“En 1988 el Wall Street Journal, inspirado en el famoso Best Seller financiero “Paseo aleatorio por Wall Street” lanzo el retó al mundo de la bolsa de si eran capaces las mejores casas de Bolsa crear una cartera de valores que venciera a un mono (si, si, a un primate) que con los ojos vendados lanzaría dardos contras las paginas del diario donde figuraban las cotizaciones de las acciones…Las casas de valores aceptaron la apuesta y las principales entidades de inversiones de Wall Street configuraron, realizaron y presentaron…. sesudas y justificadas carteras de valores…y, tal como se había convenido…el mono lanzó los dardos y….¡ADIVINAN!… efectivamente, el mono gano por goleada…dicen que obtuvo un 85%más de rentabilidad…”

Pedro Somacarrera

“Since my adolescence, I have read many philosophical texts, and I still remember the spell “L’évolution créatrice” cast on me. More specifically, I felt that some essential message was embedded, still to be made explicit, in Bergson’s remark:

“The more deeply we study the nature of time, the better we understand that duration means invention, creation of forms, continuous elaboration of the absolutely new.”

(…) Finally, among all those perspectives opened by thermodynamcis, the one which was to keep my interest was the study of irreversible phenomena, which made so manifest the “arrow of time”. From the very start, I always attributed to these processes a constructive role, in opposition to the standard approach, which only saw in these phenomena degradation and loss of useful work. Was it the influence of Bergson’s “L’évolution créatrice” or the presence in Brussels of a performing school of theoretical biology?9 The fact is that it appeared to me that living things provided us with striking examples of systems which were highly organized and where irreversible phenomena played an essential role.”

Ilya Prigogine

Biographical
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1977

“Tal interpretación no vendrá jamás a la mente de aquellos que lean atentamente la obra. Y sorprenderá profundamente a aquellos que han tenido la dicha de conocer al hombre. Nadie amó la verdad con un amor más ardiente. Nadie la buscó con más pasión. Una inmensa inquietud lo agitaba; y, de ciencia en ciencia, de la anatomía y la fisiología a la psicología, de la psicología a la filosofía, él iba, tendido sobre los grandes problemas, despreocupado del resto, negligente de sí mismo. Toda su vida observó, experimentó, meditó. Y como si no hubiese hecho lo suficiente, también soñaba, al adormecerse en su último sueño, soñaba con experiencias extraordinarias y con esfuerzos más que humanos a través de los cuales pudo continuar, hasta más allá de la muerte, trabajando con nosotros para el mayor bien de la ciencia, para la mayor gloria de la verdad.”

Henri Bergson

(“El pensamiento y lo moviente”)

“With wind and the weather beating round me
Up to the hill and the moorland I go.
Who will come with me? Who will climb with me?
Wade through the brook and tramp through the snow?

Not in the petty circle of cities
Cramped by your doors and your walls I dwell;
Over me God is blue in the welkin,
Against me the wind and the storm rebel.

I sport with solitude here in my regions,
Of misadventure have made me a friend.
Who would live largely? Who would live freely?
Here to the wind-swept uplands ascend.

I am the lord of tempest and mountain,
I am the Spirit of freedom and pride.
Stark must he be and a kinsman to danger
Who shares my kingdom and walks at my side.”

Sri Aurobindo

(Composed in Alipore Jail, 1908-09)

“Examination: If thou examinest a man having a smash of his skull, under the skin of his head, while there is nothing at all upon it, thou shouldst palpate his wound. Shouldst thou find that there is a swelling protruding on the out side of that smash which is in his skull, while his eye is askew because of it, on the side of him having that injury which is in his skull; (and) he walks shuffling with his sole, on the side of him having that injury which is in his skull…

Diagnosis: Thou shouldst account him one whom something entering from outside has smitten, as one who does not release the head of his shoul fork, and one who does not fall with his nails in the middle of his palm; while he discharges blood from both his nostrils (and) from both his ears, (and) he suffers with stiffness in his neck. An ailment not to be treated.

Treatment: His treatment is sitting, until he [gains color], (and) until thou knowest he has reached the decisive point….

Gloss: As for: “He walks shuffling with his sole,” he (the surgeon) is speaking about his walking with his sole dragging, so that it is not easy for him to walk, when it (the sole) is feeble and turned over, while the tips of his toes are contracted to the ball of his sole, and they (the toes) walk fumbling the ground. He (the surgeon) says: “He shuffles,” concerning it…”

Edwin Smith (Surgical) Papyrus

(The text is attributed by some to Imhotep, an architect, high priest, and physician of the Old Kingdom, 3000–2500 BCE; Perhaps the first neural-motor lesion correlation observed in history.)

“During many generations there has been an attempt to explain our ultimate insights as merely interpretive of sense-impressions. Indeed this school of thought can trace itself back to Epicurus. It can appeal to some phrases of Plato. I suggest to you that this basis for philosophic understanding is analogous to an endeavour to elucidate the sociology of modern civilization as wholly derivative from the traffic-signals on the main roads. The motions of the cars are conditioned by these signals. But the signals are not the reasons for the traffic. Common sense supplies this conclusion, so overwhelmingly that illustration is unnecessary.

It is this direct insight, vague as to detail and yet the basis of all rationality, that has been denied by the prevalent epistemology of the preceding century. Interest and importance are the primary reasons for the effort after exact discrimination of sense-data. The traffic-signals are the outcome of the traffic.”

[Modes of Thought]

Alfred North Whitehead

“Be honest towards yourself – (no self-deception).
Be sincere towards the Divine – (no bargaining in the surrender).
Be straightforward with humanity – (no pretence and show).”

The Mother

“What is left over if I subtract the fact that I raise my arm from the fact that I raise it intentionally—or whole-heatedly, or autonomously, or freely?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein