The Saunterer

Albert Szent-Györgyi on discovery

    Bill Gates strikes few of us as especially creative because we are thinking of creativity as producing something out of seemingly nothing. His creativity is another kind, fitting Albert Szent-Gyorgyi’s comment:

    Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.

    (Quoted from 83 of Impossibility: The Limit of Science and the Science of Limits, by John D. Barrow. Oxford University Press, 1998.)
    For a brief biography of Albert Szent-Györgyi, click here. For images of or relating to Albert Szent-Györgyi, click here.
    For a brief biography of John D. Barrow, click here. For images of or relating to John D. Barrow, click here.

Jacob Bronowski on technological ritual

    Think ritual is confined to the church? Then you are hardly thinking like Jacob Bronowski:

    The making of the sword, like all ancient metallurgy, is surrounded with ritual, and that is for a clear reason. When you have no written language, when you have nothing that can be called a chemical formula, then you must have a precise ceremonial which fixes the sequence of operations so that they are exact and memorable.

    (Quoted from page xii of Musicologia, by Robin Maconie. The Scarecrow Press, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Jacob Bronowski, click here. For images of or relating to Jacob Bronowski, click here.
    For a brief biography of Robin Maconie, click here. For images of or relating to Robin Maconie, click here.

Leonardo da Vinci on how to have a happy death

    By Leonardo da Vinci’s definition, he had a happy death:

    As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

    (Quoted from page 252 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Leonardo da Vinci, click here. For images of or relating to Leonardo da Vinci, click here.