Skeleton of Truth

"So there it is in words
Precise
And if you read between the lines
You will find nothing there
For that is the discipline I ask
Not more, not less
Not the world as it is
Not ought to be –
Only the precision
The skeleton of truth
I do not dabble in emotions
Hint at implications
Evoke the ghosts of old forgotten creeds.
All that is for the preacher
The hypnotist, therapist and missionary
They will come after me
And use the little that I said
To bait more traps
For those who cannot bear
The lonely
Skeleton
of Truth"

- Gregory Bateson (1904 - 1980) and Mary Catherine Bateson (1939 - 2021)

Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred

Abstract ETCs

"Irrespective of the possibility that the Galileo Project may discover additional, or even extraordinary evidence for ETCs [Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations], at a minimum the Galileo Project will gather rich data sets that may foster the discovery of — or better scientific explanations for — novel interstellar objects with anomalous properties, and for potential new natural atmospheric phenomena, or in some instances terrestrial technology explanations for many of the presently inexplicable UAP."

- Galileo Project, Harvard University

The Simplest Thing

 "Even the simplest thing
is as important as the
things we consider important.
I consider a fallen leaf as
important as the Grand Canyon.
It's all important;

it's all connected.
One couldn't be
without the other."

- Ruth Bernhard (1905 - 2006)

Unclouded by Preconceived Ideas

"Watching as things arrange
themselves in the changing light,
the photographer with unobstructed
vision sees them as they are.
Appropriate images appear without
struggle, moving with the flow of light
like leaves in a stream,
to be immediately reflected in
a mind unclouded by
preconceived ideas."

- Benjamin Hoff (1946 - )

Chain of Connection

"In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments."

- Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859)
Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe

Admiring Light's Beauty

"Look at light and admire its beauty.
Close your eyes, and then look again:
what you saw is no longer there;
and what you will see later is not yet. "

- Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)

Improvisational Nature

"Perhaps the answers to these questions require fundamental advances at the interface of physics, the arts, and neuroscience. The deep links between musical form and physical form may be unveiled by understanding how both kinds of knowledge-music and physics-arise together in human brains and nowhere else. After all, brains, regardless of how mysterious they are, are the most complex structures in the universe.

...

It is amusing to speculate that the reason why music has the ability to move us so deeply is that it is an auditory allusion to our basic connection to the universe. If our cosmic origins are seated in sound patterns, is it too far-fetched to think that music viscerally enables us to tap into those origins?

...

What if there were a vibrational pattern
in the early universe capable of
generating the current complex
structure that we live in,
the complex structures that we are?
And what if these structures
had an improvisational nature."

- Stephon Alexander (1971 - )
The Jazz of Physics