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The human brain is prepackaged with a series of innate preferences
widespread, from culture to culture. In terms of music we prefer
repetition to randomness, consonance to dissonance, tonality to
atonality, and predictability to unexpectedness. Differences in music
exist around the world, but like food, there are several essential
ingredients the brain is programmed to pay special attention to.
Contrary to the modernist, what’s pleasurable to the ear is not
arbitrary.
'...combien la conscience cesse
vite de collaborer à nos habitudes qu'elle laisse à leur développement sans plus
s'occuper d'elles et combien dès lors nous pouvons être étonnés si nous
constatons simplement du dehors et en supposant qu'elles engagent tout
l'individu, les actions d'hommes dont la valeur morale ou intellectuelle peut se
développer indépendamment dans un sens tout différent. C'était évidemment un
vice d'éducation, ou l'absence de toute éducation...'
'We cannot be seamlessly situated in the present moment, and also be
simultaneously situated so as to create a representation. The creation
of a representation requires a separation from that which is
represented; we cannot simply merge into the perception. We disengage
from the present and absorb ourselves...'
'The synthesis between the desire to retain the past and the urge to
forget it, to restlessly seek the new while also not wanting to throw
aways the old, is described as a characteristic of modern democratic
societies by Tocqueville. ‘I am not making out that the inhabitants of
democracies are by nature stationary; on the contrary, I think that such
a society is always on the move and that none of its members knows what
rest is; but I think that all bestir themselves within certain limits
which they hardly ever pass. Daily they change, alter, and renew things
of secondary importance, by they are very careful not to touch
fundamentals. They love change, but they are afraid of revolutions.'
'..good writing is mostly familiar with moments of unforeseen yet
sophisticated new ideas, plot lines or characters. What we consider
novel is relative to our experience; the more exposure we have to a
genre the higher are standards are. Novelty is important because it
counters habituation and influences moments of mirth, which are
particularly difficult to instill in the mind of an expert.'
'...ces recherches fondamentales sur les mécanismes intimes de la
physique quantique sont directement liées à la future révolution de
l’informatique. La maîtrise de la superposition d’état est en effet à la
base des fameux bits quantiques ou qbits
qui seront les briques élémentaires des ordinateurs quantiques.
Contrairement aux bits classiques qui prennent successivement la valeur 0
ou 1, les qbits fonctionnent avec une superposition de ces deux états.
Et voici le chat de Schrödinger qui pointe à nouveau son nez....'
As soon as the jury had a little recovered from the shock of
being upset, and their slates and pencils had been found and
handed back to them, they set to work very diligently to write
out a history of the accident, all except the Lizard, who seemed
too much overcome to do anything but sit with its mouth open,
gazing up into the roof of the court. -`What do you know about this business?' the King said to
Alice. -`Nothing,' said Alice. -`Nothing WHATEVER?' persisted the King. -`Nothing whatever,' said Alice. -`That's very important,' the King said, turning to the jury.
They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when
the White Rabbit interrupted: -`UNimportant, your Majesty means,
of course,' he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and
making faces at him as he spoke. -`UNimportant, of course, I meant,' the King hastily said, and
went on to himself in an undertone, --`important-unimportant--
unimportant-important--' as if he were trying which wordsounded best.
'If you took a page at random from an Ernest Hemingway novel, it's likely
to have many more words than a random page of the same size from a
Henry James novel, because Henry James used
words that were on average about 45 percent bigger than those of
Hemingway. Hemingway, in our example here, is English. And Henry James
is Finnish.'
'..
.from the middle of the twentieth century there was a reaction and it was
suggested that theoretical science had little effect on technology
until the middle of the nineteenth century, well after the industrial
revolution had been achieved. More recently, as historians have looked
more deeply at the ways in which science fed into discoveries and
innovations of a practical kind, this revised view has been challenged
again.'
