From Building A Fire One Can Learn

A Cloud Can Look Like A Camel, But A Camel Is Unlikely To Look Like A Cloud. This Is So Because The Signifier Must Be Able To Stand For The Whole Category Of The Signified. The Cloud Looks Like All Camels, But No Camel Looks Like All Clouds.

Both Art And Science Are Bent On The Understanding Of The Forces That Shape Existence, And Both Call For A Dedication To What Is. Neither Of Them Can Tolerate Capricious Subjectivity Because Both Are Subject To Their Criteria Of Truth. Both Require Precision, Order, And Discipline Because No Comprehensible Statement Can Be Made Without These. Both Accept The Sensory World As What The Middle Ages Called Signatura Regrum, The Signature Of Things, But In Quite Different Ways.

The Arts, As A Reflection Of Human Existence At Its Highest, Have Always And Spontaneously Lived Up To This Demand Of Plenitude. No Mature Style Of Art In Any Culture Has Ever Been Simple.

Now The Work Of Art Also Represents A State Of Final Equilibrium, Of Accomplished Order And Maximum Relative Entropy, And There Are Those Who Resent It. But Art Is Not Meant To Stop The Stream Of Life. Within A Narrow Span Of Duration And Space The Work Of Art Concentrates A View Of The Human Condition; And Sometimes It Marks The Steps Of Progression, Just As A Man Climbing The Dark Stairs Of A Medieval Tower Assures Himself By The Changing Sights Glimpsed Through Its Narrow Windows That He Is Getting Somewhere After All.

Television Is A New, Hard Test Of Our Wisdom. If We Succeed In Mastering The New Medium It Will Enrich Us. But It Can Also Put Our Mind To Sleep. We Must Not Forget That In The Past The Inability To Transport Immediate Experience And To Convey It To Others Made The Use Of Language Necessary And Thus Compelled The Human Mind To Develop Concepts. For In Order To Describe Things One Must Draw The General From The Specific; One Must Select, Compare, Think. When Communication Can Be Achieved By Pointing With The Finger, However, The Mouth Grows Silent, The Writing Hand Stops, And The Mind Shrinks.