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In his 1993 book Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science, Alan Cromer of Northeastern University suggests that we never would’ve invented science if not for what Carl Sagan refers to as “an unlikely concatenation of historical events.” Cromer writes, “This hostility to science, in the face of its obvious triumphs and benefits, is… evidence…
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“Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth.” — Bertrand Russell We love our insights, collecting them like shiny stones, tweeting them, tattooing them, and even weaponizing them in comment sections. But in our highly polarized digital age, Bertrand Russell’s warning rings louder than ever: insight alone—no matter how poetic, how emotionally satisfying—isn’t…
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“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” —Leonardo da Vinci I’ve always preferred Frankenstein’s Monster to the Mona Lisa. We’re often told to look to Leonardo da Vinci as the “patron saint” of genius, the man who could paint a masterpiece while dissecting a frog. But da Vinci, excellent as he…
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“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.” – Ansel Adams This axiom from Ansel Adams, one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed photographers, remains one of the most vital distinctions in visual art. It highlights a fundamental split in how we interact with the world, between passive extraction and active construction. To “take” implies…
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“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” – Stephen King Human beings are blessed with one sort of talent or another. Some are great at public speaking. Others are great at composing music. Still others are very good at writing essays;…
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“We have a tendency today to think we occupy some exalted vantage point, and to pity the poor Newtonians for having so limited a world view. But within certain reasonable limitations, the same harmonic equations that describe clockwork really do describe the motions of astronomical objects throughout the Universe. This is a profound, not a…
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“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” Charles Darwin, Introduction, The Descent of Man (1871) I’m starting to think I should read that book! In particular, this…
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“The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade.” – Simone Weil I found this quote from this great YouTube video from…
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“The myths and folklore of many premodern cultures have explanatory or at least mnemonic value. In stories that everyone can appreciate and even witness, they encode the environment.” – Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World” Here, Sagan is engaging in a critique of modern intellectual habits by reflecting on the purpose of ancient myth. He’s saying…
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The art of the essay is a practice much like medicine and law. There are no predefined rules besides conventions of grammar holding together your thoughtforms, what we call words. Every time we set ourselves to composing a work of writing, we must consider it as an experiment. Each time you set yourself to putting…