Saturday 29 November 2014

Pauline Pratt's Mass

I found this online having glimpsed it on a television programme.


This image combines my fascination with right angles with my being an anatomist.


Sunday 23 November 2014

Two quotes: On knowledge, thinking and living


The purpose of knowledge is for it to be a servant and helpmate to humanity not the means by which one man might lord it over another.
(Unattributed)


Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
Christopher Morley


Monday 17 November 2014

The Big Bang Theory - 3

The third of my Big Bang Theory quotes, demonstrating the rivalry between different branches of science.


Sheldon: I brought Amy here to show her some of the work I’m doing.

Amy: It’s very impressive, for theoretical work.

Sheldon: Do I detect a hint of condescension?

Amy: I’m sorry, was I being too subtle? I meant compared to the real-world applications of neurobiology, theoretical physics is, what’s the word I’m looking for? Hmm, cute.

Leonard and Howard together: Oooh!

Sheldon: Are you suggesting the work of a neurobiologist like Babinski could ever rise to the significance of a physicist like Clarke-Maxwell or Dirac?

Amy: I’m stating it outright. Babinski eats Dirac for breakfast and defecates Clarke-Maxwell.

Sheldon: You take that back.

Amy: Absolutely not. My colleagues and I are mapping the neurological substrates that subserve global information processing, which is required for all cognitive reasoning, including scientific inquiry, making my research ipso facto prior in the ordo cognoscendi. That means it’s better than his research, and by extension, of course, yours.

Leonard: I’m sorry, I’m-I’m still trying to work on the defecating Clark Maxwell, so…

Sheldon: Excuse me, but a grand unified theory, insofar as it explains everything, will ipso facto explain neurobiology.

Amy: Yes, but if I’m successful, I will be able to map and reproduce your thought processes in deriving a grand unified theory, and therefore, subsume your conclusions under my paradigm.

Sheldon: That’s the rankest psychologism, and was conclusively revealed as hogwash by Gottlob Frege in the 1890s!

Amy: We appear to have reached an impasse.

Sheldon: I agree. I move our relationship terminate immediately.

Amy: Seconded.



From: The Zazzy Substitution
BBT Transcripts
Wikipedia Episode Guide


Tuesday 11 November 2014

Cubes etc

Having commented upon my discovery of Kazimir Malevich's work depicting squares in my previous blog post, I should also comment on an extension he made to his work into three dimensions by inventing architectons such as this:


Gota (1927)
The following video celeverly links his two-dimensional and three-dimensional work and reminds me of the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838-1926).


Universe of Malevich -  Макс Семаков


Wednesday 5 November 2014

Squares


I only recently came across the painting Black Suprematic Square by Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935).


While doing so, I also came across White On White:


Whatever one thinks of the artistic merit of such work, I certainly find such explorations fascinating. (I have even made some explorations of my own elsewhere.)