The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “science”

Dismantling the Dogmas of Life and Death: How the Forgotten Prodigy William James Sidis Presaged the Quantum Undoing of Time and Thermodynamics
Dismantling the Dogmas of Life and Death: How the Forgotten Prodigy William James Sidis Presaged the Quantum Undoing of Time and Thermodynamics

“There is no way of telling whether we are living organisms in a positive universe, or pseudo-living organisms in a negative universe.. The difference is really one merely between the two directions of time, and, though those two directions are opposite to each other, they have no physical properties which are in any way different.”

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Octopus Blues and the Poetry of the Possible
Octopus Blues and the Poetry of the Possible

An ode to unbreaking our hearts by widening our lenses on reality.

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Catching the Light of the World: The Entwined History of Vision and Consciousness
Catching the Light of the World: The Entwined History of Vision and Consciousness

“The light of the mind must flow into and marry with the light of nature to bring forth a world… To see, to hear, to be human requires… our ceaseless participation.”

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The Healing Power of Nature and Beauty: Florence Nightingale on Expediting Recovery from Illness and Burnout
The Healing Power of Nature and Beauty: Florence Nightingale on Expediting Recovery from Illness and Burnout

“People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too.”

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The Science of Working Out the Body and the Soul: How the Art of Exercise Was Born, Lost, and Rediscovered
The Science of Working Out the Body and the Soul: How the Art of Exercise Was Born, Lost, and Rediscovered

“A history of exercise is not really — or certainly not only — a history of the body. It is, equally, perhaps even primarily, a history of the mind.”

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Consciousness and the Constellations: Cognitive Scientist Alexandra Horowitz Reads and Reflects on Robert Frost
Consciousness and the Constellations: Cognitive Scientist Alexandra Horowitz Reads and Reflects on Robert Frost

“You’ll wait a long, long time for anything much to happen…”

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Haunting Cyanotype Portraits of Flowers by Artist Rosalind Hobley
Haunting Cyanotype Portraits of Flowers by Artist Rosalind Hobley

Roses are blue, violets are ultraviolet, and beauty is made of chemistry and light.

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Your Brain on Grief, Your Heart on Healing
Your Brain on Grief, Your Heart on Healing

“Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful problem for the brain to solve… to live in the world with the absence of someone… ingrained in your understanding of the world… For the brain, [they are] simultaneously gone and also everlasting, and you are walking through two worlds at the same time.”

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The Faith of the “Naturist”: John Burroughs’s Superb Century-Old Manifesto for Spirituality in the Age of Science
The Faith of the “Naturist”: John Burroughs’s Superb Century-Old Manifesto for Spirituality in the Age of Science

“Communing with God is communing with our own hearts, our own best selves, not with something foreign and accidental. Saints and devotees have gone into the wilderness to find God; of course they took God with them.”

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200 Years of Great Writers and Artists on the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Gardening
200 Years of Great Writers and Artists on the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Gardening

Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Oliver Sacks, Rebecca Solnit, Bronson Alcott, Michael Pollan, Jamaica Kincaid, and more.

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