All the scientists hope to do is describe the universe mathematically, predict it, and maybe control it. The philosopher, by contr...ast, seems unbecomingly ambitious. He wants to understand the universe; to get behind phenomena and operation and solve the logically prior riddles of being, knowledge, and value. But the artist, and in particular the novelist, in his essence wishes neither to explain nor to control nor to understand the universe. He wants to make one of his own, and may even aspire to make it more orderly, meaningful, beautiful, and interesting than the one God turned out. What's more, in the opinion of many readers of literature, he sometimes succeeds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory--of the absol...ute and of the particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All beauties contain, like all possible phenomena, something eternal and something transitory,--something absolute and something p...articular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction skimmed from the common surface of different sorts of beauty. The particular element of each beauty comes from the emotions, and as we each have our own particular emotions, so we have our beauty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Predictions usually deal with events--who will win an election, whether or not a country will go to war, the specification of a ne...w invention; they center on decisions. Yet such predictions, while possible, cannot be formalized, i.e. made subject to rules. The prediction of events is inherently difficult. Events are the intersect of social vectors (interests, forces, pressures, and the like). While one can to some extent assess the strength of these vectors individually, one would need a "social physics" to predict the exact crosspoints where decisions and forces combine.... Forecasting is possible where there are regularities and recurrences of phenomena (these are rare), of where there are persisting trends whose direction, if not exact trajectory, can be plotted with statistical time-series or be formulated as historical tendencies. Necessarily, therefore, one deals with probabili ties and an array of possible projections. But the limitations of forecasting are also evident. The further one reaches ahead in time with a set of forecasts, the greater the margin for error, since the fan of the projections widens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of ...the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to "dress up like daddy."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the great natural phenomena is the way in which a tube of toothpaste suddenly empties itself when it hears that you are pla...nning a trip, so that when you come to pack it is just a twisted shell of its former self, with not even a cubic millimeter left to be squeezed out.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It goes without saying that religion thus conceived is the opposite of magic. The latter is essentially selfish, the former admits... of and often even demands disinterestedness. The one claims to force the compliance of nature, the other implores the favor of a god. Above all, magic works in an environment which is semi-physical and semi-moral--the magician, at all events is not dealing with a person; whereas on the contrary it is from the god's personality that religion draws its greatest efficacy. Granted that primitive intelligence thinks it perceives around it, in phenomena and in events, elements of personality rather than complete personalities, religion, as we have just understood it, will ultimately reinforce these elements to the extent of completely personifying them; whereas magic looks upon them as debased, dissolved, as it were, in a material world in which their efficacy can be tapped.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Animals are ever so psychic. There are some people who just can't come in here.... The cats particularly. They seem to know. You c...an fool everybody, but landy M deary-me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right, if you know what I mean.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which it is intended to express, whether verbally or in writing, or in any other way, t...he real process of thought. Thought's dictation, free from any control by the reason, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »