It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themsel...ves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after van Gogh's stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I look for the new Teacher that shall follow so far those shining laws that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their ro...unding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of the heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Under equal conditions, the feminine psyche is closer to potential contraction than the masculine; for the simple reason that the ...woman has a more centripetal, integrated, and elastic mind. As we noted, the function charged with giving the mind its structure and cohesion is the attention. A highly unified mind presupposes a highly concentrated manner of attention. One could say that the feminine mind tends to have a single axis of attention, which at each phase of her life is set toward one thing alone.... In contrast to the concentric structure of the feminine mind there are always epicenters in that of the man. The more masculine one is, in a spiritual sense, the more his mind is disjointed in separate compartments. One part of us is deeply dedicated to politics or business, while another devotes itself to intellectual curiosity and another to sexual pleasure. There is lacking, then, a tendency toward one unified gravitation of the attention. In fact, the contrary predominates, which leads to dissociation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular nigh...t, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendour and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details.... But in history the matter is far otherwise.... Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both Leonardo and Newton had fecund imaginations from which poured forth a stream of discoveries, gadgets, engineering marvels, an...d farsighted contrivances. Newton invented the reflecting telescope, Leonardo the helicopter; Newton, the binomial theorem, Leonardo, the parachute, submarine, and tank. Newton's discover ies were expressed in equations. Leonardo's in drawings. Leonardo made many contributions to science, both in theory and application, but he is principally featured in art history classes. Newton wrote lengthy exegeses on alchemy, the mysteries of the Trinity, and the authority of the Bible, yet he is considered history's premier physicist.... Each man transformed the science of his day from one that held an essentially static view of the universe into one that included motion. The subject of motion consumed them both and their greatest contributions to humankind grew out of an intense curiosity about it. Newton's ambitious desire to explain celes tial movements resulted in the formulation of his three famous laws of motion and his discovery of the inverse square law of gravitation. Leonardo's compelling studies of the muscular movements of men and horses, exemplified in his cartoons for his Battle of Anghiari, are the most detailed anatomical descriptions of men and animals in motion that have ever been produced.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Knowledge, like matter, [my father] would affirm, was divisible in infinitum;Mthat the grains and scruples were as much a part of ...it, as the gravitation of the whole world.--In a word, he would say, error was error,--no matter where it fell,--whether in a fraction,--or a pound,--'twas alike fatal to truth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
History cannot, like physical science, deduce causal laws of general application. All attempts have failed to discover laws of "ca...use and effect" which are certain to repeat themselves in the institutions and affairs of men. The law of gravitation may be scientifically proved because it is universal and simple. But the historical law that starvation brings on revolt is not proved; indeed the opposite statement, that starvation leads to abject submission, is equally true in the light of past events. You cannot so completely isolate any historical event from its circumstances as to be able to deduce from it a law of general application. Only politicians adorning their speeches with historical arguments have this power; and even they never agree. An historical event cannot be isolated from its circumstances, any more than the onion from its skins, because an event is itself nothing but a set of circumstances, none of which will ever recur.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account f...or its origin. At last we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which... it lives on as a limiting case.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »