A Special Place for Blog Lovers with a Touch of Science!

1."Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference."
– Neil deGrasse Tyson

2. "Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination."
– Jonah Lehrer

3. "Above all, don't fear difficult moments. The best comes from them."
– Rita Levi-Montalcini

1. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.

2. Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is the best.

3. If you're going through hell, keep going.

4. It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.
- Aristotle

Jesus Christ

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Ernest Hemingway

"There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span."
― For Whom the Bell Tolls

Voltaire

"The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood."

  Ray Bradbury

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things."

The litany against fear

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

― Frank Herbert, Dune

Henry Miller

"Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such"
― Henry Miller

Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,

A thinker with a thousand faces

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

― Mahatma Gandhi

Follow your heart and intuition 

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

- Steve Jobs

Scientific progress or spiritual regress? 

The last few centuries saw unbelievable technological progress and the flourishing of all branches of Science. What was considered impossible is whether a fact now or foreseeable future. The tools and devices that we have invented are constantly improving and are going closer to perfection. Our civilization reached even a level when we are heading towards the stars. And yet, these immense advancements caused some of the greatest disasters that we have ever experienced – weapons of mass destruction, global pollution, worldwide mass media manipulation, and disinformation, etc. Where do we go wrong? Why do we misuse our great scientific inventions? The answer comes from the past:

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

Language and Love

Roland Barthes is one of the most important think-tanks in Linguistics, Humanities, Literature, Cinema, and Post-Modern thought. As he perceived it, Language itself is the most crucial part of the body of our understanding of the world's phenomena. Language is not only a living organism but a corporeal part of our consciousness. We feel, touch, love, or hate, we fathom the depths of the Universe and experience our lives through our language. Our words and the meaning we attach to them have the possibility to literally create or disintegrate reality. So, don't underestimate what you daily utter or write or read or hear. It's what pushes up or down the evolution of our linguistic body, of our future as a species. Mind your words. For, what defines human being the most is language. And language could be love. Love and language - the greatest inventions of all times.

"Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. " 

― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Life cannot have had a random beginning…

Sir Fred Hoyle (1915 - 2001) was an astronomer, who was famous for his bold and provocative stances on scientific matters. He was a prominent theoretician and a great contributor to the field of stellar nucleosynthesis. In opposition to Big Bang Theory, which he denied to be valid, he was a proponent of steady-state theory. The latter is the one that claims that no matter that the universe is expanding it remain with approximately the same density and it is constantly creating new stars, galaxies and to say it more general matter in order to keep the balance.

Except for being an incredibly talented scientist, Fred Hoyle was really witty with throwing maxims at the audience. As he once said:

"Life cannot have had a random beginning ... The trouble is that there are about 2000 enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10^40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup."

Just to remind us that Science is limited as all other human endeavors and there are truths, which we are not or still not able to explore. Maybe we would be more accurate if we take scientific axioms as the best explanations so far instead of general truths. As Sir Hoyle said – Life cannot have had a random beginning – because random is just another concept that we often use for higher states of order that we haven't understood yet or is still lying ahead of us, not yet discovered.

So, keep away from dogmatism and expand your knowledge and perception of the innate meaning of the Universe. Because to not accept total randomness doesn't mean that your fall into the vicious circle of determinism but that you haven't closed your eyes for the ever-present signs of reason in the creation of both micro and macro cosmos.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz ( 1646 –1716) was one of the most prominent polymaths of the 17th century Enlightenment. He was a notable mathematician, logician, and philosopher, who was representative of the tradition of rationalism. Leibniz developed the ideas of differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton. He was also one of the most important inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. Leibniz is often cited as one of the greatest proponents of optimism although frequently misinterpreted. Arguably, his best-known thought: "This is the best of all possible worlds" is widely misunderstood. When Leibniz claims that the way the world is created is the best, he doesn't exclude all evil, unfair, and amoral aspects of human nature and society like a man who suffers from daltonism and can't see the whole spectrum of the world's phenomena. The statement actually says the opposite. The universe with all its imperfections and distortions is, indeed, in perfect balance because it sustains existence. All that seems chaotic to us is just a higher level of order. We can't possibly conceive even the idea of a better universe because it exceeds our mental capacity. Therefore, the world as we know it is the best we can imagine. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that we should accept its flaws but that we shall embrace its natural harmony. 

Enjoy the best of all possible Sundays!

Love for Truth

To go out of your comfort zone, to become more or less skeptical, to seek reason, or reconciliation between rational intentions and irrational instincts is a lifetime dedication. Love of truth may not lead you to happiness but it's arguably the only path to achieve wisdom and thus a happier state of mind. We cannot deny the importance of such endeavors. For us is as crucial to take care of our bodies as to sustain our mental and emotional health. So, never stop following your dreams and aspirations even though they may face you with the greatest difficulties in your life. Listen to your inner voice and you will find the support you need because you are not alone. There are the Truth and all the others who search for it. 

"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. " 

- Simone de Beauvoir

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

- Marie Curie

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover."

–Mark Twain