figure and dynamics - invariably appear as one. They are inconceivable without each other. It is quite out of the question to take away the one or the other; nothing can be abstracted without the whole ceasing to exist."

- Hans Jenny (1904 - 1972)
Cymatics

Interpenetration

"Deep interlock and ambiguity are other strong ways of connecting. Forms interpenetrate to link together. An analogy comes from fractals, where crinkled lines tend to fill portions of space, and surfaces grow with accretions. Two regions can interpenetrate at a semi-permeable interface, which enables a transition from one region to another. There is ambiguity as to which side of the interface one belongs while inside the transition region, and this is a good feature. Abrupt transitions such as a clean straight line, however, do not bind objects coming up to each other."

- Nikos Salingaros (1952 - )
Unified Architectural Theory: Form, Language, Complexity 

Inner Sound

"Form itself,
even if completely abstract...
...has its own inner sound."

- Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)

Morphic Resonance

"The sudden appearance of all the Laws of Nature is as untestable as Platonic metaphysics or theology. Why should we assume that all the Laws of Nature were already present at the instant of the Big Bang, like a cosmic Napoleonic code? Perhaps some of them, such as those that govern protein crystals, or brains, came into being when protein crystals or brains first arose. The preexistence of these laws cannot possibly be tested before the emergence of the phenomena they govern."

- Rupert Sheldrake (1942 - )
Morphic Resonance

Beyond the Grasp of The Imagination

"Let us now endeavor to conceive what Matter must be, when, or if, in its absolute extreme of Simplicity. Here the Reason flies at once to Imparticularity - to a particle - to one particle - a particle of one kind of one character - of one nature of one size of one form - a particle, therefore, ‘without form and void’ - a particle positively a particle at all points a particle absolutely unique, individual, undivided, and not indivisible only because He who created it, by dint of his Will, can by an infinitely less energetic exercise of the same Will, as a matter of course, divide it ... Oneness, then, is all that I predicate of the originally created Matter; but I propose to show that this Oneness is a principle abundantly sufficient to account for the constitution, the existing phænomena and the plainly inevitable annihilation of at least the material Universe.

...

By Him, then, existing as Spirit, let us content ourselves, to-night, with supposing to have been created, or made out of Nothing, by dint of his Volition—at some point of Space which we will take as a centre - at some period into which we do not pretend to inquire, but at all events immensely remote - by Him, then again, let us suppose to have been created what? … An intuition altogether irresistible, although inexpressible, forces me to the conclusion that what God originally created - that Matter which, by dint of his Volition, he first made from his Spirit, or from Nihility, could have been nothing but Matter in its utmost conceivable state of Simplicity.

...

Had we discovered, simply, that each atom tended to some one favorite point - to some especially attractive atom - we should still have fallen upon a discovery which, in itself, would have sufficed to overwhelm the mind: but what is it that we are actually called upon to comprehend? That each atom attracts - sympathizes with the most delicate movements of every other atom, and with each and with all at the same time, and forever, and according to a determinate law of which the complexity, even considered by itself solely, is utterly beyond the grasp of the imagination of man."

- Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

Eureka: A Prose Poem

Autumn Tree

"Every leaf speaks bliss to me,
fluttering from the autumn tree."

- Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848)

Electric Universe

"The watcher’s eyes are likely to swivel forward in a sequence of stately turns as the screen’s pixel glows: each quarter-ounce mass of eyeball tugged by six flat muscles, in a glissando slide within the slippery fat lining the orbital cavity. The eye blinks, the widened pupils are in position, and the incoming electromagnetic waves roar in. Ripping through the thin layer of the cornea, they decelerate slightly, with their outermost edges forming a nearly flat plane as they travel inward, carrying the as-yet-undetected signal from the screen deep into the waiting human. The waves continue through the liquid of the aqueous humor and on to the gaping hole of the pupil. The human may have squinted to avoid the glare, but human reflexes work at the rate of slow thousandths of a second and are no match for these racing intruders. The pupil is crossed without obstruction. The stiff lens just below focuses the incoming waves even more, sending them into the inland sea of the jellylike vitreous humor deeper down in the eye. A very few of the incoming electric waves explode against the organic molecules in their way, but most simply whirl through those soft biological barriers and continue straight down, piercing the innermost wrapping of the eyeball, till they reach the end-point of their journey: the fragile, stalklike projection from the living brain known as the retina. And deep inside there, in the dark, barely slowed from their original 670 million mph, the waves splatter into the ancient, moist blood vessels and cell membranes, and something unexpected happens. An electric current switches on."

- David Bodanis, Electric Universe