Tonic of Wildness

"We need the tonic of wildness...
At the same time that we are earnest
to explore and learn all things,
we require that all things
be mysterious and unexplorable,
that land and sea be indefinitely wild,
unsurveyed and unfathomed
by us because unfathomable.
We can never have
enough of nature."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)

Shapes, Lines, Curves, and Solids

"The world of shapes, lines, curves, and solids is as varied as the world of numbers, and it is only our long-satisfied possession of Euclidean geometry that offers us the impression, or the illusion, that it has, that world, already been encompassed in a manageable intellectual structure. The lineaments of that structure are well known: as in the rest of life, something is given and something is gotten; but the logic behind those lineaments is apt to pass unnoticed, and it is the logic that controls the system."

- David Berlinski (1942 - ) 

Primordial Purity

"The master replied: Tsogyal, the
empty essence of your awareness
is not created by anyone.
Without causes and conditions,
it is originally present.
Don't try to change
or alter awareness.
Let it remain exactly as it is!
Thus you will be free
from straying and awaken
within the state of
primordial purity."

- Padmasambhava (c. 8th - 9th centuries)
Advice from the Lotus-Born

Geometric Patterns

"Every place is given its
character by certain patterns of
events that keep on happening there.
These patterns of events
are locked in with certain
geometric patterns in the space.
...
"I believe that all centers
that appear in space -
whether they originate in biology,
in physical forces, in pure geometry,
in color - are alike simply in that
 they all animate space.
 It is this animated space that
has its functional effect
 upon the world, that determines
 the way things work, that governs
 the presence of harmony and life.
...
"All space and matter,
organic or inorganic,
has some degree of life in it,
and matter/space is more alive
or less alive according to
its structure and arrangement."

- Christopher Alexander (1936 - 2022)

Beauty Everywhere

"A line is a dot that went for a walk."
- Paul Klee (1879 - 1940)

"Try to walk as much as you can,
and keep your love for nature,
for that is the true way to learn
to understand art more and more.
Painters understand nature and
love her and teach us to see her.
If one really loves nature,
one can find beauty everywhere."
- Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

"The whole world is an

art gallery when you're mindful.
There are beautiful things
everywhere and they're free."
- Charles Tart (1937 - )

Form of Forms

"Thought is the thought of thought.
Tranquil brightness.
The soul is in a manner all that is:
the soul is the form of forms.
Tranquility sudden, vast,
candescent: form of forms."

- James Joyce (1882 - 1941) 

Electromagnetic Phenomena

"We shall never know what Faraday would have achieved had he mastered mathematics, but, paradoxically, his ignorance may have been an advantage. It led him to derive his theories entirely from experimental observation rather than to deduce them from mathematical models. Over time, this approach gave him a deep-seated intuition into electromagnetic phenomena. It enabled him to ask questions that had not occurred to others, to devise experiments that no one else had thought of, and to see possibilities that others had missed. He thought boldly but would never commit himself to an opinion until it had withstood the most rigorous experimental testing. As he explained in a letter to Ampère: I am unfortunate in a want to mathematical knowledge and the power of entering with facility any abstract reasoning. I am obliged to feel my way by facts placed closely together."

-  Nancy Forbes (1952 - 2021)
Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field