The Feynman Series (part 1) - Beauty
Richard Feynman,
YouTube,
Dec 16, 2011
I bought a new Buddha this week (pictured left) and a new bonsai tree. The Buddha is made of some kind of mixture of resin, soil and sawdust, and is happily imperfect. The bonsai tree is still very young.
We had our last #change11 session for the year, marking the half-way point in the course. I remarked on how the innovations and discoveries were progressing so rapidly I had little desire to top and write papers. It was funny - usually I worry that my best days are behind me, but today after our online session I was left with the feeling my best work is still to come.
Forget doom and gloom, said the blog post. "Journalism isn't dying, even if newspapers in the way we've always known them may be. We don't have a consumption problem for news.... the 18-, now 19-, year-olds may have it figured out more than the rest of us.... They get that the job has changed and they're fine with it.... they have a strong sense of a social mission. They want to report on the issues that matter. They’re idealistic. I love it."
I open think about what it means to be human, to live, to grow, to die. I'm come to grips with it, with the idea that my coming and going are a part of that great process. That death is necessary for change, for evolution, for life itself. Philip K. Dick, naturally, sees the art in this:
"The beautiful and imperishable comes into existence due to the suffering of individual perishable creatures who themselves are not beautiful, and must be reshaped to form a template from which the beautiful is printed (forged, extracted, converted). This is the terrible law of the universe. This is the basic law; it is a fact… Absolute suffering leads to — is the means to — absolute beauty."
This week, as physicists seek the ultimate particle, I think of people like Richard Feynman, who sought to find, not what they could get out of the universe, but through the absolute joy of discovery, what they could put into it. Who sees beauty in all dimensions, in all the shapes of things, in all the elements large and small.
We had our last #change11 session for the year, marking the half-way point in the course. I remarked on how the innovations and discoveries were progressing so rapidly I had little desire to top and write papers. It was funny - usually I worry that my best days are behind me, but today after our online session I was left with the feeling my best work is still to come.
Forget doom and gloom, said the blog post. "Journalism isn't dying, even if newspapers in the way we've always known them may be. We don't have a consumption problem for news.... the 18-, now 19-, year-olds may have it figured out more than the rest of us.... They get that the job has changed and they're fine with it.... they have a strong sense of a social mission. They want to report on the issues that matter. They’re idealistic. I love it."
I open think about what it means to be human, to live, to grow, to die. I'm come to grips with it, with the idea that my coming and going are a part of that great process. That death is necessary for change, for evolution, for life itself. Philip K. Dick, naturally, sees the art in this:
"The beautiful and imperishable comes into existence due to the suffering of individual perishable creatures who themselves are not beautiful, and must be reshaped to form a template from which the beautiful is printed (forged, extracted, converted). This is the terrible law of the universe. This is the basic law; it is a fact… Absolute suffering leads to — is the means to — absolute beauty."
This week, as physicists seek the ultimate particle, I think of people like Richard Feynman, who sought to find, not what they could get out of the universe, but through the absolute joy of discovery, what they could put into it. Who sees beauty in all dimensions, in all the shapes of things, in all the elements large and small.
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