This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubborn, persistent illusion.
The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values. Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one.
Future | Myth | Order | Past | Present | Society | Tradition | Society |
John Schaar, fully John Homer Schaar
The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and their destination.
Future |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
Future | Generosity | Giving | Present |
Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do? The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn't violate too many of Newton's Laws!
The organs are correlated by the organic fluids and the nervous system. Each element of the body adjusts itself to the others, and the others to it. This mode of adaptation is essentially teleological. If we attribute to tissues an intelligence of the same kind as ours, as mechanists and vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to associate together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near, and the future as well as the present.
Body | Existence | Future | Intelligence | Mind | Organic | Present | Space | System | Time |
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
The most decisive actions of our life - I mean those that are most likely to decide the whole course of our future - are, more often than not, unconsidered.
If we attribute an intelligence of the same kind as ours, as mechanists and vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to associate together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near, the future as well as the present.
Body | Existence | Future | Intelligence | Mind | Present | Space | Time |