Beauty

"One may ask the question as to the extent to which the quest for beauty is an aim in the pursuit of science... It is, indeed, an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature. What is intelligible is also beautiful…Beauty is that to what the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound."

- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

(1910 - 1995)

Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science

Grey Commotion of Mind

"I do nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the only thing worth doing. There is an ecstasy of accidia — will-less in a grey tumult of idées obscures. There is an end to the temptation of light, its polite scorchings & consolations. It is good for children & insects. There is an end of making up one's mind, like a pound of tea, an end of patting the butter of consciousness into opinions. The real consciousness is the chaos, a grey commotion of mind, with no premises or conclusions or problems or solutions or cases or judgments."

-  Samuel Beckett (1906 - 1989)

The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 1, 1929-1940

Form

"No permanence is ours;

we are a wave

That flows to fit

whatever form it finds:

Through night or day,

cathedral or the cave

We pass forever,

craving form that binds."

-  Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)

Shadows

"Henceforth space by itself,

and time by itself,

are doomed to fade away

into mere shadows,

and only a kind of union

of the two will preserve

an independent reality."

- Hermann Minkowski (1864 - 1909)

Sense of Unity

"I think nothing can be compared to the Hills for the elevation of spirit, and peace of mind...All aspects of nature lead to elevation and knowledge when you once have an idea. The commonplace growth of weeds beneath a pile of refuse appear to shine with the divine light when you know the meaning of the world and sense of unity of all things. In a great city the buildings, the machinery, the works of art, everything produced by man, are naught but the material expression of ideas. We look on lines and forms and masses of what we call matter, and we know these things existed in the mind of man in the form of ideas before they were expressed in the physical world in the form of matter. I look on the lines and forms of the mountains and all other aspects of nature as if they were but the vast expression of ideas within the Cosmic Mind, if such it can be called. Without that outlook, I am assured there is nothing in the Universe that is not the expression of mind or of life. The sense of unity is enormously increased."

- Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984)

Letter to Virginia Best, Sep 22, 1925
Ansel Adams: Letters, 1916 - 1984

Intimate Presence

"Beginning with these harmonies of the universe that could in some manner be expressed in mathematical equations, an intense scientific mediation on the structure and functioning of the universe was begun by western scientists some centuries ago. Among the insights attained by this meditation has been a sense of the curvature of the universe whereby all things are held together in their intimate presence to each other. This bonding is what makes the universe what it is, not a collection of disparate objects but an intimate presence of all things to each other, each thing sustained in its being by everything else...That the universe is a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects is the central commitment of the Ecozoic. Existence itself is derived from and sustained by this intimacy of each being with every other being of the universe."

- Brian Swimme (1950 - ) and Thomas Berry (1914 - 2009)

The Universe Story

Reinvigoration

"If we analyze the operations of scenes of beauty upon the mind, and consider the intimate relation of the mind upon the nervous system and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which constantly occur between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration which results from such scenes is readily comprehended. . . . The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system."

- Frederick Law Olmsted (1822 - 1903)