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Monday, November 16, 2009

Author, Finger, Imagination, Almost, and Huh?

"The vastness, beauty, orderliness of heavenly bodies; the excellent structure of animals and plants; and other phenomena of nature justly induce an intelligent, unprejudiced observer to conclude a supreme, powerful, just, and good author."
--Robert Boyle


"The book of nature which we have to read is written by the finger of God."
--Michael Faraday


“When I worked on the polio vaccine, I had a theory. I guided each [experiment] by imagining myself in the phenomenon in which I was interested. The intuitive realm . . . the realm of the imagination guides my thinking.”
--Jonas Salk


 "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."
--Francis Crick

“Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question "How?" but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question "Why?""
-- Erwin Chargaff

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Do you see what I see

The human eyes and brain are wonderfully adapted to pattern recognition, one of the greatest survival tools of our ancient ancestors, quickly recognizing friend from foe, danger from safety, with but a minimal amount of visual input. But of course this 'quick and dirty' pattern recognition also provides for endless fun in seeing images in clouds, or the VIrgin Mary in the stains on a wall. But not to dismiss these fun images, for they do have importance, somewhat like dreams, they reveal what is of great import to ourselves. So I think of it as the outside world enters through the eyes, yet these perceived images are the mind exiting the eyes and creating Jesus on the wood grain of a door or a swirl of DNA in a ring nebula!

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Imagine, a story

Ima was in her room, forbidden to go out doors to play with the other children, Rea and Int were strict parents, wanting only the best for Ima, so they knew best and Ima was homebound. Daily Ima peeked out the windows, in secret, while mother and father endlessly praised all the joys that the house held, on the mantel were knowledge and fact, each polished daily by Rea, it was almost a ritual. But one day Ima became ill, and the parents wondered why, of course they couldn't imagine why, for Reason and Intellect forbade Imagination, and of course, she soon died.