Comments on: TIA Tuesday: Natural wonders

By: Common Sense Atheism » The Irrational Atheist (notes in the margin, index)

Common Sense Atheism » The Irrational Atheist (notes in the margin, index) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 23:59:29 +0000

[...] parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, [...]

By: Arthur

Arthur — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:09:01 +0000

The neatest part of art history, to me, is the part where painters started trying to figure out ways to represent the real world around them more accurately. This appears (to an untutored layperson like myself) to have been such an interesting enterprise that, before you knew it, nobody was painting floaty religious icon arrangements anymore. And nobody ever looked back either.

We’re apparently heavily beholden to those painters for the development of the notion, first, of perspective, and later of all that neat projective geometry stuff that I still don’t understand. It seems odd to me that this chapter in art history doesn’t show up in more conversations about religious versus secular influences on great art.

By: Sarah Dettwiler

Sarah Dettwiler — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:41 +0000

I’m so tired of the argument that we would have no art without religion. Yes, some artists are inspired by it, but the same can be said of LSD. Does this mean we should be feeding it to our children?

By: heliobates

heliobates — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:22:57 +0000

No Wallace Stevens? No Tom Gunn? No Anna Akhmatova? No Robert Frost…

By: Nemo

Nemo — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:28:49 +0000

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

– “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
Inspired by science

By: Bacopa

Bacopa — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:45:14 +0000

Feynman weiged in on this issue:
” Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination – stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one – million – year – old light. A vast pattern – of which I am a part… What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?