Source: Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1986), p. 75
“Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not science.”
The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. this was something that classical science could explain. Yet, the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not science. With the formulation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the border between formula and story, between science and myth. In that, however, science has paradoxically returned, in a roundabout way, to man, and offers him — in new clothing — his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos.
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Václav Havel 126
playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of … 1936–2011Related quotes
Travis Parker, Proloque, p. 1
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)
“Sex is as personally unique to individuals as it is universal.”
Vanna Bonta
(1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)
Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)
“we are unique individuals with unique experiences”
John Gray
(1948) British philosopher
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
Peter Greenaway
(1942) British film director
"105 Years of Illustrated Text" in the Zoetrope All-Story, Vol. 5 No. 1.
105 Years of Illustrated Text
Part I : Contemporary Issues in Science, Ch. 1 : "The Scientist as Rebel"; this first appeared in New York Review of Books (25 May 1995).
The Scientist As Rebel (2006)
Context: There is no such thing as a unique scientific vision, any more than there is a unique poetic vision. Science is a mosaic of partial and conflicting visions. But there is one common element in these visions. The common element is rebellion against the restrictions imposed by the locally prevailing culture, Western or Eastern as the case may be. It is no more Western than it is Arab or Indian or Japanese or Chinese. Arabs and Indians and Japanese and Chinese had a big share in the development of modern science. And two thousand years earlier, the beginnings of science were as much Babylonian and Egyptian as Greek. One of the central facts about science is that it pays no attention to East and West and North and South and black and yellow and white. It belongs to everybody who is willing to make the effort to learn it. And what is true of science is true of poetry.... Poetry and science are gifts given to all of humanity.
Parmenides
(-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher
Frag. B 8.1-4, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics, 144
Patrick Swift
(1927–1983) British artist
"The Painter in the Press", X magazine, Vol. I, No.4 (October 1960).
Context: The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity… a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter: an object made alone with a man and a blank canvas... A real painting is something which happens to the painter once in a given minute; it is unique in that it will never happen again and in this sense is an impossible object... And it is something which happens in life not in art: a picture which was merely the product of art would not be very interesting and could tell us nothing we were not already aware of. The old saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”, expresses the opposite idea to that which animates the painter before his canvas. It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him.
“No aspect of a poem is more singular, more unique, than its rhythm.”
Robert Pinsky
(1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.
'The Sounds of Poetry' Farrar,Strauss & Giroux 1998
The Sounds of Poetry 1998
