In so far as the statements of geometry speak about reality, they are not certain, and in so far as they are certain, they do not ...speak about reality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
the moderate Aristotelian city Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry... And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience, And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematis...ing the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray's Anatomy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... geometry became a symbol for human relations, except that it was better, because in geometry things never go bad. If certain t...hings occur, if certain lines meet, an angle is born. You cannot fail. It's not going to fail; it is eternal. I found in rules of mathematics a peace and a trust that I could not place in human beings. This sublimation was total and remained total. Thus, I'm able to avoid or manipulate or process pain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since childhood, I have been enchanted by the fact and the symbolism of the right hand and the left--the one the doer, the other t...he dreamer. The right is order and lawfulness, le droit. Its beauties are those of geometry and taut implication. Reaching for knowledge with the right hand is science. Yet to say only that much of science is to overlook one of its excitements, for the great hypotheses of science are gifts carried in the right hand. Of the left hand we say that it is awkward and, while it has been proposed that art students can seduce their proper hand to more expressiveness by drawing first with the left, we nonetheless suspect this function. The French speak of the illegitimate descendent as being à main gauche, and, though the heart is virtually at the center of the thoracic cavity, we listen for it on the left. Sentiment, intuition, bastardy. And should we say that reaching for knowledge with the left hand is art? Again it is not enough, for as surely as the recital of a daydream differs from the well-wrought tale, there is a barrier between undisciplined fantasy and art. To climb the barrier requires a right hand adept at technique and artifice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these ext...remes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To me, however, the question of the times resolved itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live? We a...re incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their opposition. We can only obey our own polarity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measu...res are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature play through his mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »