The Saunterer

Florida Scott-Maxwell on how to deal with old age

    Perhaps salting the aging process with humor helps one live longer. Florida Scott-Maxwell, who lived well up into her years, wrote this:

When a new disability arrives I look about me to see if death has come, and I call quietly, “Death, is that you? Are you there?” So far the disability has answered, “Don’t be silly, it’s me.” (Quoted from The Measure of My Days, Florida Scott-Maxwell, New York: Knopf, 1968.)
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Florida Scott-Maxwell (1883-1979) was a writer, playwright, suffragist, and psychologist who studied with Carl Jung in Scotland and England. For more of her ideas on aging, click here.

How the shaved down reveals the pent up

    In creating solutions in mathematics and science, use a mental razor to shave the bells and whistles from your attempts. For, the truest solutions always have the cleanest forms. Think of Newton’s laws, Maxwell's equations, Pythagoras' theorem, the helical structure of DNA. This is not to say that every simple idea is a great truth, but rather great truths are almost always simple.

    The term for this strategy of creating solutions in mathematics and science is “Occam's razor,” named for the 14th century logician William Ockham. It is sometimes put as: "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one."

    While Sauntering in the museum of the Art Institute of Chicago, the several sculptures by Constantin Brancusi struck us as irreducibly simple and, at the same time, irreducibly beautiful. We made up a term: Brancusi’s razor. Not only is it behind Brancusi’s art, it is behind Michelangelo's statue David, as well as most every clay jar older than1000 years.

    In applying Occam’s razor and Brancusi’s razor, once irreducible simplicity is reached it is just the starting point. Irreducible simplicity is the seed of a rich complexity of ideas, in the case of mathematics and science. Irreducible simplicity is the seed of a rich complexity of feelings, in the case of art.

    After our Chicago visit, we looked through books about Constantin Brancusi and his art. We discovered he knew of what we are calling his razor, for he said this:

Simplicity is not an end in art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, in approaching the real sense of things. Simplicity is complexity itself, and one has to be nourished by its essence in order to understand its value. (Quoted in Constantin Brancusi, by Carola Giedion-Welcker, George Braziller, Inc., New York 1959, p. 220.)

    When you come to think of it, the line between Brancusi’s razor and Thoreau’s razor is very finely drawn. Thoreau showed that shaving the bells and whistles from one’s life leaves a wholesome simplicity. ("All things being equal, the simplest life tends to be the most nourishing.")

    And when you think further think, there is Robbins’ razor (or if you like, Chouinard’s razor), for Royal Robbins (and Yvon Chouinard), who shaved the complexity out of their rock climbing. ("All things being equal, the simplest, cleanest moves in climbing tend to be the most nourishing.")

    Pick your reminding symbol of living simply. For some it is Walden and Thoreau. For some, Robbins’ and Chouinard’s climbing. For some, Newton's F = ma. For me, it’s one particular Brancusi’s sculpture.
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    For an outline of the history of Occam’s razor, click here. For a brief biography of Constantin Brancusi, click here. For a sample of Constantin Brancusi’s works, click here. For brief biographies of Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard, click here.

John Henry Cardinal Newman on how teaching and researching clash

    My best teachers in college didn’t do research, and those who did much research were, at best, mediocre teachers. Later I sauntered across an explanation for this in the writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman:

To discover and teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person. He, too, who spends his day in dispensing his existing knowledge to all comers is unlikely to have either leisure or energy to acquire new. The common sense of mankind has associated the search after truth with seclusion and quiet. The greatest thinkers have been too intent on their subject to admit of interruption; they have been men of absent minds and idosyncratic habits, and have, more or less, shunned the lecture room and the public school. (Quoted from The Idea of a University, John Henry Cardinal Newman, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1902)
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    For a brief biography of John Henry Cardinal Newman, click here.

Thomas Henry Huxley on the religious commandment of “increase and multiply”

    A good many religions preach for obedience to the commandment “increase and multiply,” which on the other hand is a cause of violence and war they preach against. So these words of Thomas Henry Huxley need to be understood:

One of the most essential conditions, if not the chief cause, of the struggle for existence, is the tendency to multiply without limit, which man shares with all living things. It is notable that “increase and multiply” is a commandment traditionally much older than the ten; and that it is, perhaps, the only one which has been spontaneously and ex animo obeyed by the great majority of the human race. But, in civilised society, the inevitable result of such obedience is the reestablishment, in all its intensity, of that struggle for existence - the war of each against all - the mitigation or abolition of which was the chief end of social organisation. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 305.)
    For a brief biography of Thomas Henry Huxley, click here.

Pablo Picasso on seeking perfection of expression

    Why create? To seek perfection of expression. As Pablo Picasso put it:

I too often tell myself: “It’s not quite there yet. You can do better.” I can rarely keep myself from redoing a thing - umpteen times the same thing. Sometimes it gets to be a real obsession. After all, why work otherwise, if not to better express the same thing? You must always seek perfection. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 265.)
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    For a brief biography of Pablo Picasso, click here.

Margaret Sherwood’s poem to her cat Leo

    Sauntering in the literature of kindness brought us to Margaret Sherwood’s poem, In Memoriam - Leo: A Yellow Cat, which ends with:

Whisper some kindly word, to bless
A wistful soul who understands
That life is but one long caress
Of gentle words and gentle hands.

    Our wish: that all pets could be blessed with the caressing life they deserve.
    Do our pets help increase our sympathies for people and wild animals?
    Margaret Sherwood (1864 - 1955) was a professor of English at Wellesley. For her complete poem, click here.

James Gould Cozzens on George Washington’s excellence

    While reading Diaries of George Washington, James Gould Cozzens wrote in his notebook:

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been getting thru these 4 volumes with great interest. I think the thing that must impress any reader most is constant evidence of a consistent and energetic good sense; and you must see that if he had made himself the richest man in the Colonies by the time of the revolution, it was through application and industry - he examined personally and knowledgeably all his western lands; he ‘rid’ every day to all his Virginia plantations, observing in detail every bit of work that was going on and carefully considered how the smallest operation might be done better - that is: more quickly, more easily, and less expensively. You must also see, reading thousands upon thousands of his own words that meanness, penny-pinching, or greed for gain weren’t remotely involved. What he aimed at was simply doing it right, eliminating irrational wastes. It’s a tribute to him that you find yourself really set-down when it develops that the diaries stop somewhat before he took command of the continental army - and all the more let-down when he resumes them (explaining that he had not before found time) in the last year of the war; because they are done with the same show of energetic good sense, sharp attention to detail, and simple businesslike perceptiveness. In some ways it’s a sort of shock to see beyond any possible doubt that the inevitably more or less mummified figure of statues, coins, postage stamps, the suspiciously stuffed-shirt-like image of conventional history must actually, as a living man, have been every bit as good as, and maybe a little better than, the man of legend. (Quoted from James Gould Cozzens, Selected Notebooks: 1960 - 1967, p. 58.)
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    For a brief biography of James Gould Cozzens, click here.

Mark Twain on how to make troubles vanish

    Mark Twain made his troubles vanish by working creatively:

I am working but it is for the sake of the work - the “surcease of sorrow” that is found there. I work all the days, and trouble vanishes away when I use that magic. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 289.)
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    For a brief biography of Mark Twain, click here.

Winston Churchill’s advice to young people

    Here is what Winston Churchill told the youths of the world (and he surely aimed it at both sexes):   

Come on now all you young men, all over the world. . . . These are the years! Don’t be content with things as they are. . . . Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities. . . . Don’t take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 210.)
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    For a brief biography of Winston Churchill, click here.

George Mallory on how the beauty of nature is central to mountaineering

    Why is it that if Everest were surrounded by New York City, climbing it would not be the same? Hear George Mallory:

Sunrises and sunsets and clouds and thunder are not incidental to mountaineering, but a vital and inseparable part of it; they are not ornamental, but structural. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 339.)
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    For a brief biography of George Mallory, click here.