Both art and physics are unique forms of language. Each has a specialized lexicon of symbols that is used in a distinctive syntax.... Their very different and specific contexts obscure their connection to everyday language as well as to each other. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy just how often the terms of one can be applied to the concepts of the other. "Volume," "space," "mass," "force," "light," "color," "tension," "relationship," and "density" are descriptive words that are heard repeatedly if you trail along with a museum docent. They also appear on the blackboards of freshman college physics lectures. The proponents of these two diverse endeavors wax poetic about elegance, symmetry, beauty, and aesthetics. While physicists demonstrate that A equals B or that X is the same as Y, artists often choose signs, symbols, and allegories to equate a painterly image with a feature of experience. Both of these techniques reveal previously hidden relationships.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Measured by any standard known to science--by horse-power, calories, volts, mass in any shape,--the tension and vibration and volu...me and so-called progression of society were full a thousand times greater in 1900 than in 1800;Mthe force had doubled ten times over, and the speed, when measured by electrical standards as in telegraphy, approached infinity, and had annihilated both space and time. No law of material movement applied to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the pun...ishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why do our bodies wear out? Why can't we just go on and on and on, accumulating a potentially infinite number of Frequent Flyer mi...leage points? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been asking ever since they realized that being a philosopher did not involve any heavy lifting. And yet the answer is really very simple. Our bodies are mechanical devices, they break down. Some devices, such as battery-operated toys costing $39.95, break down almost instantly upon exposure to the Earth's atmosphere. Other devices, such as stereo systems owned by your next-door neighbor's 13-year-old son who likes to listen to bands with names like "Nerve Damage," at a volume capable of disintegrating limestone, will continue to function perfectly for many years, even if you hit them with an ax. But the fundamental law of physics is that sooner or later every mechanism ceases to function for one reason or another, and it is never covered under the warranty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading ... may be given without first getting the author's permi...ssion. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A German immersed in any civilization different from his own loses a weight equivalent in volume to the amount of intelligence he ...displaces.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because--desp...ite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content--these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[I]t is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an ...expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given ...trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret's nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction..., to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »