If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.
There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.
I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature; and that man will be myself.
Americans are defined by a history of immigration in pursuit of freedom and opportunity. We are more individualistic, enterprising, and protective of liberties that most Europeans do not expect, such as owning guns, working 70-hour weeks, or appreciating nature as it goes by at 60 mph on a snowmobile.
I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things... I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.
The soul is one in its nature, but its entities are many.
I remember New York in the '80s as a place with vacant lots that would eventually give over to nature. Weeds would grow up, squirrels would move in. That entropy is gone now. It's too expensive to let a vacant lot go natural.
If you look at life with any honesty and intelligence, it's clear that human nature is dark, vile, selfish, and despondent. But I also see a force in human nature, namely grace, that sometimes works against our natural moral entropy.
Scientists and philosophers tend to treat knowledge, imagination and love as if they were all very separate parts of human nature. But when it comes to children, all three are deeply entwined. Children learn the truth by imagining all the ways the world could be, and testing those possibilities.
Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.
Invoking Nature always measures the distance we have yet to travel to achieve real progress on environmental issues.
I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a wacko environmentalist. I believe that mankind and nature can live side-by-side for the mutual benefit of both.
There's been progress toward seeing that nature and culture are not opposing terms, and that wilderness is not the only kind of landscape for environmentalists to concern themselves with.
My dad is very environmentally conscious, and so I've always been close to nature.
I'm a sports fanatic. It's hard for me to commit to the weekly, episodic nature of television, so for me, anytime that I can put a game on, that's what I do.
But epistemology is always and inevitably personal. The point of the probe is always in the heart of the explorer: What is my answer to the question of the nature of knowing?
All men have an equal right to the free development of their faculties; they have an equal right to the impartial protection of the state; but it is not true, it is against all the laws of reason and equity, it is against the eternal nature of things.
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
We are more than just flesh and bones. There's a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can't measure. We can't find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it's there.
There's a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can't measure. We can't find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it's there.
