marking the ever-shifting boundary between the known and the unknown. Paraphrasing the Socratic paradox, Gleiser writes: Learning more about the world doesn’t lead to a point closer to a final destination — whose existence is nothing but a hopeful assumption anyway — but to more questions and mysteries. The more we know, the more exposed we are to our ignorance, and the more we know to ask. Echoing Ray Bradbury’s poetic conviction that it’s part of human nature “to start with romance and build to a reality,” Gleiser adds: This realization should open doors, not close them, since it makes the search for knowledge an open-... posted on Mar 16 2015 (18,727 reads)

was really lucky to grow up with a a couple of parents who were very experimental and very open to radical ideas and new ideas. My mom was a literature professor and a social activist. I think if I were to say what she really got me interested in -- in addition to things like yoga and massage and alternative foods in the late '60s when people just didn't do those kind of things -- was compassion. To this day, she is interested in the sectors of our society that suffer and the nature of human suffering and volunteering in prisons and teaching people who don't have access to things like that. She was a literature professor, and as Molly, my wife, who's back there, wi... posted on Nov 4 2016 (31,379 reads)

analogies and metaphors and ways of thinking about thinking and visualizing it. I suddenly thought that this is what thought really is. MS. TIPPETT: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. [music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating] MS. TIPPETT: Frank Wilczek won the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for his discoveries about quarks that helped illuminate our understanding of the strong force, or strong interaction, one of the four fundamental forces of nature in the Standard Model of physics. Though Frank Wilczek more poetically calls the Standard Model the “Core Theory,” gravitational fields he calls “geometry encoding fluids.&rdq... posted on Jul 25 2016 (12,286 reads)

easiest way for me to find God is in nature,” Sister Ceciliana Skees explains. Born Ruth Skees, she grew up in Hardin County, Kentucky, during the 1930s. It’s a rural place of soft green hills, where her father farmed his entire life. Now just a few months shy of her eighty-fifth birthday, she remembers feeling the first stirrings of a religious calling at the age of 10. Her peasant blouse and smooth, chin-length haircut don’t fit the popular image of a nun, but she has been a Sister of Loretto—a member of a religious order more than 200 years old—since she took vows at the age of 18. Skees’ commitment to social activism goes back almost a... posted on Sep 26 2016 (9,665 reads)

the listener, who experiences secondhand what the speaker experienced, and thereby discovers internally what it might have felt like to have experienced it firsthand. Historically, it has long been recognized that music stimulates intense emotions. Plato distrusted the emotional power of sensuous music and saw it as dangerous enough to justify censorship. Schopenhauer recognized the deep connection between human feeling and music, which "restores to us all the emotions of our inmost nature, but entirely without reality and far removed from their pain." Nietzsche described an Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy in music, representing form and rationality versus drunkenness and ecs... posted on May 24 2017 (8,850 reads)

Nutcracker ballerina. On the last Winter Solstice, I noticed the morning sunlight reflecting off the colorful winter tallow tree, with the sky a brilliant blue. How could the longest night, an ancient time of fear and everlasting darkness, really be tonight, I thought, on a day with the sky so blue? Truly, that is how life is sometimes, things are moving along quite nicely when suddenly: uncertainty, chaos, change, loss, or an unexpected illness. When this happens, I seek the solace of nature, as a balm to heal my soul. I look for the little wild places in the garden and the creatures that live in it, or I seek the wildness of the Galveston shoreline, or I sit in meditation and t... posted on Aug 12 2017 (16,520 reads)

experiencing the beautiful gift of an Awakin Call with Zen monk and Tea Master, Wu De, I never would have understood the magic of tea. Other than being vaguely aware of its medicinal powers and high end varieties, there was little more that I knew and I certainly wouldn’t have equated tea with being “the great human connector”. But the wisdom with which Wu De shared with us how tea connects us back to nature, to each other, and to ourselves opened my heart to more than a different way of starting my day. Journeying from a Rural Ohio to Taiwan Suzanne: How did you find tea, being that you were born in North America? How did you listen to the self and fin... posted on Aug 5 2017 (10,143 reads)

be limited. DB: Yes, well, that again might require some discussion. JK: Of course, we must discuss it. DB: Now, why do you say knowledge is always limited? JK: Because you as a scientist, you are experimenting, adding, searching, so you are adding, and after you some other person will add more. So knowledge, which is born of experience, is limited. DB: Yes, well some people have said it is and they would hope to obtain perfect knowledge, or absolute knowledge of the laws of nature. JK: The laws of nature are not the laws of human being. DB: Well, do you want to restrict the discussion then to knowledge about the human being? JK: Of course, that's all we... posted on Dec 29 2017 (15,629 reads)

I began writing, it suddenly occurred to me that my unbridled gratefulness for this time of year is perhaps best put forth poetically, and this reminded me of a piece I began writing four years ago: “My Song to Nature, A Poetic Celebration Through the Seasons”. Utilizing fairly simple rhyming schemes, the verse is infused with a child-like spirit, and also informed by my decades of study of natural history. The poem is intended to communicate the joy I felt as a young boy exploring nature; a sentiment that is still quite alive within me as I approach my seventieth birthday (how fortunate to still be here now!). Sadly, “My Song to Nature” is currently unfinished, i... posted on Jun 6 2018 (8,136 reads)

the busy-ness of our contemporary life, we are drawn into ceaseless activity that often separates us from the deeper dimension of ourselves. With our smartphones and computer screens, we often remain caught on the surface of our lives amidst the noise and chatter that continually distract us, that stops us from being rooted in our true nature. Unaware we are drowned deeper and deeper in a culture of soulless materialism. At this time I find it more and more important to have outer activities that can connect us to what is more natural and help us live in relationship to the deep root of our being, and in an awareness of the moment which alone can give real meaning to our every... posted on Jul 5 2018 (19,590 reads)

the beleaguered but surviving belief system and chosen way of life of her people, the Mississippi band of Anishinaabeg of the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota. Harvard graduate Winona LaDuke is a natural leader, an interpreter of Native American views, and a compelling spokesperson for the suffering of indigenous peoples and their struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands. She breathes life and experience into Schumacher's invoking of "the truths revealed in nature's living processes." Thank you for inviting me to come here and talk about some of the things that are important to the Anishinaabeg and to the wider comm... posted on Jun 27 2018 (7,095 reads)

new kinds of civic, cultural, educational, and open spaces. At the center in Garrison, New York, he and his wife, Diana, are helping people from all traditions to find new ways of being conscious together in an inner and outer sense—better able to take practical action to repair the torn fabric of the world. —Tracy Cochran Jonathan Rose: The military has a phrase called “VUCA” and it stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It describes the nature of the world that we are facing. The old systems, thinking, and political debate often do not recognize this. We see enormous volatility in extreme weather events and climate change and in extr... posted on Jul 14 2018 (9,439 reads)

was in that moment my inability to hug my beautiful child fell away from me, and I was able after that to hug him.” Clare Dubois: Toward a New Nature-Based Feminine Consciousness Claire is the founder of TreeSisters.org, a quickly-growing women’s crowd-funding and consciousness-shift campaign to inspire and direct the brilliance, creativity and generosity of women towards the reforestation of the tropics and shared leadership around ecological restoration On the cyclical nature of the feminine: “The feminine intelligence is equally cyclical because our hormones change throughout the months. We have all four of nature seasons happen every month, but nobody w... posted on Jan 21 2019 (7,079 reads)

and conscience call us to do what we can to avert unnecessary tragedy. This is personal for me: my own infinitely dear but frail mother is among the most vulnerable to a disease that kills mostly the aged and the infirm. What will the final numbers be? That question is impossible to answer at the time of this writing. Early reports were alarming; for weeks the official number from Wuhan, circulated endlessly in the media, was a shocking 3.4%. That, coupled with its highly contagious nature, pointed to tens of millions of deaths worldwide, or even as many as 100 million. More recently, estimates have plunged as it has become apparent that most cases are mild or asymptomatic. Since... posted on Apr 16 2020 (14,294 reads)

be kind, and find meaning in our everyday lives. The final insights were selected by experts on our staff, after soliciting nominations from our network of nearly 400 researchers. We hope they help normalize whatever challenges you may be experiencing and offer a note of optimism for the year ahead. Appreciating Our Everyday Experiences Can Enhance Our Sense of Meaning in Life Have you ever found yourself caught up in admiring the beauty of a painting or the tranquility of your local nature reserve? Do you get deeply engaged in conversations with other people, or find yourself savoring the little things in life? A 2022 study published in Nature Human Behavior f... posted on Feb 4 2023 (8,189 reads)

to a group of CEOs in Singapore. One of them was the head of a big multi-multinational corporation. He said that for the last eight years, I have been fighting to get my company to be sustainable and ethical in the country where we source our supplies, in our offices around the world and in how we treat our customers. He said there were three reasons why I wanted to make my company more ethical. First, he said, because I saw the writing on the wall, we were using natural resources faster than nature could replenish them in many places. Second was consumer pressure – people are beginning to understand and become more aware. They’re starting to ask questions like: Why is this pro... posted on May 10 2024 (4,139 reads)

form. Such a community might be called a "circle of the gift." Fortunately, the monetization of life has reached its peak in our time, and is beginning a long and permanent receding (of which economic "recession" is an aspect). Both out of desire and necessity, we are poised at a critical moment of opportunity to reclaim gift culture, and therefore to build true community. The reclamation is part of a larger shift of human consciousness, a larger reunion with nature, earth, each other, and lost parts of ourselves. Our alienation from gift culture is an aberration and our independence an illusion. We are not actually independent or "financially secure&... posted on Jun 13 2012 (27,512 reads)

human beings are seekers. We seek love, wealth, security, power, happiness, and recognition. We also seek knowledge. Aristotle said, “All people by nature desire to know.” The desire to know can be very ambitious, like that of the scientists who sought to solve the structure of the DNA molecule, or rather modest. It can be enormously satisfying to know and understand things. What does it take to have intellectual success—to come to know and understand something challenging? Well, you need some raw intelligence and memory, and you need to work hard and persevere when it doesn’t come easily. You’ll be better off if you’re surrounded by learned people ... posted on Jul 10 2013 (34,950 reads)

for Goldilocks. That's right [laugh]. Ms. Tippett: Would you say a little bit more about Kepler? Because I just think he's in that league of Copernicus and Galileo and Newton, but I'm not sure he's known quite as well by people. Ms. Batalha: Johannes Kepler, yeah. He lived in the 1600s and was a mathematician, very, very brilliant mathematician. But he was also very — I don't know if spiritual is the right word, but he also had this really deep reverence for nature. There's a story. I don't know how much of it is myth and how much is fact, but there's a story that he was in a classroom giving a lecture on mathematics and geometry talking ab... posted on Jan 29 2014 (26,851 reads)

first guiding principle of the Center for Ecoliteracy's framework for schooling for sustainability — Smart by Nature™ — is "nature is our teacher." Taking nature as our teacher requires thinking in terms of systems, one of nature's basic patterns. Systems can be incredibly complex, but the concept is quite straightforward. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, for example, defines a "system" as "any collection of things that have some influence on one another." Individual things — like plants, people, schools, communities, and watersheds — are all systems of interrelated elements. At the same ti... posted on Dec 12 2013 (33,233 reads)