The Saunterer

Thomas Henry Huxley on the ideal university

    Be honest: How near, do you think, are actual universities to Thomas Henry Huxley’s ideal university? He says:

In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University, the force of living example should fire the students with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 304.)

    For a brief biography of Thomas Henry Huxley, click here.

George F. Gitlitz on how to solve global warming

    Dr. Gitlitz puts the solution in algebraic terms:

If A times B equals C, in which A is world per capita emission of greenhouse gases, B is the number of people on the planet, and C is global warming, I’m perpetually mystified why the whole scientific community is obsessed (rightly so, I agree) with finding a way to reduce A, but no scientist ever speaks out in favor of simultaneously reducing B. Have algebraic equations gone out of style? (Letter to The New York Times, George F Gitlitz, Sarasota, Fla. January 15, 2008.)

Peter Callesen on seeing the full power of creativity

    We can’t see the full power of creativity when the creators had access to thousands of materials and means for creating. But limit the material to one (e.g., a piece of paper) and the means to one (e.g., a pair of scissors), and the full power is clear. To see the proof of this from Peter Callesen’s art, and to realize that all your life you have degraded the word “marvelous,” click here and scroll down.