Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘How can we see from somewhere that we cannot actually reach?

I think that the answer is to grope for a delicate balance — a balance between how much of our previously accrued learning we take with us and how much we leave at home, freeing ourselves to reconsider what we think we know. On the one hand, what we carry with us allows us to know what to expect. To know what to expect in the black hole, we can use the equations of Einstein, which predict its geometry. Einstein used the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, which describe how light behaves. Kepler used Copernicus’s book, “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.” These are the maps, the rules, the generalities that we trust in because they have worked so well. And yet, we know that we must leave something behind.

Anaximander left at home the idea that all things fall in the same direction: For the Earth itself not to fall, falling must be different than what we thought. Kepler left at home the idea that things move in circles, which seems so natural. Einstein left behind the idea that all clocks tick in tune with each other, which still seems obvious to many of us, and yet is wrong. If we leave too many things at home, we lack the tools needed to forge ahead; if we take too many, we fail to find the paths to new understanding. There are no recipes for success. There is only trial and error. Trying and trying again.

This is what we do, the long study and the great love that is scientific inquiry. We combine and recombine in different ways what we know, looking for an arrangement that clarifies something. We leave out pieces that previously seemed essential, if they get in the way. We take risks, albeit calculated ones. We linger at the border of our knowledge. We familiarize ourselves with it, and we spend a long time there, walking back and forth along its length, searching for the gap. We try out new combinations. New concepts.

I think that this is also how the best art works. Science and art are both concerned with the continual reorganization of our conceptual space, of what we call meaning. What happens when we react to a work of art is not happening in the art object itself, of course — still less in some unphysical “world of the spirit.” It lies in the complexity of our brain, in the kaleidoscopic network of analogical relationships with which our neurons weave what we call meaning.’ (from the New York Times)

The article was a thought-provoking discussion on the balance between the beginner’s mind and the expert’s mind.