“Therefore, why not plastic forms in motion? Not a simple translatory or rotary motion but several motions of different types, speeds and amplitudes composing to make a resultant whole. Just as one can compose colors, or forms, so one can compose motions.”

— Alexander Calder

1930s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)

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Alexander Calder 41

American artist 1898–1976

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“Therefore, why not plastic forms in motion?... one can compose motions.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

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“The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
Context: The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing, called perpetual motion, would establish itself. It is because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being, but that of the Creator of motion. When the pretenders to Atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited.

“Therefore, the mathematical forms that represent the elementary particles will be solutions of some eternal law of motion for matter.”

Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) German theoretical physicist

Physics and Philosophy (1958)
Context: The equation of motion holds at all times, it is in this sense eternal, whereas the geometrical forms, like the orbits, are changing. Therefore, the mathematical forms that represent the elementary particles will be solutions of some eternal law of motion for matter. Actually this is a problem which has not yet been solved.<!-- p. 72

“Heat can evidently be a cause of motion only by virtue of the changes of volume or of form which it produces in bodies.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

“Among these Ways, or any other whatever, of generating Magnitudes, the Primary and Chief is, that perform'd by local Motion, which all of them must in some Sort suppose, because without Motion, nothing can be generated or produced and therefore this must first be considered. The following Axiom of Aristotle concerning Motion is famous… He that is ignorant of Motion, must necessarily know nothing of Nature… in Nature every Thing created is produc'd by Motion, or certainly not without Motion.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

p, 125
Geometrical Lectures (1735)

“Just as the eldest son of a wheel-turning monarch properly keeps in motion the wheel of sovereignty set in motion by his father, so do you, Sāriputta, properly keep in motion the Wheel of Dhamma set in motion by me.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Vangisasamyutta, as translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi (2000), p. 287
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Samyutta Nikaya (Connected Discourses)

“…life is not so much motion as an inventless repetition of motion.”

William Faulkner book The Mansion

Charles Mallinson in Ch. 8
The Mansion (1959)

“There is… something which is in energy only; and there is something which is both in energy and capacity. …of relatives, one is predicated as according to excess and defect: another according to the effective and passive, and, in short, the motive, and that which may be moved… Motion, however, has not a substance separate from things… But each of the categories subsists in a twofold manner in all things. Thus… one thing pertaining to it is form, and another privation. …So the species of motion and mutation are as many as those of being. But since in every genus of things, there is that which is in entelecheia, and that which is in capacity; motion is the entelecheia of that which is in capacity… That there is energy, therefore, and that a thing then happens to be moved, when this energy exists, and neither prior nor posterior to it, is manifest. … [N]either motion nor mutation can be placed in any other genus; nor have those who have advanced a different opinion concerning it spoken rightly. …for by some motion is said to be difference, inequality, and non-being; though it is not necessary that any of these should be moved… Neither is mutation into these, nor from these, rather than from their opposites. …The cause, however, why motion appears to be indefinite, is because it can neither be simply referred to the capacity, nor to the energy of beings. …[I]t is difficult to apprehend what motion is: for it is necessary to refer it either to privation, or to capacity, or to simple energy; but it does not appear that it can be any of these. The above-mentioned mode, therfore remains, viz. that it is a certain energy; but… difficult to be perceived, but which may have a subsistence.”

Aristotle book Physics

Book III, Ch. I, pp. 137-147.
Physics

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Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

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Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Primer of scientific management, 1912, p. 8

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