A number of winters ago I had a slip on the ice which necessitated me calling an orthopedic specialist. After the examination I was more black and blue as well as confused. When he had finished twisting my body around treating me like Gumby he said, “It is my conviction that an arthroscopic procedure is contraindicated due to your unusually inflamed, ostreoarthritic “what’s-it” (or something that sounded a lot like “what’s-it”) which I find to be . . . “ At this point I had glazed over and don’t recall what he said about my “what’s-it”. I think he said it was larger, smaller, darker or lighter than normal. The next time I ran into our family physician, I told him about my experience. He just nodded and said that Dr. Rambo (not his real name but an alias I have chosen to prevent a mal-patient suit) practiced medicine as a science and not an art.
That insightful observation got me thinking about how many folks treat life like a science and not an art. Scientists tell us that one rotten apple can spoil the rest of the peck. Many people also believe that is the case with life. I have found that, when it comes to human beings, one good apple can transform more than a peck of people already written off as“over-ripe.” To understand the nature of things, science often demands that the object under scrutiny be broken down into its smallest, individual parts. If that was true of life we could best understand humans by looking at the $35 bag of chemicals and gallons of water that make up our body.
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” said Albert Einstein. Is your life more of an art or a science? Want to find out? Then, let’s take a little test:
+Does the simple, overwhelming beauty of the world ever make you gasp?
+Instead of only telling time, do you ever stop to discover what time is telling you?
+Have you recently pondered the night sky, looking for a doorway into your own heart, instead of Halley’s Comet?
+Is life so precious to you that you would gladly give it up to save the life of a loved one? (Extra Credit if you would give it up for someone you don’t know and Extra, Extra Credit if you would give it up for someone you do know, but don’t like.)
Give yourself 1 point for every “yes” and a day off to explore the world around you for every “no.” We need science. Science is good. Without it, we would never have put a person on the moon, a rover on Mars or been able to restore the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Without science and scientists, there would be no life-saving vaccines and no one who knows how to build bigger and better roach motels.
If you look at a painting and can tell the chemical composition of the pigments and are able to retrace how the framers stretched the canvas, life is probably a science for you. If the painting makes you think of how the color-laden palette of the past has splashed upon the canvas of the present, life has moved beyond science. The way I see things leads me to believe the future hope for living lies in the art of the thing.
That insightful observation got me thinking about how many folks treat life like a science and not an art. Scientists tell us that one rotten apple can spoil the rest of the peck. Many people also believe that is the case with life. I have found that, when it comes to human beings, one good apple can transform more than a peck of people already written off as“over-ripe.” To understand the nature of things, science often demands that the object under scrutiny be broken down into its smallest, individual parts. If that was true of life we could best understand humans by looking at the $35 bag of chemicals and gallons of water that make up our body.
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” said Albert Einstein. Is your life more of an art or a science? Want to find out? Then, let’s take a little test:
+Does the simple, overwhelming beauty of the world ever make you gasp?
+Instead of only telling time, do you ever stop to discover what time is telling you?
+Have you recently pondered the night sky, looking for a doorway into your own heart, instead of Halley’s Comet?
+Is life so precious to you that you would gladly give it up to save the life of a loved one? (Extra Credit if you would give it up for someone you don’t know and Extra, Extra Credit if you would give it up for someone you do know, but don’t like.)
Give yourself 1 point for every “yes” and a day off to explore the world around you for every “no.” We need science. Science is good. Without it, we would never have put a person on the moon, a rover on Mars or been able to restore the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Without science and scientists, there would be no life-saving vaccines and no one who knows how to build bigger and better roach motels.
If you look at a painting and can tell the chemical composition of the pigments and are able to retrace how the framers stretched the canvas, life is probably a science for you. If the painting makes you think of how the color-laden palette of the past has splashed upon the canvas of the present, life has moved beyond science. The way I see things leads me to believe the future hope for living lies in the art of the thing.
RSS Feed