Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Arbitrary Slices


“They will say: ‘Well, it’s a hexagon,’ but it isn’t a hexagon, and a rectangle which isn’t a rectangle. By describing what it nearly is but isn’t quite, they get a sort of description out. The division into parts is of course purely arbitrary. They could have sliced it anyway they wanted.”

- Gregory Bateson (1904 - 1980)

Monday, February 15, 2016

Friday, February 12, 2016

To Dream the World


"We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false."

(1899 - 1986)

Chasing Ideas


“The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.

It is the night sea journey, the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets, and you let these nets down - sometimes, something tears through them that leaves them in shreds and you just row for shore, and put your head under your bed and pray. 

At other times what slips through are the minutiae, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea chasing. But, sometimes, you can actually bring home something that is food, food for the human community that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.”

(1946 - 2000)

Thursday, February 11, 2016

A Sea Boundless and Measureless


“The hidden well-spring of your soul
must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths
would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to
weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your
knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.
Say not, 'I have found the truth,'
but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.'
Say rather, 'I have met the soul
walking upon my path.'
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line,
neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself,
like a lotus of countless petals.” 

- Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Stasis, Rhythm, and Aesthetics


"Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty." 

"What is that exactly?", asked Lynch.

"Rhythm," said Stephen, "is the first formal esthetic relation of part to part in any esthetic whole or of an aesthetic whole to its part or parts or of any part to the aesthetic whole of which it is a part."

- James Joyce, (1882 - 1941)

Tuesday, February 09, 2016

Bildung , Gestalten, and Metamorphosis


“If we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing at rest or defined—everything is in a flux of continual motion. This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use of the word Bildung [formation] to describe the end product and what is in process of production as well…. When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately into a new one.

...We will see the entire plant world, for example, as a vast sea which is as necessary to the existence of individual insects as the oceans and river are to the existence of individual fish, and we will observe that an enormous number of living creatures are born and nourished in this ocean of plants. Ultimately we will see the whole world of animals as a great element in which one species is created or at least sustained, by and through another. We will no longer think of connections and relationships in terms of purpose and intention; we will progress in knowledge alone through seeing how formative nature expresses itself from all sides and in all directions.

...Among the objects we will find many different forms of existence and modes of change, a variety of relationships livingly interwoven; in ourselves, on the other hand, a potential for infinite growth through constant adaptation of our sensibilities and judgment to new ways of acquiring knowledge and responding with action."

(1749 - 1832)