“…it is apparent that Galileo’s proposal amounts to a partial revision of our observation language or of our experience. An experience which partly contradicts the idea of the motion of the earth and is turned into an experience that confirms it, at least as far as ‘terrestrial things’ are concerned. This is what actually happens. But Galileo wants to persuade us that no change has taken place, that the second conceptual system is already universally known, even though it is not universally used. Salvati, (Galileo’s) representative in the Dialogue, his opponent Simpilcio and Sagredo the intelligent layman all connect Galileo’s method of argumentation with Plato’s theory of anamnesis- a clever tactical move, typically Galilean one is inclined to say. Yet we must not allow ourselves to be deceived about the revolutionary development that is actually taking place.”

Paul Feyerabend- Against Method

Leisure Time

“The crowd is not only the newest asylum of outlaws; it is also the latest narcotic for those abandoned. The flaneur is someone abandoned in the crowd. In this he shares the situation of the commodity. He is not aware of this special situation, but this does not diminish its effect on him and it permeates him blissfully like a narcotic that can compensate for many humiliations. The intoxication to which the flaneur surrenders is the intoxication of the commodity around which surges the stream of customers.”

Walter Benjamin- Charles Baudelaire: a lyric poet in the era of high capitalism, tr. Harry Zohn

“
You know not what you ask: can you drink of the cup I drink of?
Mark 10:38- KJB
“
Are there not enough experiments, do you not think, shown by the high heavens and the seas and the broad Earth?
“Dialogus Physicus”- Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life
View high resolution
Played 50 times
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

msodradek:

—Björk, “Hyperballad”, Post (1995).

She sleeps. I don’t wake her up. Why don’t you wake her up? It is my sorrow and my happiness. I’m sorry that I can’t wake her up – that I can’t put my foot on the burning threshold of her house – that I don’t know the way to her house – that I don’t know in which direction the way lies – that I move constantly away from her, powerless like the leaf carried away from its tree by the autumn wind. And furthermore: I was never on this tree, a leaf in the autumn wind, but from no tree. – I am happy that I can’t wake her up. What would I do, if she would rise, if she would get up from bed, if I would get up from bed, the lion from his lair, and my roar break into my frightful ear.

Sie schläft. Ich wecke sie nicht. Warum weckst du sie nicht? Es ist mein Unglück und mein Glück. Ich bin unglücklich, daß ich sie nicht wecken kann, daß ich nicht aufsetzen kann den Fuß auf die brennende Türschwelle ihres Hauses, daß ich nicht den Weg kenne zu ihrem Hause, daß ich nicht die Richtung kenne, in welcher der Weg liegt, daß ich mich immer weiter von ihr entferne, kraftlos wie das Blatt im Herbstwind sich von seinem Baume entfernt und überdies: ich war niemals an diesem Baume, im Herbstwind ein Blatt, aber von keinem Baum. – Ich bin glücklich, daß ich sie nicht wecken kann. Was täte ich, wenn sie sich erhöbe, wenn sie aufstehen würde von dem Lager, wenn ich aufstehen würde von dem Lager, der Löwe von seinem Lager, und mein Gebrüll einbrechen würde in mein ängstliches Gehör.

—Franz Kafka, Nachlaß (Posthumous Writings), probably Autumn 1923.

(Reblogged from msodradek)
“
The vision of the laboratory as a technological device to gain strength by multiplying mistakes is made obvious if one looks at the difference between a politician and a scientist. They are typically contrasted on cognitive or social grounds…. These many differences are all artificial projections of one, simple, material thing. The politician has no laboratory and the scientist has one.
Bruno Latour- “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World,” in Science Observed
“
Persons who would never have been taken seriously became famous. Harshness mellowed, separations fused, intransigents made concessions to popularity, tastes already formed relapsed into uncertainties… There is nothing one can hold responsible for this, nor can one say how it all came about. There are no persons or ideas or specific phenomena that one can fight against. There is no lack of talent or goodwill or even of strong personalities. There is just something missing in everything, though you can’t put your finger on it, as if there had been a change in the blood or in the air; a mysterious disease has eaten away the previous period’s seeds of genius, but everything sparkles with novelty, and finally one has no way of knowing whether the world has really grown worse, or oneself merely older.
Robert Musil in The Man Without Qualities. (via mills)
(Reblogged from mills)

“Two times two is four has a cocky look; its stands across your path, arms akimbo, and spits.”

Dostoevsky- Notes From Underground

Playing King

“Death kicks over its traces in the midst of life, and this would not be life if it did not, and in the middle is where the homo Dei’s state is found- in the middle between kicking over the traces and reason- just as his condition is somewhere between mystical community and windy individualism. I can see all that from my column here. And in that state let him commune with himself, fine, gallant, genial, and respectful- for he alone is noble, and not that set of contradictions. Man is the master of contradictions, they occur through him, and so he is more noble than they. More noble than death, too noble for it- that is the freedom of the mind. More noble than life, too noble for it- that is the devotion of the heart… Death is a great power. You take off your hat and tiptoe past his presence, rocking your way forward. He wears the ceremonial ruff of what has been, and you put on austere black in his honor. Reason stands foolish before him, for reason is only a virtue, but death is freedom and kicking over the traces, chaos and lust.”

Thomas Mann- The Magic Mountain