Tag: quotes

Outline of an anarchistic theory of knowledge

Posted on by channing

 

“The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory. Hypotheses contradicting well-confirmed theories give us evidence that cannot be obtained in any other way. Proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs its critical power. Uniformity also endangers the free development of the individual.”

“There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo.”

“No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof of progress. It is also a first step in our attempts to find the principles implicit in familiar observational notions.”

 

Terence McKenna was a fan.

Source: Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method

Those Little Fucking Photons

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Jack Whitten, Beloved Painter of Abstract Cosmologies, Dies at 78 -ARTnews

 

His “conceptual paintings” offered new possibilities for what abstraction could be.

 

“Ethereal and oftentimes mystical, Whitten’s paintings came out of inquiries into philosophical, scientific, and mathematical concepts. The chipped-paint technique in the “E Stamps” works, for example, often makes his work shine, and it sprang from reading up on the physical properties of light. “We know now that light occurs in extremely small particles,” he once told ARTnews. “That’s what allows us to see—those little fucking photons bouncing around your retina, and blam-o, I can see!””

Source: Jack Whitten, Beloved Painter of Abstract Cosmologies, Dies at 78 -ARTnews

Rothko Algorithm

Posted on by channing

“The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.”

The recipe of a work of art – its ingredients – how to make it -the formula.

 

  1. There must be a clear preoccupation with death – intimations of mortality…Tragic art, romantic art, etc., deals with the knowledge of death.
  2. Sensuality. Our basis of being concrete about the world. it is a lustful relationship to things that exist.
  3. Tension. Either conflict or curbed desire.
  4. Irony. This is a modern ingredient – the self-effacement and examination by which a man for instant can go on to something else.
  5. Wit and play…for the human element.
  6. The ephemeral and chance…for the human element.
  7. Hope.10% to make the tragic concept more endurable. I measure these ingredients very carefully when I paint a picture. It is always the form that follows these elements and the picture results from the proportions of these elements.”

 

Mark Rothko Art Center https://www.rothkocenter.com/en/about-rothko/statement-about-art