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Sunday, January 09, 2005

Knowledge, Culture, Wisdom.

Greeks assumed that light entered the eye bringing with it what we see and the beauty of nature.
They were wrong.
What happens is this: light waves arrive on the retina, this translates them into tiny upside down images. Millions of receptors carve this up into messages which race off to several billions cells.
These interpret the data and send back messages to project the images the right way up.

The picture translated by the retina and the image projected in the mind's eye are not necessarily the same.
During the process language and culture act as prisms to bend and shape our view, so although we all start out seeing the same things each individual unconsciously creates their own interpretation.

Oscar Wilde (Intentions) writing about Art and Nature said:

"Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows?
To whom, if not to them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying barge?
The extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due to a particular school of Art. You smile. Consider the matter from a scientific or a metaphysical point of view, and you will find that I am right.
For what is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us.
To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence.
At present, people see fogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London.
I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist till Art had invented them. Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess.
They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis.

Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold."

The world can be different seen by a cultured person or by an ignorant one.
As a matter of fact, culture improves life in the sense that allows to experience and enjoy many more things in life.
How can you fully appreciate Music or Art (Painting, Literature) if you do not understand it?

And certainly understanding begins with knowledge.

Wisdom too comes from knowledge.(and experience)

That doesn't mean that a cultured person must necessarily be wise or appreciate Art.
You appreciate what you know, and the better you know it, the better you appreciate it.
Because you can see in it more.

If you are a Scientist you appreciate the part of Science you are an expert of, because you understand it.


What I want to say is:

Whatever you do to learn and to know is never wasted.
I began liking gardening the moment I began reading books on gardening.
I learned how to breed plants and to germinate seeds.
As a "gardening expert" I had better results than as a mere practitioner.

And I enjoy more and more seeing my efforts gratified by a small, little plant I helped to be born from a seed.

Pleasures of life are in what we call "small things", which are far from being small.
The best reward is very often not in earning a big sum of money (which of course I would be a liar if I said I despise) but in achieving something.
I would go as far as to say, it is not even in the achieving, but in doing all what you can to achieve it.

It is not in what you get, but in what you do to get it...and learning how to do it the right way is the purpose of knowledge and culture.

Patrizia

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