“There is the idea
of patterns in motion
represented by the movement
of forms repeating their patterns
of solid shapes and hues
expressing the idea
of patterns in motion.

And then there are
the spaces that we enter
the eyes that see the sky
the nose that breathes
the air of the sea
and the waves that move
our minds like ships of light.

The idea that breathes
the dance into us
prepares the food of our souls
sings the song of our hearts
fills us like a vessel
paints us like a canvas
with the colors of its fire.

This is the idea of patterns in motion.”

Artist’s Muse
(on visiting the Bauhaus and Berggruen museums in Berlin)

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety.

Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

So write with a combination of short, medium, and long sentences. Create a sound that pleases the reader’s ear. Don’t write just words. Write music.”

Gary Provost

“A scientist who wishes to maximize the empirical content ofthe views he holds and who wants to understand them as clearly as he possibly can must therefore introduce other views; that is, he must adopt a pluralistic methodology. He must compare ideas with other ideas rather than with ‘experience’ and he must try to improve rather than discard the views that have failed in the competition.

(…) it is not a gradual approach to the truth. It is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible alternatives, each single theory, each fairy-tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness. Nothing is ever settled, no view can ever be omitted from a comprehensive account.

(…) The task of the scientist, however, is no longer ‘to search for the truth’, or ‘to praise god’, or ‘to systematize observations’, or ‘to improve predictions’. These are but side effects of an activity to which his attention is now mainly directed and which is ‘to make the weaker case the stronger‘ as the sophists said, and thereby to sustain the motion ofthe whole.”

Feyerabend — Against Method