Nights of Silk and Tears-Ernesto Cortazar
Emile Vernon Painting
Science & the aesthetic sense
I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken
Richard P. Feynman
a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up
a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll
agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful
this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and
it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind
of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is
available to other people and to me too, I believe.
Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as
he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.
At the same time, I see much more about the flower than
he sees. I could imagine the cells in there,
the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty.
I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one
centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions,
the inner structure, also the processes.
The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order
to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting;
it means that insects can see the color. It adds
a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in
the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of
interesting questions which the science knowledge
only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe
of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.
Two Kinds of Intelligence
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
This second knowing is a fountainhead
Rumi
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
from within you, moving out.
On Teaching
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple,
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of
And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell
And even as each one of you stands alone in God's
Khalil Gibran
lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather
of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house
of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold
of your own mind.
space, but he cannot give you his understanding.
The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in
all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests
the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.
of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot
conduct you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not
its wings to another man.
knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his
knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.
Lovely and enchanting video, and the words on this page say volumes...Thanks so much..
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