Miracles...

Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute unveiled
the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by
humankind.

Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the
million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge
from the so-called "dark ages," the time shortly after the big bang
when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe.

Great stuff

I recently saw some Warhol paintings. One of them struck me: his "Electric Chairs". The idea is simple enough. It's a reflection about capital punishment. But the way that it was painted, with multiple, dizzying repetitions, gives us the idea about the frenesi we live in, our crazy, busy, meaningless world.

On a different venue, I read a fantastic quote by him. The theme of the quotation is a famous cliche but the way he said it was very clever. Enjoy!

"Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches."
(Andy Warhol)

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A piece of Kierkegard's E/O... makes one think about the meaning of life...


"Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily."

Hamlet

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in
faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In
action how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The
beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!

Ignoramus et ignorabimus!

In 1880 Emil du Bois-Reymond outlined seven "world riddles" some of which, he declared, neither science nor philosophy could ever explain. Concerning numbers 1,2 and 5 he actually proclaimed: "we do not know and will not know."

1. The ultimate nature of matter and force;
2. The origin of motion;
3. The origin of life;
4. The "apparently teleological arrangements of nature," not an "absolutely transcendent riddle";
5. The origin of simple sensations, "a quite transcendent" question;
6. The origin of intelligent thought and language, which might be known if the origin of sensations could be known;
7. The question of freewill;

The fifth one is particularly interesting. Quoting Schrodinger: "we simply cannot see how material events can be transformed into sensation and thought..."

Complain all you want! He may be right...

Despair and Consciousness

"With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness, the more intense the despair...

In case one were to think of a house, consisting of cellar, ground-floor and premier étage, so tenanted, or rather so arranged, that it was planned for a distinction of rank between the dwellers on the several floors; and in case one were to make a comparison between such a house and what it is to be a man -- then unfortunately this is the sorry and ludicrous condition of the majority of men, that in their own house they prefer to live in the cellar. The soulish-bodily synthesis in every man is planned with a view to being spirit, such is the building; but the man prefers to dwell in the cellar, that is, in the determinants of sensuousness. And not only does he prefer to dwell in the cellar; no, he loves that to such a degree that he becomes furious if anyone would propose to him to occupy the bel étage which stands empty at his disposition -- for in fact he is dwelling in his own house.

No, to be in error or delusion is (quite un-Socratically) the thing they fear the least. One may behold amazing examples which illustrate this fact on a prodigious scale. A thinker erects an immense building, a system, a system which embraces the whole of existence and world-history etc. -- and if we contemplate his personal life, we discover to our astonishment this terrible and ludicrous fact, that he himself personally does not live in this immense high-vaulted palace, but in a barn alongside of it, or in a dog kennel, or at the most in the porter’s lodge. If one were to take the liberty of calling his attention to this by a single word, he would be offended. For he has no fear of being under a delusion, if only he can get the system completed . . . by means of the delusion." (S.K.SUD)