“The one who seeks truth is a scientist.
The one who wish to realize the free flow of his subjective thought is a writer.
But what can one do in case if one needs a way in between these two possibilities?”—Robert Musil Dora Maurer: Curved plane, concave, 1996
Dora Maurer: Curved plane, concave, 1996 • Municipal Picture Gallery

worries
Charles Percy Snow
The Two Cultures (excerpt) by C. P. Snow
[ keywords: two cultures, art, science ]
“Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have your read a work of Shakespeare's?”
bridges
Jonathan Swift
The scientific background of Swift's Voyage to Laputa (excerpt) by M. Nicolson & N. M. Mohler
[ keywords: mathematics ]
“Although several of the critics incline to think that such satire is peculiar to Swift, there is little in the main idea of this section that is unique.”
artists
Robert Burns
The Horror of Technology of Beer-Making
[ keywords: food processing, barley, hordeum, beer, beer-making ]
“They took a plough and ploughed him down, / Put clods upon his head, / And they have sworn a solemn oath / John Barleycorn was dead.”
George Bernard Shaw
Wonders Then and Now ·
[ keywords: physics, atom, electron, results of modern physics ]
“The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimeters every movement and position in the dance of the electrons.”
Marcel Duchamp by Villon
Unhappy Readymade—Marcel Duchamp's experimental geometry
[ keywords: mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry ]
“Duchamp's days of concentrated geometric scholarship were largely over by the time he left France in 1915 and were certainly so by 1919.”
Vitruvian Man
"all of them had one casting, one measure, and one size ..."
[ keywords: engineering, standardization ]
“...After this manner he made the ten bases: all of them had one casting, one measure, and one size....”
scientists
Robert Darwin by James Pardon
A Botanical Poet at the 18th Century
[ keywords: didactic poem, biology, botany, Carl Linné ]
“Rooted in earth, each cloven foot descends, / And round and round her flexile neck she bends, / Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme, / Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime;”
aphorisms
Thomas Mann
Selection from the Mathematical Quotations Server
[ keywords: mathematics ]
“J. W. Goethe, Th. Mann, A. Pope, W. Shakespeare, G. B. Shaw, J. Swift, L. N. Tolstoy, Voltaire "I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh."—Th. Mann: The Magic Mountain.”
mnemonics
Aristoteles Logica, 1570
Syllogistic Poems
[ keywords: mathematical logics, Aristotelian syllogisms ]
“...In the part of syllogisms the famous mnemonic verses 'Barbara Celarent' make their first appearance...”
humor
Miguel de Cervantes
Discours de la Méthode by Sancho by Cervantes
[ keywords: methods of natural science, mathematics, physics, astronomy, geography, etc. ]
“Sancho felt, and passing his hand gently and carefully down to the hollow of his left knee, he looked up at his master and said, 'Either the test is a false one, or we have not come to where your worship says, nor within many leagues of it.'”