This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Oppenheimer, fully Julius Robert Oppenheimer
Both the man of science and the man of art live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it. Both, as the measure of their creation, have always had to do with the harmonization of what is new and what is familiar, with the balance between novelty and synthesis, with the struggle to make partial order into total chaos... This cannot be an easy life.
Art | Balance | Life | Life | Man | Mystery | Novelty | Order | Science | Struggle | Wisdom | Novelty | Art |
[Paraphrase from “Brain and Mind” article] “Local” healing reflects information from subtle bioenergy fields. By contrast, healing that appears non-local in space and time may be mediated by “information associated with conscious intention”... In electromagnetic healing... the living human organism contains many highly sensitive natural oscillators that join to form a collective “biofield.” This field is “a collective property of the organism and cannot be reduced to biomolecular events.” In this case, information is transmitted by external fields of similar frequency, with healing occurring through a “tuning” effect... “Information is about relationship and exists only in relationship.” Therefore, information grounded in love - “the highest-quality relationship” - may produce healing by overcoming information originated from the more mechanical levels of physical organization... “For science and medicine to embrace life’s full capacity and the full human potential we need to go beyond mechanical concepts that were developed for machines.”
Capacity | Contrast | Events | Intention | Life | Life | Love | Machines | Mind | Need | Organization | Property | Relationship | Science | Space | Time | Wisdom |
Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
A childlike mind, in its simplicity, practices that science of good to which the wise may be blind.
No scientific concept can ever represent the richness of nature or the complexity of its full creative potential. Thus, [information] is only another facet of the diamond... The most that a new model, metaphor or concept in science can give us is the gift of new questions.
Reverence for life does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful to the community in so doing. Reverence for life does not permit the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many by its means... Reverence for life demands for all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others.
Art | Inspiration | Life | Life | Means | Reverence | Sacrifice | Scholar | Science | Wisdom |
David Swing, aka Professor Swing
Ethics is the science of human duty. Arithmetic tells man how to count his money; ethics how he should acquire it, whether by honesty or fraud. Geography is a map of the world; ethics is a beautiful map of duty. This ethics is not Christianity, it is not even religion; but it is the sister of religion, because the path of duty is in full harmony, as to quality and direction, with the path of God.
Duty | Ethics | Fraud | God | Harmony | Honesty | Man | Money | Religion | Science | Wisdom | World |
Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
History is the science of what never happens twice.
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of legislation than democracies ever can be. They are possessed of a self-control that protects them fro the errors of temporary excitement.
Control | Excitement | Science | Self | Self-control | Wisdom |