But Most Intensely Love For That Other Thing, The Sound-absorbent Screen, Life’s White Machine, Shadows

...without at least an elementary instruction in mathematics and science, man will remain a stranger in this world, a stranger in the culture that supports him.”

Ernst Mach, en Sigmund, Karl. Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science (pp. 19-20).

Ethical thought consists of the systematic examination of the relations of human beings to each other, the conceptions, interests and ideals from which human ways of treating one another spring, and the systems of value on which such ends of life are based. These beliefs about how life should be lived, what men and women should be and do, are objects of moral enquiry; and when applied to groups and nations, and, indeed, mankind as a whole, are called political philosophy, which is but ethics applied to society.

Isaiah Berlin The Pursuit of the Ideal

That's the question...

Exacto, ni más ni menos!

toska [tohs-kah]

(noun) An untranslatable, Russian word – Vladimir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” (via wordsnquotes)

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio Explains Emotions | MIT Technology Review

The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio explains how minds emerge from emotions and feelings.

by ed ruscha (+)

[on tumblr]

Para leer en este 2014

In honor of #readwomen2014 – an effort to equalize the gender imbalance in our collective reading habits – here are 14 fantastic, timeless reads by women:

Joan Didion on self-respect

Susan Sontag on photography as aesthetic consumerism and a form of modern violence

Virginia Woolf on the creative benefits of keeping a diary

Annie Dillard on presence over productivity

Helen Keller on optimism

Alexandra Horowitz on the blinders of attention

Anaïs Nin on why emotional excess is essential to creativity

Hannah Arendt on how bureaucracy fuels violence

Jennifer Finney Boylan on what it’s like to be a transgender parent

Anissa Ramirez on saving science education

Jeanette Winterson on adoption and how we use storytelling to save ourselves

Dani Shapiro on the pleasures and perils of the creative life

Virginia Woolf on how to read a book

Susan Sontag on literature and freedom

Artwork above by Joanna Walsh

...we must be very careful not to exaggerate the uniqueness of our species. The ancients apparently never gave much thought to this practice, the opposite of anthropomorphism, and so we lack a word for it. I will call it anthropodenial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves.

Frans de Waal

the new American Gothic. // artist: Criselda Vasquez.