30 DEC 2016 by ideonexus
Naysmiths
Magnus broods in his black tower, peering into the depths of the Great Ocean for validation, a sign that he was right to act as he did.
He will find nothing, for there is nothing to find.
His actions were never his own, for he forgot the first rule of the mysteries.
He let his ambition and hubris blind him to his flaws and the knowledge that there is always someone stronger and more powerful out there.
I will not make that mistake.
But we are still creatures of flesh and inclined to repe...Folksonomies: disputation contrarian
Folksonomies: disputation contrarian
1 
notes
notes15 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
The Conflict of What We Desire to Do and What We Are Able...
What if someone who had the potential to discover a formula to unlock the mysteries of the universe wanted to become a pulp fiction writer?
What if someone who had the potential to create unparalleled gastronomic delicacies had his heart set on civil engineering?
There is what we desire to do, and what we are able to do. When those two things don't coincide, which path should we pursue to find happiness?Folksonomies: purpose
Folksonomies: purpose
1 notes
notes07 FEB 2014 by ideonexus
The Invention of Printing Threatens the Church
This new invention of printing has produced various effects of which Your Holiness caimot be ignorant. If it has restored books and learning, it has also been the occasion of those sects and schisms which daily appear. Men begin to call in question the present faith and tenets of the Church; the laity read the scriptures and pray in their vulgar tongue. Were this suffered the common people might come to believe that there was not so much use of the clergy. If men were persuaded that they coul...
3 [Cardinal] Thomas Wolsey.
05 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Negative Capability
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caugh...
1 According to wikipedia: "...the capacity of human beings to transcend and revise their contexts." Here is the first use of the term by John Keats, where it sounds more like the ability to remain calm and rational in the face of uncertainty and not jump to conclusions without evidence.
14 FEB 2013 by ideonexus
1 = 0.999999999…
This simple equation, which states that the quantity 0.999, followed by an infinite string of nines, is equivalent to one, is the favorite of mathematician Steven Strogatz of Cornell University.
"I love how simple it is — everyone understands what it says — yet how provocative it is," Strogatz said. "Many people don't believe it could be true. It's also beautifully balanced. The left side represents the beginning of mathematics; the right side represents the mysteries of infinity."An equation that is challenging, provocative, and portrays both the certainty of mathematics and its infinity.
12 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
What is a Scientist?
What is a scientist?… We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself. 1 notes
notesOne so in love with nature as to lose oneself in exploring it.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Mathematics Offers Spirituality
Perhaps the best reason for regarding mathematics as an art is not so much that it affords an outlet for creative activity as that it provides spiritual values. It puts man in touch with the highest aspirations and lofiest goals. It offers intellectual delight and the exultation of resolving the mysteries of the universe. Folksonomies: wonder spirituality
Folksonomies: wonder spirituality
1 notes
notesIn learning the mysteries of the universe.
07 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Unweave a Rainbow
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow. 1 notes
notesPoem about how science robs life of wonder.
16 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Feynman on God
On the contrary, God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such ... 1 notes
notesGod is used to explain what we haven't figured out yet.
17 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Science is Discovery, Not Creation
I do not think that G. H. Hardy was talking nonsense when he insisted that the mathematician was discovering rather than creating, nor was it wholly nonsense for Kepler to exult that he was thinking God's thoughts after him. The world for me is a necessary system, and in the degree to which the thinker can surrender his thought to that system and follow it, he is in a sense participating in that which is timeless or eternal. Folksonomies: discovery
Folksonomies: discovery
1 notes
notesThe scientist is simply following the path nature has provided, uncovering its mysteries along the way.
