Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Vast Compass of the Ocean


“People travel to wonder 
at the height of the mountains, 
at the huge waves of the seas,
at the long course of the rivers,
at the vast compass of the ocean,
at the circular motion of the stars,
and yet they pass by themselves 
without wondering. ”

(354 - 430)

Monday, April 11, 2016

Time, Process, and Eternity


"Happy is the man who can recognize in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.

Thus ought man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible, nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it."

(1831 - 1879)

Sunday, April 10, 2016

A Participatory Universe


"Spacetime in the prequantum dispensation was a great record parchment. This sheet, this continuum, this carrier of all that is, was and shall be, had its definite structure with its curves, waves and ripples; and on this great page every event, like a glued down grain of sand, had its determinate place. In this frozen picture a far-reaching modification is forced by the quantum. What we have the right to say of past spacetime, and past events, is decided by choices – of what measurements to carry out – made in the near past and now. The phenomena called into being by these decisions reach backward in time in their consequences ... back even to the earliest days of the universe. Registering equipment operating in the here and now has an undeniable part in bringing about that which appears to have happened. Useful as it is under everyday circumstances to say that the world exists “out there” independent of us, that view can no longer be upheld. There is a strange sense in which this is a 'participatory universe'."

(1911 - 2008)

Saturday, April 09, 2016

Light


"I almost never set out
to photograph a landscape,
nor do I think of my camera
as a means of recording a mountain
or an animal unless I absolutely
need a 'record shot'.
My first thought
is always of light."

(1940 - 2002)

Thursday, April 07, 2016

Description of Reality


"Words and ideas
are a description of reality,
silence is a negation of reality.
What is the reality itself?"

(1931 - 2009)

Wednesday, April 06, 2016

Temporarily Identifiable Wiggles


“A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy.”

(1915 - 1973)

Tuesday, April 05, 2016

Swirls, Whorls, and Tendrils


"Big whorls have little whorls
Which feed on their velocity,
And little whorls have lesser whorls
And so on to viscosity."

- Lewis Fry Richardson (1881 - 1953)

Postscript: additional images from this series