By the Late John Brockman Read online

  62. Brillouin, op. cit., p. 10. “The study of . . . that of scarcity.”

  63. William Empson, “Value Is in Activity,” in Collected Poems (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1949), p. 4. “Value is in activity.”

  64. Brillouin, op. cit., p. 100. “Only the final sum matters.”

  65. Eddington, op. cit., p. 142. “Physical science consists . . . impenetrable mathematical symbol.”

  66. Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” in Collected Poems, p. 183. “And say of . . . the rotted names.”

  67. Wittgenstein, Zettel, pp. 12-13e, paras. 57-58. “finding to show . . . in our language.”

  68. C. G. Jung, VII Sermones Ad Mortuous (London: Stuart & Watkins) “that hallowed and . . . the same time.”

  69. Stevens, “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction,” op. cit., p. 387. “a form to . . . in the word.”

  70. Stevens, “The Man on the Dump,” op. cit., p. 203. “Is it peace . . . On the dump.”

  71. Wittgenstein, op. cit., p. 17e, para. 88. “It is very . . . never interests us.”

  72. Ibid., p. 35e, para. 198. “Can I think . . . it does not?”

  73. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 44. “The actual occasions are . . . ground of obligation.”

  74. Ibid. “express the definiteness . . . ingression is realized.”

  75. Brillouin, op. cit., p. 49. “Any absolute statement . . . can be valid.”

  76. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p. 145. “costing not less than everything.”

  77. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Ibid., pp. 4-5. “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?”

  78. Stevens, “Solitaire Under the Oaks,” in Opus Posthumous, p. 111. “In the oblivion . . . trees, completely released.”

  79. Stevens, “Life on a Battleship,” op. cit., p. 79. “The part / Is the equal of the whole.”

  80. Whitehead, op. cit., p. 53. “There is a . . . from common sense.”

  81. Ibid. “There is a . . . continuity of becoming.”

  82. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p. 138. “This is the . . . in time’s covenant.” “Where is the . . . Zero summer.”

  83. Stein, op. cit., p. 169. “No matter how . . . was no repetition.”

  84. Empson, “This Last Pain,” op. cit., p. 33. “Feign then what’s . . . from a despair.”

  85. Fuller, op. cit., pp. 62-3. “Physical experiments have . . . metaphysical, is finite.”

  86. Empson, “Doctrinal Point,” op. cit., p. 39. “All physics one . . . of the description.”

  87. Eddington, op. cit., p. 32. “Progress so far . . . unobserved and observable.”

  88. Jeans, Mysterious Universe, p. 176. “Most men find . . . an imperishable universe.”

  89. Whitehead, op. cit., p. 17. “Every proposition proposing . . . for the fact.”

  90. Wittgenstein, Zettel, pp. 120-21e, para. 695. “Understanding a commission . . . got to do.”

  91. Jeans, op. cit., p. 172. “The final truth . . . is at fault.”

  92. Stevens, “Description Without Place,” in Collected Poems, p. 344. “Description is revelation . . . nor false facsimile.”

  93. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p.144. “Every phrase and . . . to the block.”

  94. Ibid. p. 126. “hope would be hope for the wrong thing” . . . “love would be love of the wrong thing.”

  95. Stevens, “Adagia,” Opus, p. 164. “The exquisite environment . . . not realized before.”

  96. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p. 122. “Ridiculous the waste . . . before and after.”

  97. I. A. Richards, “The Status of the Mentionable,” in Goodbye Earth and Other Poems (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), p. 29. “Hill, cloud, field . . . And must.”

  98. Stein, op. cit., p. 172. “Anybody can be . . . at all important.”

  99. Richards, “To Dumb Forgetfulness,” op. cit., p. 52. “Forget, forget . . . dead be dead .”

  100. Richards, “The States of the Mentionable,” op. cit., p. 29. “Will, doubt, desire . . . To naught.”

  101. Richards, “To Be,” op. cit. p. 25. “still missing it . . . what, none know.”

  102. Wittgenstein, Logico-Philosophicus, p. 113, para 5.556. “There cannot be . . . we ourselves construct.”

  103. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 1914-16 (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 52, para. 27.5.15. “what cannot be expressed we do not express.”

  104. Whitehead, op. cit., p. 44. “A multiplicity merely . . . its individual members.”

  105. Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” Collected Poems, p. 171. “It is the chord that falsifies.”

  106. Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” op. cit., p. 92. “A man and . . . blackbird / Are one.”

  107. Bertrand Russell, quoted in Jeans, The New Background of Science, p. 295. “Not a persistent . . . than fleeting thoughts.”

  108. Jeans, Ibid. “Matter of solid . . . of human spectacles.”

  109. Whitehead, op. cit., p. 20. “No language can . . . to immediate experience.”

  110. Empson, “Doctrinal Point,” op. cit., p. 39. “the duality of . . . unconsciousness of foreknowledge.”

  111. Richards, “The Ruins,” op. cit., p. 44. “So which way’s . . . All idle theory.”

  112. William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” in The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960), p. 184. “Things fall apart.”

  113. Empson, “Letter V,” op. cit., p. 41. “You are a metaphor and they are lies.”

  114. Richards, “Not No,” op. cit., p. 21. “Not mine this life that must be lived in me.”

  115. Wittgenstein, Zettel, p. 40e, para. 220. “Do you look . . . your own breast.”

  116. Stevens, “The Man on the Dump,” op. cit., pp. 202-3. “One beats and . . . Be merely oneself?”

  117. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p. 114. “A people without . . . Of timeless moments.”

  118. John McHale, correspondence. See McHale, John, The Future of the Future (New York: George Braziller, 1969). “Ahistory: Amen.”

  119. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p. 117. “All time is eternally present.”

  120. Ibid., p. 129. “Here and there . . . a deeper communion.”

  121. Stein, op. cit., p. 195. “The composition we . . . thing to know.”

  122. Stevens, “Description Without Place,” op. cit., p. 345. “The theory of . . . of the world.”

  123. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p. 122. “Ridiculous the waste . . . before and after.”

  124. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p. 133. “We had the . . . beyond any meaning.”

  125. Ibid., p. 125. “only a limited . . . we have been.”

  126. Richards, “The Screens,” in The Screens and other Poems, p. 26. “An instrument which . . . it as well.”

  127. Stevens, “Men Made Out of Words,” op. cit., p. 355. “Life consists / Of propositions about life.”

  128. Rudolph Wurlitzer, Nog (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 84. “It’s the next . . . from a name.”

  129. Ibid., p. 106. “There is nothing . . . to play with.”

  130. Richards, “Complementary Complementarities,” op. cit., p. 36. “that’s not how . . . well be none.”

  131. Eliot, “Four Quartets,” op. cit., p.129. “Not the intense . . . cannot be deciphered.”

  132. Richards, “Silences,” The Screens and other Poems, p. 55. “But listen! When . . . listens: listen again.”

  Part III

  1. Wallace Stevens, “Adagia,” in Opus Posthumous (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 168. “The word must . . . question of identity.”

  2. Ihab Hassan, The Literature of Silence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p. 207. “The objective world . . . are their habit.”

  3. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuiness (New York: The Humanities Press, 1960), p. 115, para 5. 6. “The limits of my lang
uage mean the limits of my world.”

  4. T. E. Hulme, Speculations (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1924), p. 231. “no longer any refuge in the infinities of grandeur.”

  5. Wallace Stevens, “Description Without Place,” in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p.339. “observing is completing . . . it in the mind.”

  6. Hulme, op. cit., p. 223. “The same old . . . good as another.”

  7. Stevens, “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” op. cit., p. 474. “words of the . . . of the world.”

  8. Ibid., “Things of August,” p. 490. “The speech of . . . in what it says.”

  9. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (London: Routledge and Paul, 1963), trans. Emma Crawford, p. 542. “A closed door . . . the way through.”

  10. T. E. Hulme, Further Speculations (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962), p. 82. “Transfer physical to language.”

  11. Stevens, “Esthetique Du Mal,” op. cit., p. 313. “He disposes the world in categories.”

  12. Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, in Three Novels by Samuel Beckett (New York: Grove Press, 1955), p. 326. “There’s no getting . . . keep in mind.”

  13. Beckett, Molloy, op. cit., p. 31. “The icy words . . . the words know.”

  14. David Pears, Ludwig Wittgenstein (New York: The Viking Press, 1962), p. 179. “Meaning and necessity . . . which embody them.”

  15. Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p. 19. “neither significant nor . . . splendid construction collapses.”

  16. Victor Gioscia, “Frequency and Form,” in Radical Software, No. 2, 1970, p. 7. “Universe is not . . . at varying distances.” . . . “Universe is not . . . facade of omniscience.”

  17. Wittgenstein, Tractatus, p. 149, para. 6.44. “not how things . . . that it exists.”

  18. Advertisement for “Friends of the Earth,” reprinted in The Whole Earth Catalog Supplement. “everyone talks about . . . this way fast.”

  19. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Selected Prose, trans. Mary Hottinger and Tania & James Stern (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952), p. 182. “where is this . . . Here! Or nowhere.”

  20. Norman 0. Brown, “Daphne or Metamorphosis,” in Myths, Dreams, and Religions, ed. Joseph Campbell (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1970), p. 108. “the whole story . . . Our very eyes.”

  21. Robbe-Grillet, op. cit., p. 33. “To tell a story has become strictly impossible.”

  22. Beckett, Molloy, op. cit., p. 32. “Saying is inventing . . . You invent nothing.”

  23. Brown, op. cit., p. 93. “Saying makes it so.”

  24. Beckett, The Unnamable, op. cit., p. 386. “I’m in words . . . all these strangers.”

  25. Stevens, “Two Prefaces,” in Opus Posthumous, p. 270. “The god that . . . the question itself.”

  26. Beckett, The Unnamable, op. cit., p. 390 “The thing said . . . a common source.”

  27. Shakespeare, “A world full . . . signifying nothing.”

  28. E. E. Cummings, I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 69. in any number of . . . “past,” “present,” or “future.”

  29. Hulme, Speculations, p. 221. “it is impossible . . . the symbolic language.”

  30. Stevens, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour,” in Collected Poems, p. 524. “Here, now, we . . . in the mind.”

  31. Stevens, “As You Leave the Room,” in Opus Posthumous, p. 117. “nothing has been . . . changed at all.”

  32. Paul Valery, The Outlook For Intelligence (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 157. “All the notions . . . calling the tune.”

  33. Ibid., p. 162. “the real is . . . carry much weight.”

  34. Robbe-Grillet, op. cit., p. 148. “description comes to . . . creation and destruction.”

  35. Valery, op. cit., p. 68. “once speculation was . . . no longer conceivable.”

  36. Ibid., p. 69. “simply that our . . . is positively transcendent.”

  37. Stevens, “Connoisseur of Chaos,” in Collected Poems, p. 215. “The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind.”

  38. Hassan, op. cit., p. 127. “the facts of . . . doubt on both.”

  39. Ezra Pound, “Ortus,” in Personae (New York: New Directions, 1926), p. 84. “I “I beseech you . . . but a being.”

  40. Stevens, “The Rock,” op. cit., p. 525. “The lives lived . . . to be believed.”

  41. Ibid., “Chocorua To Its Neighbor,” p. 298. “He was not . . . existing everywhere.”

  42. Robbe-Grillet, op. cit., p. 147. “once claimed to . . . to disappear altogether.”

  43. Stevens, “United Dames of America,” op. cit., p. 206. “The mass is . . . man of the mass.”

  44. Ibid., “The Rock,” p. 525. “it is an illusion that we were ever alive.”

  45. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958), p. 48, para. 115. “A picture held . . . to us inexorably.”

  46. Robbe-Grillet, op. cit., p. 23. “we had thought . . . all its life.”

  47. Stevens, “St. Armorer’s Church from the Outside,” op. cit., p. 529. “No sign of . . . as its symbol.”

  48. Weil, op. cit., p. 28. “decreation: to make . . . to the uncreated.”

  49. Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel (New York: Random House, Inc., 1951), p. 175. “Modern reality is . . . our own powers.”

  50. Weil, op. cit., p. 29. “we participate in . . . by decreating ourselves.”

  51. Stevens, “Adagia,” in Opus Posthumous, p. 169. “Life is the elimination of what is dead.”

  52. Beckett, The Unnamable, op. cit., pp. 394-95. “There was never . . . me of me.”

  53. Valery, op. cit., p. 40. “When I dream I . . . I not . . . Nature?”

  54. Brown, op. cit., p. 100. “a fall into . . . natural object: ‘projected.’” “the death of . . . birth of poetry.”

  55. Ibid., p. 107 (quoting Blake). “each herb and . . . men seen afar.”

  56. Von Hofmannsthal, op. cit., p. 349 “man perceives in . . . needs of the world.”

  57. Pears, op. cit., p. 4 “need any justification . . . center, man himself.”

  58. Beckett, op. cit., p. 404. “the fault of . . . comes from that.”

  59. Ibid., pp. 334-35. “it’s a lot . . . of such expressions.”

  60. Hassan, op. cit., p. 119. “Combat all rationalist . . . a metaphysical universe.”

  61. Paul Valery, Masters and Friends: The Collected Works of Paul Valery, Vol. 9, ed. Jackson Matthews, trans. Martin Turnell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 69. “made a personal . . . tipped the balance.”

  62. Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart (New York: New Directions, 1941), p. 169. “own validity . . . and unthinkable order.”

  63. Weil, op. cit., p. 34. “Uproot yourself . . . every earthly country.”

  64. Paul Valery, History and Politics: The Collected Works of Paul Valery, Vol. 10, ed. Jackson Matthews, trans. Denise Folliot and Jackson Matthews (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962), p. 222. “How can anyone . . . curiosities, a masquerade.”

  65. Beckett, op. cit., p. 388. “It has not . . . midst of silence.”

  66. Valery, Outlook For Intelligence, p. 136. “our kind of . . . in their solutions.”

  67. Robbe-Grillet, op. cit., p. 14. “to illustrate a . . . such to themselves.”

  68. Stevens, “The Creations of Sound,” in Collected Poems, pp. 310-11. “there are words . . . an artificial man.”

  69. Ibid., “Dutch Graves In Bucks County,” p. 292. “Freedom is like . . . an incessant butcher.”

  70. Ibid., “Chaos In Motion And Not In Motion,” p. 358. “He has lost the whole in which he was contained.”

  71. Robbe-Grillet, op. cit., p. 68. “Drowned in the . . . impressions and desires.”

  72. Ibid., p. 51. “to recover everything . . . as a whole.”

  73. Ibid., p. 58. “A common nature . . . to everything: man.”

&n
bsp; 74. Hulme, Speculations, p. 166. “Man is an . . . is absolutely constant.”

  75. Robbe-Grillet, op. cit., p. 75. “Man is a sick animal.” (quoting Unamano). “Imprison him in the disease.”

  76. Stevens, “Less And Less Human, 0 Savage Spirit,” op. cit., p.328. “the human that . . . incommunicable mass.”

  77. Beckett, Molloy, op. cit., p. 110. “From their places . . . and as bound.”

  78. Stevens, “The Common Life,” op. cit., p. 221. “The men have no shadows.” “A man is a result, a demonstration.”

  79. Hassan, op. cit., p. 207. “the role of . . . are their habit.”

  80. Valery, op. cit., p. 42. “I can find . . . itself are myths.”

  81. Brown, op. cit., p. 109. “Private authorship or . . . all one book.”

  82. Beckett, The Unnamable, op. cit., p. 325. “it’s of me . . . with their language.”

  83. Ibid. “I slip into . . . Of what was.”

  84. Ibid. “never anyone but . . . Words, what others.”

  85. Ibid., pp. 290-300. “I must not try to think, simply utter.” “I shall have . . . encumbered this place.”

  ALSO BY JOHN BROCKMAN

  AS AUTHOR:

  By the Late John Brockman

  37

  Afterwords

  The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution

  Digerati

  AS EDITOR:

  About Bateson

  Speculations

  Doing Science

  Ways of Knowing

  Creativity

  The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years

  The Next Fifty Years

  The New Humanists

  Curious Minds

  What We Believe but Cannot Prove

  My Einstein

  Intelligent Thought

  What Is Your Dangerous Idea?

  What Are You Optimistic About?

  What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

  This Will Change Everything

  Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?

  The Mind

  Culture

  This Will Make You Smarter

  This Explains Everything

  What Should We Be Worried About?

  Thinking

  Excerpt from This Will Make You Smarter: Daniel Kahneman and More