The Saunterer

George Spencer-Brown on the method of making discoveries

    Real discovery comes only from years of bearing in mind what you need to know. George Spencer-Brown:

To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practised, requires years of contemplation. Not activity. Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions which are continually being thrust upon them. (Quoted from The Laws of Form, by George Spencer Brown.)

    For a brief biography of George Spencer-Brown, click here.

John C. Van Dyke on the worth of deserts

    As John C. Van Dyke tells:

The deserts should never be reclaimed. They are the breathing-spaces of the west and should be preserved forever. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 330.)

    For a brief biography of John C. Van Dyke, click here.

Leslie Marmon Silko’s advice for getting over the death of a loved one

    Leslie Marmon Silko wrote in a letter:

Today is All Souls’ Day and for both Mexican and Pueblo people it is the day when the dead are especially remembered, but not like Memorial Day exactly. Tonight at Laguna, there will be candles lighting the graves and there will be all kinds of food - favorite dishes like chili stew and roasted pinon nuts - for the souls of the dead ones. People try to remember favorite foods of the dead person. At Laguna, when someone dies, you don’t “get over it” by forgetting; you “get over it” by remembering, and by remembering you are aware that no person is ever truly lost or gone once they have been in our lives and loved us, as we have loved them. (Extract of a letter from Leslie Marmon Silko to James Wright, November 1, 1978.)

    For a brief biography of Leslie Marmon Silko, click here. For the same of James Wright, click here.
    Related to this post is Lucien Price’s advice for getting over the death of a loved one. To read it, click here.

Karl R. Popper on planning for a better world using a hazy criterion

    What do you do when, as is the usual case, you don’t have a definite measure for judging the achievement of your intended act? You go ahead and act on your intuition. Not only do artists not suffer for lacking a standard, their work is better for it. And most of the worthwhile in living is an art. Karl Popper speaks to the point in terms of a criterion of truth, but what he says holds generally:

I believe that it is the demand for a criterion of truth which has made so many people feel that the question ‘What is truth?’ is unanswerable. But the absence of a criterion of truth does not render the notion of truth non-significant any more than the absence of a criterion of health renders the notion of health non-significant. A sick man may seek health even though he has no criterion for it. An erring man may seek truth even though he has no criterion for it.
    And both may simply seek health, or truth, without much bothering about the meanings of these terms which they (and others) understand well enough for their purposes. (Quoted from The Open Society and Its Enemies, v. II, by Karl R. Popper, Princeton University Press, p. 373.)

    For a brief biography of Karl R. Popper, click here.

Gustav Mahler on what every work of art should have

    Gustav Mahler believed that every work of art - call it a thing - should have in it a trace of the Thing behind the thing:

How can people forever think that Nature lies on the surface! Of course it does, in its most superficial aspect. But those who, in the face of Nature, are not overwhelmed with awe at its infinite mystery, its divinity (we can only sense it, not comprehend or penetrate it) - these people have not come close to it. . . . And in every work of art, which should be a reflection of Nature, there must be a trace of this infinity. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 351.)

    For a brief biography of Gustav Mahler, click here.

e. e. cummings on spring

    Spring will always keep its grip on its wonderful secret. Hear e. e. cummings:

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

         fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

   beauty    , how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
       (But
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

      thou answerest

them only with

                       spring)

But there will not always be springs. The human race, bent on breeding, breeding, breeding, is bound to fry the planet. For a brief biography of e. e. cummings, click here.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on responsibility and being

    To be responsible is to direct yourself toward fulfilling the needs of people (and the other animals). That and only that, as an indirect consequence, creates your being. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry puts it in three short sentences:

I reject non-being. My purpose is to be. And if I am to be, I must begin by assuming responsibility.    (Quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 355.)

    For a brief biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, click here.

Joseph Wood Krutch on quality versus quantity

    In defense of Thomas Gray’s spending his lifetime for making a few excellent poems rather than many average ones, Joseph Wood Krutch wrote:

Can one accuse of ineffectiveness or of waste a man who writes even one immortal poem? (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 330.)

These words contain the solution to every problem of society – from the problem of education to the problem of global warming, from the problem of overrunning the planet with people to the problem of the Forest Service – every problem.

    For a brief biography of Joseph Wood Krutch, click here. For a brief biography of Thomas Gray, click here.

Max J. Friedlander on the danger of looking for interrelationships

    The danger of looking for interrelationships is in not knowing what you are looking for, wrote Max Friedlander:

One can find something without having sought it - indeed, every connoisseur knows from experience that one nearly always finds something other than what one seeks. When you go looking for strawberries, you know what a strawberry looks like - but when you go looking for interrelationships, you do not know what they will look like. The ever-present danger is precisely that the desire and the will to find something may, in the mind of the seeker, precociously project a connection - one that does not exist. (From Max J. Friedlander's Die Altniederlandische Malerei.)
    For a brief biography of Max Friedlander, click here.

Anaïs Nin on the pure and beautiful in this world

    To Anaïs Nin, nature was the only thing pure and beautiful in this world. Her words:

How I love to walk among the trees stirred by a light February wind and in the fields where one can see the clear horizon. Ah, how I love that! How sweet it is to me! In those dreamy moments I feel as though I have left this sad earth, I feel as though I catch a glimpse, a tiny glimpse, of the air and fragrance of heaven, it seems as though I fly away toward the infinite. If my Maman’s sweet voice didn’t call me back, I would spend hours, long hours, contemplating nature . . . it’s so beautiful! . . . it’s the only thing that is pure and beautiful in this world. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 317.)

    For a brief biography of Anaïs Nin, click here.