BREAKING THE MIND BARRIER
Todd Siler
A brilliantly original way to think about art, science, the mind, and the universe.
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"Through our joined perspectives, we have the ability to create a world in which one person's life experiences and beliefs may be respected, shared, and understood by others. I feel this is imperative for human development and survival - a cultural necessity, not an intellectual luxury. We want to build communication between all peoples, advancing the collective wisdom of our civilization."
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"The 'Wheel of the Law' sculpture in Buddhist art explores with astute realism the unproportioned, timeless space. Similarly, 'The Wheels of the Sun Chariot' of Surya Deul Temple at Konorak, in northeastern India, interprets time as a cyclical form – where beginnings and ends are arbitrary points. You will find similar interpretations in particle physics and cosmology which postulate a cyclical pattern to the creation/re-creation of the cosmos. The reason for this repetition of themes may rest on one straightforward fact: Our minds, like the universe, probably undergo similar cyclical transformations in their evolution. And so everything we theorize regarding this pattern of evolution takes place inside us. Since the human mind invented these notions, they probably reflect in form and in substance the nature of the mind itself."
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"We're born informed."
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"Subatomic particles are not 'things' that build one upon the other until they form large aggregates. Rather, they are part of a union of relations."
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"We cannot possibly see the whole of what we are, if we persist in seeing the parts of our nature and nature's parts as disassociated entities. Defining things without considering their relationships with other things is a fatal flaw in descriptive analysis."
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"A structure or system grows by means of itself."
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"Nature is an artist that works from within."
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"Most opposites, when stretched far enough apart, paradoxically come full circle only to be rejoined at some point of confluence, some moment or area of tenseless harmony."
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"Out of all things there comes a unity, and out of a unity all things." Heraclitus
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"He treated the microscopic scene as though it were alive and were inhabited by beings which felt and did and hoped and tried even as we do....A nerve-cell...'groped to find another'!....Listening to him I asked myself how far this capacity for anthro-pomorphizing might not contribute to his success as an investigator." Charles Sherrington, Nobel laureate, writing about Nobel laureate Santiago Ramon y Cajal
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"Explorations in metaphorical thinking no doubt pre-date Hesiod in the eighth century b.c. Three special masters of this medium of communication (out of thousands over the millenia) include the Greek writer Aesop, the Roman poet Phaedrus and Leonardo daVinci – each of whom used the suggestive imagery of fables, to convey insights into the world of human nature. In more recent times, writers, artists, poets, educators, and scientists have systematically explored the versatile art of comparison and association as a means of nurturing our impulse to connect and to discover."
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"The philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard deChardin (1881-1955) theorized that humankind strives toward mental, social, and spiritual unity – perhaps like the smallest atomies, which exhibit the behavior of what might be called 'striving'. They strive to be fulfilled."
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"Once you accept the world-view where everything is connected, no aspect of reality is seen as being separate and unrelated. Neither the universals nor the particulars of matter and nonmatter, brain and mind – nor the languages we use to describe these things, science and art – are seen to be in conflict with one another. There is only confluence."
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"If we are in fact the 'physical reflections' of the cosmos, then knowledge of the cosmos is applicable to our self-knowledge. This knowledge makes life meaningful."
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"Although nature's forms are varied, the vast differences of form are contrasted by a simplicity of likeness in process. Our internal processes mirror nature's internal processes and vice versa."
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"Scholars of Eastern mythology point out that the universe was conceived as a 'great mother' who bore many worlds - and in whose womb will form other worlds, in a continuous circle of novel creations.
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"In the thick of our views exists a common pattern of perception….the pattern is a weave of united processes. We now need to see this 'weave' in the human nervous system and the cosmos's system alike. The wider and sharper our vision becomes – and the more flexible our definitions of these systems become – the more the conceptual boundaries between the beholder (brain) and the beheld (universe) will overlap."
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"The outcome is fairly clear – providing you regard certain traditional concepts of totality, unity, oneness, creation, and other concepts of integration as being clear."
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"As open systems, the brain and cosmos 'live' in the way we know all life-giving processes live - 'experiencing' their environments through flowing exchanges of information, matter, and energy."
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"The pre-Socratic philosophers of the sixth century, b.c. intimated many of our current notions about consciousness, matter, and the fundamental principles of the world. The Greek astronomer Anaximander, for instance, conceived of reality as a whole whose parts are all interdependent."
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"This ageless thought of a 'world without end' implies that the brain, like its celestial godmother, is a continuum - a timeless world in which matter and energy are the same throughout. The microtime, with which we measure the birth and death of our bodies, and the macrotime, which we use to determine the birthdays and the deathdates of celestial bodies, are conceptual illusions. Matter continually reorganizes itself in one form or another."
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"From cell-assemblies to thought-assemblies the cosmos unfolds inside us – and we, inside it."
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"The poles open two paths, which both lead to ONE goal at the end." Wassily Kandinsky, painter
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"Our minds ARE nature, in every detail and behavior. We are 'processmorphs' of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, wind storms, geological and atmospheric disturbances, etc. Even though we don't look like any of these things in our outward appearances, the processes of our thoughts, feelings, and actions resemble these and other phenomena....perhaps humankind is also a way for nature to know itself."
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"Each theory may have evolved from a unique angle of analysis, but ultimately our theories form from - and refer to - a sort of unified, collective mind."
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