Thank you for this, all of it, but especially the quote from Tesla, about whom I know nothing. Reading what he said about designing motors, I was reminded, for some reason, of both Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. I read their biographies recently and was amazed to find that both said that, when a music idea came to them, it came in complete form. I think it was Tchaikovsky who said he imagined a composition as if it were a tree, from roots to tips of branches and leaves. What a thing, to have 2 hours or 3 of music in one's head, thought out, ready to write! For me, writing seems to go paragraph by paragraph. I remember having a student, many years ago, one of the very best, telling me that her papers came to her complete, as 5 or 10 pages, and all she had to do was write them. Also, thank you for suggesting an explanation for the decay of logic and discussion, and for relating it to the lack of an inner life. Reading, absorbing, thinking: things of the past, it seems, for many people. Great reading.
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing your examples, Allen. Gary Lachman wrote a piece for analogy a while back on Goethe's notion of scientific, "active seeing"--where the experimenter kinda mind-melds with the object under observation. He was after the ur-pflanze, or the first plant, the archetype of the plant in the mind of the creator. Fun material. I'm glad you're finding this stuff interesting. Thank you for the feedback.
Thank you for this, all of it, but especially the quote from Tesla, about whom I know nothing. Reading what he said about designing motors, I was reminded, for some reason, of both Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. I read their biographies recently and was amazed to find that both said that, when a music idea came to them, it came in complete form. I think it was Tchaikovsky who said he imagined a composition as if it were a tree, from roots to tips of branches and leaves. What a thing, to have 2 hours or 3 of music in one's head, thought out, ready to write! For me, writing seems to go paragraph by paragraph. I remember having a student, many years ago, one of the very best, telling me that her papers came to her complete, as 5 or 10 pages, and all she had to do was write them. Also, thank you for suggesting an explanation for the decay of logic and discussion, and for relating it to the lack of an inner life. Reading, absorbing, thinking: things of the past, it seems, for many people. Great reading.
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing your examples, Allen. Gary Lachman wrote a piece for analogy a while back on Goethe's notion of scientific, "active seeing"--where the experimenter kinda mind-melds with the object under observation. He was after the ur-pflanze, or the first plant, the archetype of the plant in the mind of the creator. Fun material. I'm glad you're finding this stuff interesting. Thank you for the feedback.