THOUGHTS

SUBJECT: SOME  IDEAS AND IDEALS ABOUT FUNDAMENTAL  SCIENTIFIC  TRUTH.

PHILOSOPHY:

Lead, follow — or get out of the way.

Ted Turner

The task of the physicist is to see through the appearances down to the underlyling, very simple, symmetric reality.

Steven Weinberg

He travels furthest, fastest, and with greatest insight – is the man who travels alone.

Anonymous

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift  and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have  created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Einstein

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;  He who would search for pearls must dive below.

John Dryden

Part of the art and skill of the engineer and of the experimental physicist is to create conditions in which certain events are sure to occur.

Eugene Wigner

Truth comes more readily out of error — than out of confusion.

Francis Bacon

It is difficult to think about draining the swamp — when you are up to your neck in alligators.

Anonymous

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution.  It is that they can’t see the problem.

G.  K.  Chesterson

Men live by their routines; and when these are called into question, they lose all power of normal judgment.  They will listen to nothing save the echo of their own voices; all else becomes dangerous thoughts.

Harold Laski

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

Galileo

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday, is the hope of today, and the reality of tomorrow.

Robert H. Goddard

ABOUT THE CURRENT “CAMERA” PICTURE OF THE NATURAL EYE – AS TAUGHT IN MEDICAL SCHOOLS:

An easily understood, workable falsehood is more useful than a complex incomprehensible truth.

Thumb’s Postulates

The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best — and therefore never scrutinize or question.

Stephen Jay Gould

The ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding.

Francis Bacon

It is as fatal as it is cowardly to “blink” facts because they are not to our taste.

Tyndall

Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things.

Spinoza

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition.  I doubt if I could do it myself.

Mark Twain

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler.

Albert Einstei

People believe and do whatever they want to do, regardless of the facts presented to them.

Thomas Quackenbush (Vision Research)

You can recognize a pioneer by the arrows in his back.

Beverly Rubik

New ideas are always criticized – not because an idea lacks merit, but because it might turn out to be workable, which would threaten the reputations of many people whose opinions conflict with it.  Some people may even lose their jobs.

Physicist

When adults first become conscious of something new, they usually either attack it or try to escape from it…  Attack includes such mild forms as ridicule, and escape includes merely putting it out of mind.

W.  I.  Beveridge

I know that most men …  can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the very fabric of their lives.

Leo Tolstoy

Insanity is doing the same thing over-and-over again — but expecting different results.

Rita Mae Brown

It is one thing, to show a man that he is in an error — and another — to put him in possession of truth.

John Locke

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.

Samuel Johnson

The trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

Erica Jong

You cannot by reasoning correct a man of an ill opinion which by reasoning he never acquired.  We can also say that neither by reasoning, nor by actual demonstration of the facts, can you convince some people that an opinion which they have accepted on authority is wrong.

William Bates

There are no hopeless situations. There are only men who have grown hopeless about them.

Anonymous

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principle is contempt — prior to investigation.

Herbert Spencer

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.

Alan Lakein

Science is never merely knowledge; it is orderly knowledge.

Josiah Royce

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Hanlon’s Razor

The test of a first-class mind is the ability to hold two opposing views …  at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

F.  Scott Fitzgerald

Imagination is more important that knowledge…knowledge is limited but imagination circles the world.  To see with one’s own eyes, to feel and judge without succumbing to the suggestive power of the fashion of the day, to be able to express what one has seen and felt in a trim sentence or even a cunningly wrought word…is that not glorious?  When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing absolute knowledge.

Albert Einstein

To him who is a discover in this field, the products of his imagination appear so necessary and natural that he regards them, and would like to have them regarded by others, not as creations of thought but as given realities.

Albert Einstein

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

Albert Einstein

No one but a theorist believes his theory; everyone puts faith in a laboratory result — but the experimenter himself.

Albert Einstein

…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires.  A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.

Albert Einstein

It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things.  Kepler’s marvelous achievement is a particularly fine example of the truth that knowledge cannot spring from experience alone, but only from the comparison of the inventions of the mind with observed fact.

Albert Einstein

The formulation of a problem is often far more essential than its solution, which may be a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.  To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.

Albert Einstein

Any intelligent fool can make thing bigger, more complex, and more violent.  It takes a touch of genius — as a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.

Albert Einstein

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

Albert Einstein

It is the theory that decides what we can observe.

Albert Einstein

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch.  He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears it ticking, but he has no way of opening the case.  If he is ingenious he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations.  He will never be able to compare his picture the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility of the meaning of such a comparison.

Albert Einstein

The important thing is to not stop questioning.  Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Albert Einstein

The skeptic will say, ‘It may well be true that this system of equations is reasonable from a logical standpoint, but this does not prove that it corresponds to nature.’ You are right, dear skeptic.  Experience alone can decide on truth.

– Albert Einstein

Two things are infinite:  the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.

Albert Einstein

My advice to those who wish to learn the art of scientific prophesy is not to rely on abstract reason, but to decipher the secret language of Nature from Nature’s documents:  the facts of experience.

Max Born

ATOMIC THEORY AND DESCRIPTION OF NATURE.

The task of science is both to extend the range of our experience and to reduce it to order, and this task presents various aspects inseparable connected with one another.  Only by experience itself do we come to recognize those laws which grant us a comprehensive view of the diversity of phenomena. As our knowledge becomes wider, we must even be prepared therefore to expect alterations in the point-of-view best suited for the ordering of experience.

Niels Bohr

ABOUT EINSTEIN “THINKING” APPROACH TO SCIENCE.

“Einstein expressed over and over again the thought that one should not couple the quest for knowledge with a bread-and-butter profession, but that research should be done as a private spare-time occupation.  He himself wrote the first of his great treatises while earning his living as an employee of the Swiss Patent Office in Bern.  What he did not consider, however, [was that] to be able to practice science as a hobby, one has to be an Einstein.

– Max Born

You cannot cheat nature, however much you may cheat your fellow man.

Galileo

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Galileo

In the natural sciences the art of rhetoric is ineffective.

Galileo

People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care …  about them.

Zig Ziglar

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George B. Shaw

Odd as it may seem, most people’s views about motion are part of a system of physics that was proposed more than 2,000 years ago and was experimentally shown to be inadequate at least 1,400 years ago.

Bernard Cohen

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

Every creative act involves …  a new innocence of perception, liberated from the cataract of accepted belief.

Arthur Koestler

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

Leonardo da Vinci

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

Ralph Nader

It often happens, with regard to new inventions, that one part of the general public finds them useless, and another part considers them to be impossible.  When it becomes clear that the possibility and the usefulness can no longer be denied, most agree that the whole thing was fairly easy to discover and that they knew about it all along.

Abraham Edelcrantz

When a thing is new, people say:  ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth became obvious, they say:  ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say:  ‘Anyway, it is not new.

William James

The test of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

John Buchan

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity:  But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

T.  E.  Lawrence

He that resolves upon any great and good end has, by that very resolution, scaled the chief barrier to it.

Tryon Edwards

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Max Planck

Nature does not appear very simple or unified … [but] we can at least make out the shape of symmetries, which though broken, are exact principles governing all phenomena, expressions of the beauty of the world …

Steven Weinberg

Knowledge rests not only upon truth alone, but upon error also.

C.  Jung

You know …  everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Will Rogers

Arguments are to be avoided.  They are always vulgar and often convincing.

Oscar Wilde

It’s not what we inherit from our mothers and fathers that haunts us.  It’s all kinds of old defunct theories, all sorts of old defunct beliefs, and things like that.  It’s not that they actually live on in us; they are simply lodged there, and we cannot get rid of them.

Henrick Ibsen

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right.  When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Arthur C. Clarke’s First Law

It’s like religion.  Heresy [in science] is thought of as a bad thing, whereas it should be just the opposite.

Thomas Gold

The pressure for conformity is enormous.  I have experienced it in editors rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees.  The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science.

Julian Schwinger, physicist

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.

Linus Pauling

All truth passes through three stages:  First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“Theories have four stages of acceptance:

i) this is worthless nonsense;

ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;

iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;

iv) I always said so.

– J.B.S.  Haldane

Oakham’s Razor:  The philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

In other words, you should not invent additional explanations about the experimental data that are more complex, when a simpler explanation has already been provided. If each experiment requires its own theory and explanation, then you have not developed a scientific concept at all.

A management team distracted by a series of short-term targets is as pointless as a dieter stepping on a scale every half hour.

The Google Owner’s Manual

If I want to stop a research program I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.

Charles Kettering

If you restrict the journal to publishing only what pleases the referees, you end up publishing what is popular, and while it does make everyone feel more comfortable, you are guaranteed to miss the occasional breakthrough.

A.  Dessler, Editor, Geophysical Research Letters,

If the man doesn’t believe as we do, we say he is a crank, and that settles it.  I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can’t burn him.

Mark Twain

Once a new paradigm takes hold, its acceptance is extraordinarily rapid and one finds few who claim to have adhered to a discarded method.

Dr. B. Lown, inventor of the modern defibrillator

A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds.

Mark Twain

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas.  If your ideas are that good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.

Howard Aiken

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

William James

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Frank Zappa

GORDIAN KNOT

Intricate; complicated, like the GORDIAN KNOT tied by Gordius, King of Phrygia.  An oracle having declared that he who should untie the knot should be master of Asia, Alexander the Great cut it with his sword.

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.  Then all things are at risk.  It is as when a conflagration has broken out in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is a fool’s prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.

Shakespeare

He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it.

Karel von Knebel (1744-1834)

6 responses to “THOUGHTS

  1. MORE THOUGHTS:

    “Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”
    – Albert Einstein

    “Knowledge exists in two forms — lifeless, stored in books, and
    alive in the consciousness of men.
    The second form of existence is, after all, the essential one;
    the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.”
    – Albert Einstein

    “Even for the physicist, the description in plain language will be a criterion on the degree of understanding that has been reached.”
    – Werner Heisenberg

    “If you cannot — in the long run — tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing of it has been worthless.”
    – Erwin Schrodinger

    “See things not as they are, but as they might be”
    J. Robert Oppenheimer

    “What I cannot create, I do not understand”
    Richard Feynman

    “If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”
    Richard Feynman

    The sense experiences are the given subject matter. But the theory that shall interpret them is man-made. It is the result of an extremely laborious process of adaptation: hypothetical, never completely final, always subject to question and doubt.
    – Albert Einstein

    It is the theory — that decides what we can observe.
    – Albert Einstein

    As far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, the do not refer to reality.
    – Albert Einstein

    Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.
    – Albert Einstein

    CONCEPTS ARE VALUED BASED ON THEIR PREDICTIVE CAPABILITIES. REMARKS ON HOW PREDICTIVE THEORIES ARE COMPARED.

    Einstein said we can not compare our theories with the real world. We can compare PREDICTIONS from our theory with OBSERVATIONS of the world, but we can not even imagine … the meaning of”, comparing our theories with reality.
    – Bruce Gregory (Inventing Reality — Physics as a Language)

    Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality, we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears it ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious, he may form some picture of the mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism, and he cannot even imagine the possibility of of the meaning of such a comparison.
    – Albert Einstein

    It seems that the human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things. Kepler’s marvelous achievement is a particularly fine example of the truth that knowledge can not spring from experience alone, but only from the comparison of the inventions of the mind, with the observed fact.
    – Albert Einstein

    To him who is a discoverer in his field, the products of his imagination appear to necessary and natural that he regards them, and would like to have them regarded by others, not as creations of thought, but as given realities.
    – Albert Einstein

    The Universe, which stands continually open to our gaze, cannnot be understood unless one must first learn to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics …
    – Galileo Galilei

    Many different physical ideas can describe the same physical reality. Thus, classical electrodynamics can be described by a field view, or an action at a distance view, etc. Originally, Maxwell filled space with idler wheels, and Faraday with field lines, but somehow the Maxwell equations themselves are pristine and independent of the elaboration of words attempting a physical description. The only true physical description is … the way the equations are to be used in describing experimental observations.
    – Richard Feynman

  2. THE ESSENCE OF LEADERSHIP

    A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. In the end, leaders are much like eagles … they don’t flock, you find them one at a time.

    DETERMINATION

    Some people dream of success … while others wake up and work hard at it.

    TEAMWORK

    Teamwork is the ability to work together towards a common vision. It is the ability to direct individual accomplishment towards organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

    CHALLENGES

    Small minds are subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above them.

    QUALITY…

    Quality is never an accident, it is always the result of; high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution — it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.

    THE ESSENCE OF IMAGINATION

    What we can easily see is only a small percentage of what is possible. Imagination is having the vision to see what is just below the surface, to picture that which is essential, but invisible to the eye.

    THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX

    Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible.

    EXCELLENCE CAN BE ATTAINED IF YOU…

    Care more than others think is wise. Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.

    PERSISTENCE

    Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; un-rewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

    Calvin Coolidge

    DON’T QUIT

    When things go wrong as they sometimes will; When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill;

    When the funds are low, and the debts are high; And you want to smile, but you have to sigh;

    When care is pressing you down a bit — Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

    Success is failure turned inside out; The silver tint of the clouds of doubt;

    And you never can tell how close you are; It may be near when it seems afar.

    So, stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit — It’s when things go wrong that you mustn’t quit.

    WINNER VS. LOSER

    The Winner – is always part of the answer. The Loser – is always part of the problem.

    The Winner – always has a program. The Loser – always has an excuse.

    The Winner says, – “Let me do it for you.” The Loser says, – “That’s not my job.”

    The Winner – sees an answer for every problem. The Loser – sees a problem for every answer.

    The Winner – says, “It may be difficult, but it’s possible.” The Loser – says, “It may be possible, but it’s too difficult.”

    EXCELLENCE…

    The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence — regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

    Vincent Lombardi

    SUCCESS…

    The difference between a successful person and others is, not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.

    Vincent Lombardi

    GOALS

    Far away in the sunshine on the mountainside, are my highest aspirations. I might not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

    THE COURAGE TO SUCCEED

    The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore … unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible … it is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors … to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.

    Ferdinand Magellan

    THE ESSENCE OF ACHIEVEMENT

    The credit belongs to those people who are actually in the arena … who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions to a worthy cause, who at best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, fail while daring greatly … so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

    Theodore Roosevelt

    FOUNDATION OF EXCELLENCE

    Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions and determine to pay the price of a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast … and one day you will build something that endures; something worthy of your potential.

    Epictetus, Philosopher, 55-135 AD

    EXCELLENCE

    Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise; risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible.

    Mistress of high achievement, O lady of Truth, do not let my understanding stumble across some jagged falsehood.

    Pindar

    How can anyone learn anything new — who does not find it a shock?

    John A. Wheeler

    All people occasionally stumble upon the truth – but most pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and carry on as if nothing had happened.

    Winston Churchill

  3. SUBJECT: POLITICAL POWER IN PERPETUATING THE MINUS-LENS STATUS QUO.

    From the book, “Power”, by Robert Greene.

    There are very few men — and they are the exceptions — who
    are able to think and feel beyond the present moment.

    Carl Von Clausewitz, 1780 – 1831

    +++++

    LAW: PLAN ALL THE WAY TO THE END

    JUDGMENT

    The ending is everything. Plan all the wat to it, taking into
    account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune
    that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others.
    By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and
    you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine
    the future by thinking far ahead.

    ++++++

    Never combat any man’s opinion; for though you reach the age of Methuselah, you
    would never have done setting him right upon all the absurd things that he believes.
    It is also well to avoid correcting people’s mistakes in conversation, however good your
    intention may be; for it is easy to offend people, and difficult, if not impossible
    to mend them.

    If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversations
    you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to the
    dialog of two fools in a comedy. Probatum est. (It has been proved.)

    The man who comes into the world with the notion that he is really going to
    instruct it in matters of highest importance, may thank his stars if he escapes
    with a whole skin.

    Arthur Schopenhauer
    1788 – 1860

    +++++

    LAW 38

    THINK AS YOU LIKE — BUT BEHAVE LIKE OTHERS

    If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas
    and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want their attention, and that you
    look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel
    inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share
    your origiginality onlly with tolerant friends, and those who are sure
    to appreciate your uniqueness.

    WHEN ASKING FOR HELP, APPEAL TO PEOPLE’S SELF-INTERST,
    NEVER TO THEIR MERCY OR GRATITUDE

    SUBJECTIVE MEN:

    Most men are so thoroughly subjective that nothing really interests them but themselves.
    They always think of their own case as soon as ever any remark
    is made, and their whold attention is engrossed and absorbed by the merest chance
    reference to anyhthing which affects them personnally, be
    it ever so remote.

    Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 – 1860

    JUDGMENT

    If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to
    remind him of your past assistance and good deeds.
    He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something
    in your request, or in your alliance with him, that
    will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion.
    He will respond enthusiastically, when he sees something
    to be gained for himsself.

    WIN THOUGH YOUR ACTIONS, NEVER THROUGH ARGUMENT

    JUDGMENT:

    Any momentary triumph you think you have gained though
    argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment
    and ill will you will stir up is stronger and lasts longer
    than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more
    powerful to get others to agree with you — though your
    own actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not
    explicate.

    *******

    From the book, “Power”, by Robert Greene.

    PLAY TO PEOPLE’S FANTASIES

    JUDGMENT

    The truth is often avoided — because it is ugly and unpleasant.
    Never appeal to the truth and reality, unless you are prepared
    for the anger that comes from disenchantment.
    Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture
    romance or conjure up fantasy, are like an oases in the desert:
    Everyone flocks to them. There is a great power taping into
    the fantasies of the masses.

    ++++

    Subject: The politics of a minus lens – and why people love Bates’ claims

    This is why Bate’s sells so well. But the harsh reality is in placing a
    strong minus lens on the normal eye – and watching it always “go down”.

    Further, a person is “comforted” by an OD who hold up a minus lens,
    and shows the person that he can “see better”. He is a great
    “magic person”, who is protecting your vision, and his “office doctor”
    position.

    To ask him to “change his mind”, is virtually impossible.

    That is why asking “brutal questions” about the safety and
    common sense of the minus lens, is totally “swept under the rug”.

    That is the reason you think for yourself, and *I* use the
    objective term, “measure refractive STATE”, never an “error”.

    The science of all natural eyes, having un-desired, but normal
    refractive STATES, is clear.

    But the OD never wants to talk about pure-science.

    We are ‘frozen” into the mentality for the above reasons.

    Best,

    Otis

    #######

    EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE – AND PURE LOGICAL THINKING.

    “Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purly logical means are completely empty as regards reality.
    Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into
    the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics — indeed,
    of modern science altogether.”

    Albert Einstein

  4. Subject: Being strong – against “impossible odds”.

    If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
    If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too:
    If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
    Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

    If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,
    If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same:.
    If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
    Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

    If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
    And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
    And never breathe a word about your loss:
    If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
    And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

    If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
    If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much:
    If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

    Rudyard Kipling

  5. Subject: The nature of character.

    Out of the night that covers me,
    Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul.

    In the fell clutch of circumstance
    I have not winced nor cried aloud.
    Under the bludgeonings of chance
    My head is bloody, but unbowed.

    Beyond this place of wrath and tears
    Looms but the Horror of the shade,
    And yet the menace of the years
    Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

    It matters not how strait the gate,
    How charged with punishments the scroll.
    I am the master of my fate:
    I am the captain of my soul.

    William Ernest Henley

  6. “Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”

    Albert Einstein.

    “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”

    Albert Einstein.

    “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”

    Albert Einstein.

    “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
    Albert Einstein.

    “Practice any art, no matter how well or badly, not to get moeny and fame but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow” — Kurt Vonnegut

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