The Saunterer

Richard Dawkins on god playing dice

    Richard Dawkins says it this way—the way only science adequately can say it:

    In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing by pitiless indifference. . . . DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

    (Quoted from “God’s Utility Function,” Scientific American, 1995 November, pp. 62-67.)
    For a brief biography of Richard Dawkins, click here. For images of or relating to Richard Dawkins, click here.

The Popol Vuh makes us ruler of the other animals

    The Popol Vuh is the Mayan story of creation, and because we humans invented it it puts us in the top boss role (we’re so wonderful) of commanding rule and power over the other forms of life, making it ethically fine to kill them without guilt whenever we like. Philip Lieberman outlines the story:

    Having created all the birds and animals, the creators said to them: Talk and scream according to your kind, pronounce and praise our name, say that we are your Fathers and Mothers, as we are indeed. Speak, praise, invoke us.
    But even though this commanded of them, they could not speak as humans, they only screamed, cackled and hissed. They tried to put words together and hail the creator, they were punished and since then their meat has been eaten by man.

    (Quoted from page 5 of Eve Spoke, by Philip Lieberman. W. W. Norton, 1998.)
    For a brief biography of Philip Lieberman, click here. For images of or relating to Philip Lieberman, click here.

Stanley H. Ambrose on the striking rate of increase in human learning

    How’s this for striking?

    Did the challenges posed by the increasingly variable, severe, and risky environments of glacial/interglacial cycles over the past 800,000 years, as well as more dramatic short-term climatic events, influence behavioral and biological evolution? Or were changes increasingly autocatalytic, driven by language and by cultural systems of knowledge and understanding of nature and society? With the appearance of near-modern brains size, anatomy, and perhaps of grammatical language ~0.3 million years ago, the pace quickens exponentially, suggesting the latter. Ex terra ad astra: A mere 12,000 years separate the first bow and arrow from the International Space Station.

    (Quoted from “Paleolithic Technology and Human Evolution,” by Stanley H. Ambrose. Science, March 2, 2001, pp 1748-1753.)
    For a work biography of Stanley H. Ambrose, click here. For images of or relating to Stanley H. Ambrose, click here.

Oscar Hammerstein I on how creators need to play

    Regularly take time for play, and you and your creative work will profit. Oscar Hammerstein I explains:

    I’m taking my first vacation in forty years and I’m not enjoying it. You see, I never learned to loaf. If I had, this enforced idleness would not be so hard to endure. For forty years I worked from eight o’clock in the morning until after midnight. I realize now that I should have learned to play as well.
    Nature has made many mistakes, but I think her greatest mistake was in failing to equip us with a switch by which we could turn off our thoughts. We can say “I don’t want to see,” shut our eyes and we don’t see. We can say, “I don’t want to hear,” stop our ears and we don’t hear. But we can’t say, “I don’t want to think” and stop thinking.
    And that is one reason why I’m not enjoying my vacation. I can’t stop thinking.
    

    (Quoted from page 341 of Oscar Hammerstein I: The Life and Exploits of an Impresario, by Vincent Sheean. Simon and Schuster, 1956.)
    For a brief biography of Oscar Hammerstein I, click here. For images of or relating to Oscar Hammerstein I, click here.
    For a brief biography of Vincent Sheean, click here. For images of or relating to Vincent Sheean, click here.

Joseph Conrad on what painting is

    Painting, wrote Joseph Conrad, is:

    A single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe . . . an attempt to find in its forms, in its colors, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential.

    (Quoted from page 7 of Masterpieces: Great Paintings of the World in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. MFA Publications, 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Joseph Conrad, click here. For images of or relating to Joseph Conrad, click here.

Paul Theroux on the ideal place to read

    His ideal place is ours: reading on long train rides, which we’ve done many times around this country on Amtrak. He says:

    Sitting alone in a corner seat in a train, on a long multiday journey through a strange land, glancing out the window from time to time, making notes on the endpapers . . . and at mealtime continuing my reading in the dining car, then at night in my berth, rocking and reading by the little light behind my head.

    (Quoted from page 8 of the November 15, 2015, issue of The New York Times Book Review.)
    For a brief biography of Paul Theroux, click here. For images of or relating to Paul Theroux, click here.

Fairfield Porter on original art compared with reproduced art

    You’ll have a chance to click below to see some of Fairfield Porter’s paintings (which probably you’ll like, as lots do). An American art critic too, he said this about reproduced art:

    In this country, certainly, when art is reproduced mechanically even by transplanted European technicians, it is done scientifically, and the spirit of the original is almost invariably debased. I have seen the phases that the reproduction of a painting goes through. In the effort to get accuracy, liveliness gradually vanishes. It should be remembered that reproduction cannot be exact, for that would contradict the nature of art as always unique. A reproduction can be itself beautiful, art itself, parallel but not equal to something else.

    (Quoted from page 149 of Art In Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism, 1935—1975, by Fairfield Porter. Zoland Books, 1979.)
    To see images of his paintings, click here.
    For a brief biography of Fairfield Porter, click here.

Arthur C. Clarke on life elsewhere in the universe

    He puts it as an either-or proposition and tells how we feel about each:

    Either intelligent life exists in outer space or it doesn’t. Either thought is frightening.

    (Quoted from page 295 of The Future of Mind, by Michio Kaku. Anchor Books, 2015.)
    For a brief biography of Arthur C. Clarke, click here. For images of or relating to Arthur C. Clarke, click here.
    For a brief biography of Michio Kaku, click here. For images of or relating to Michio Kaku, click here.

Hyman G. Rickover on meaning and purpose in life

    Admiral Hyman G. Rickover ran his life according to his credo:

    To seek out and accept responsibility; to persevere; to be committed to excellence; to be creative and courageous; to be unrelenting in the pursuit of intellectual development; to maintain high standards of ethics and morality; and to bring these basic principles of existence to bear through active participation in life—these are some of my ideas on the goals which must be met to achieve meaning and purpose in life.

    (Quoted from page 188 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Admiral Rickover, click here. For images of or relating to him, click here.

Charles Darwin on morality

    Considering the moral standard of the individual and the moral standard of groups of individuals, Darwin concluded:

    It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe . . . an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.

    (Quoted from page 166 of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, Volumes 1 and 2. Appleton, 1871.)
    For a brief biography of Charles Darwin, click here. For images of or relating to Charles Darwin, click here.