Nathan Kitchen

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“Could we see things always as we have sometimes seen them—and as one day we must always see them, only far better—should we ever know dullness? Greatly as we might enjoy all forms of art, much as we might learn through the eyes and thoughts of other men, should we fly to these for deliverance from ennui, from any haunting discomfort? Should we not just open our own child-eyes, look upon the things themselves, and be consoled?”
― George MacDonald

tags: wonder

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“Science is the greatest fruit of human achievement, bar none, and deserves rich and enthusiastic support in any civilized society, but as a worthwhile goal in its own right, not just as a way to encourage innovation.”
― Matt Ridley, How Innovation Works: Serendipity, Energy and the Saving of Time

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“But even italics fail to do justice to this magnificent outburst, the last stand of William James for the spirit of man. What can one say about the philosophical bravado, the cosmic effrontery, the sheer panache of this ailing philosopher with one foot in the grave talking down the second law of thermodynamics? It is a scene fit to set alongside the death of Socrates. The matchless incandescant spirit of the man!”
― Robert D. Richardson Jr., William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism

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“Writing's immutability reminds us that, just as a painting of a pipe is not in fact a pipe, so writing is not in fact language. It is important to know the difference between a sound and its echo. Writing is an illusion of language, language's shadow, not a rabbit but merely a cloud that looks like one; at most, a record of language, rendered imperfectly and approximately in a wholly different form. Writing is to language as maps are to streets.”
― Kevin Ashton, The Story of Stories: The Million-Year History of a Uniquely Human Art

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“Geologists search for the meaning to be read into the piled-up strata of the earth much as a historian might turn the pages of an ancient, damaged manuscript. The astronomer seeks the answer to his questions in the depths of space. Still other men concentrate on the scriptures alone. The wise man searches all these and other sources, knowing that all are communications from the same divine source and certain that, if followed far enough, all will guide him back to the Divine Presence.”
― Henry Eyring

tags: religion, science

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