Darwinist ignorance, confusion & epigenetics (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Tuesday, November 23, 2010, 21:20 (5113 days ago) @ dhw

While I was home this break I delved into the realm of painting with my wife who happens to be an art student at a local university. Ironically, just this little foray into the arts once again has framed this conversation in a different perspective for me and yet reinforces my views on the fact that everything that came prior was preparation for what came later. I only wanted to add it here because it seems to be fitting, and I hope the sentiment is not misplaced in this conversation.-When you sit down to paint, you have a very limited palette of colors. Within those colors, however, you have nearly limitless potential to mix, match, blend, shade, tint, and otherwise vary the final color. You also have a blank canvas, with all of its many pores, flaws, irregularities, and such. You can, should you so chose, cover that canvas with a plaster like substance and sand it to varying degrees of smoothness, paint it with one base color or another to serve as your backdrop, or leave it in its flawed, raw form and admire the way those vary flaws will make the end result more beautiful and intriguing. You also have a choice of brushes, from tiny ones barely a few hairs thick to some several inches wide and in a wide range of shapes. But even when you have all of the right materials, in the right combination, in the right proportions, with the perfect canvas, and all the brushes you could desire, you still have nothing but an empty canvas, a bunch of paint, and the tools to do something with it. -It takes intellect, understanding, knowledge, imagination, emotion, planning, patience, and most especially love, to turn a collection of random crap into a work of art that other intelligent beings can appreciate and enjoy. And when the viewer sees this masterpiece hanging in a beautiful gallery, with the proper lighting, and the proper perspective, he/she is moved, touched at a level that is beyond rationalization and reasoning. Yes, that painting can be dissected, the paints analyzed, the style studied, everything turned over and examined with every tool known to man. However, the greatest and most profound response is that where the viewer steps back and allows the complete work to wash over them. Only then can they really understand the painting at all. If you stand to far away, you can't see the loving detail, if you stand to close, all you can see are what appear to be flaws. Sometimes I wonder if philosophers stand too far away, and scientist stand to close.