The Saunterer

Herbert Simon’s method for effective classroom learning

    Distance education is no equal to live attendance in lectures, provided the lectures are used as Herbert Simon used his. As he tells it:

Of course, students don’t learn by being lectured at, anyway; they learn by thinking hard, solving problems, dissecting proofs. Requiring them to write briefs was the most effective component of our teaching at IIT [Illinois Institute of Technology]. After students have thought hard about a topic, a lecture can help them sort out and organize their thoughts. Enlightenments, like accidents, happen only to prepared minds. If students have thought about something, you can discuss it profitably in class; without the preparation, it is just a bull session. (Quoted from Models of My Life, by Herbert A. Simon. 1991. p. 97.)

    For a brief biography of Herbert Simon, click here.

Paul Kahn on how the realization of one’s potential is limited

    After watching parts of the TV talent show “American Idol,” we see truth in Paul Kahn’s view:

No life ever realizes its full potential; no state policies or actions are a full realization of a state’s sovereignty; no work of art is adequate to the artist’s full aesthetic vision; no narrative is adequate to the fullness of experience. In every direction, man knows himself to be more than he can realize. (Quoted from Out of Eden: Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil, by Paul W. Kahn. Princeton University Press. 2006. p. 68.)

    For a brief biography of Paul Kahn, click here.

Frank Lloyd Wright on the Oriental quality in his work

    To the question “Is there an Eastern influence in your architecture?,” Frank Lloyd Wright found an answer:

Many people have wondered about an Oriental quality they see in my work. I suppose it is true that when we speak of organic architecture, we are speaking of something that is more Oriental than Western. The answer is: my work is, in that deeper philosophical sense, Oriental. (Quoted from The Essential Frank Lloyd Wright: Critical Writings on Architecture, edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. Princeton University Press. 2008. p. 16.)

    For a brief biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, click here.

Louise Bogan on the only immortality

    Louise Bogan giving herself sharp advice:

Sparrow said to me: You are resting on your laurels. You are finished. You are mummified. Take off your earrings and do some work. You didn’t go about being a visible specimen of a fine high stern woman, well dressed and keeping her chin up, when you produced your early poetry. Look at the people about you, whom you often fear. They will be dead and forgotten and unmarked. But you and I are immortal. The only immortality is in the printed word. Get going. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. C. Romesburg. p. 184.)

    For a brief biography of Louise Bogan, click here.

Dylan Thomas on exploring one’s spirit

    Having a spirit brings us a duty said Dylan Thomas:

God is the country of the spirit, and each of us is given a little holding of ground in that country; it is our duty to explore that holding to gain certain impressions by such exploring, to stabilise as laws the most valuable of these impressions, and, as far as we can, to abide by them. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. C. Romesburg. p. 215.)

    For a brief biography of Dylan Thomas, click here.

Andy Warhol’s idea of what makes America great

    In Andy Warhol’s view:

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke, and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one that the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the president knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it. (Quoted from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), by Andy Warhol. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1975. p.100.)

    For a brief biography of Andy Warhol, click here.

John Muir on the primacy of spiritual prosperity

    John Muir naturalists are those with John Muir’s beliefs, as extracted from his collected writings and applied to today. I have spoken for them in my book,The Life of the Creative Spirit (H. C. Romesburg, p.152):

John Muir naturalists believe that spiritual prosperity towers above mercantile prosperity. Reacting against the loss of nature, they ask that development be restrained, and the known and untold forms and interlocking relations of nature be sustained. Who in right mind wrecks a mountain for its coal? Where has it been proved that what cannot be advertised, wrapped, and charged for is to be thought lowly of? And however controversial the issue of rights for animals and natural places may be, who dares deny that the first right of everyone is to be happy and content, and this is violated in those whose being is ripped by actions of those that cause animals to suffer; that confine species to smaller and smaller reservations, some consequently going extinct; and that gouge the hills, foul streams and oceans, and level forests to stumps?

    For a brief biography of John Muir, click here.

Hannah Arendt on one’s responsibility to the world community

    Hannah Arendt had ideas on how to judge and act in political matters:

One judges always as a member of a community . . . but in the last analysis, one is a member of a world community by the sheer fact of being human; this is one’s “cosmopolitan existence.” When one judges . . . and acts in political matters, one is supposed to take one’s bearings from the idea, not the actuality, of being a world citizen. (Quoted from Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, by Hannah Arendt. University of Chicago Press. 1982. p. 75.)

    For a brief biography of Hannah Arendt, click here.

Walt Whitman on North America’s prairies and plains

    Walt Whitman would be happy to remain dead if he could see how over-breeding so increased the demand for crops that the prairies and plains are forever destroyed:

While I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and the plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America’s characteristic landscape. Indeed, through the whole of this journey, what most impressed me, and will longest remain with me, are these same prairies. Day after day, and night after night, to my eyes, to all my senses - the esthetic one most of all - they silently and broadly unfolded. Even their simplest statistics are sublime. (Quoted from Specimen Days, by Walt Whitman. Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1935. p.351.)

    For a brief biography of Walt Whitman, click here.

R. Carlos Nakai on our personal task

    Nature deals all of us an imperfect hand, and R. Carlos Nakai has the solution:

We are born with severe limitations and shortcomings as human beings. Finding ways to overcome them . . . is our personal task. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 246.)

    For a brief biography of R. Carlos Nakai, click here. To hear him playing his Native American Flute, click here.