The purpose is to clarify in my own mind subjects which continue to assail me. The brief is to be as short as possible but where a subject demands it there would be no limit. The inter-relationships of knowledge and imagination are so various that light can be shed on the most intractable problems. Yet my other purpose is to bring into greater relief “the logic of the imagination” for here alone can the individual lay claim to his psychological uniqueness. DNA and all that stems from it satisfies our biological curiosity but the effect of nurture on its expression leads us into an infinity of possible outcomes. Genes also appear dynamic per se (jumping and switching) and this unravelling will see I think the freedom we have been granted – nature’s greatest gift to us.
Nature through evolution has tested life against an infinity of stresses and we are the perfect outcome in spite of our imperfections yet all has been a process of “chance and necessity”. My contention is that Kant’s noumenal world does access us through art and religion and therefore there is hope of an outcome beyond space and time. Above all are the twin towers of science and poetry, of concepts and imagination, which can deliver the stability we need.
Quotation in inverted commas will be much in use for the insight of others are our bread and butter. Indeed they are the wings which launch our ever needful quests, “they are the ringing glass which shatters as it rings”. The force of their intellect be it a Francis Crick or an Osip Mandelstam are two sides of the same coin of happiness which will give us a new culture.
At the bottom of each page a list of authors of the quotations is given in order of appearance.
T S Eliot, J Monod, R M Rilke.
