Beauty: To Capture or to Create?

It's so easy to do now -- to take a photograph.  Just pull out the cellphone, aim, and press a button.  What you saw is instantly preserved.

I am old enough to remember when Polaroid demonstrated on live TV the then remarkable accomplishment of having its new camera eject a printed picture in only 60 seconds.  No more waiting until the 24 or 46 exposures were finished, taking the exposed roll of film to a store, and returning some days later after professionals had turned it into prints or slides.  Polaroid's 60-second do-it-yourself camera was so remarkable that they had to have hosts of TV shows with live audiences demonstrate the camera so viewers at home would know there was no editing or other TV trickery.

Traveling back further in the history of cameras, we would find further evidence of how comparatively easy photography can be today.  Such as the chemically treated glass plates and bottles of caustic chemicals that were once required.

Behind all these efforts, however, lies the same desire: to preserve something one has seen.  To capture it so that one might see it again.  We even once referred to "snapshots," to "shooting" a roll of film, and to "photoshoots," unconsciously preserving in our language the similarity between capturing an image and capturing a wild animal to preserve it or even try to possess it.

Most photos in the world (I think I can safely guess) are of family or friends.  Such photos help us preserve our memories.  They allow us to see (and with prints, touch) even when the faces thus preserved are far way or no longer alive.

"Orpheus and the Beasts"
by Sebastiaan Brancx

But there is another photographic urge, which was brought to my mind by a statement by a contemporary philosopher Elaine Scarry.  It is the urge to photograph something because we are struck by its beauty.  In her book On Beauty and Being Just, Scarry writes:

"[Beauty] seems to incite, even to require, the act of replication.... Beauty brings copies of itself into being.
It makes us draw it, take photographs of it, or describe it to other people.  Sometimes it gives rise to exact replication and other times to resemblances....
Beauty prompts a copy of itself."

What struck me about Scarry's statement is that she did not use that word "capture" that has been so much a part of the lexicon of photography. Instead, she employed words that suggest that beauty can inspire us to become creative ourselves.

A photograph is, in a way, an imitation of part of what was before our eye when we clicked the camera's shutter -- but often only a pale imitation of the real thing.  A photograph of a mountain is hardly the mountain itself. Scarry's statement suggests something more.  It suggests the desire not to capture just an image, nor to capture the thing itself, but the desire to create in our own life something that bears some of the same good qualities of what we have perceived as being beautiful.

Moreover, some of the qualities we can perceive as being beautiful are known not by the eye but by the heart.  The grateful heart.

It's amazingly easy to pull out the cellphone and push a button.  It's much harder to creatively imitate the caring and helpfulness and kindness we have received from other people. But that we can sometimes do so is also a remarkable thing.

~ ~

Who has inspired you with their caring, helpfulness, or kindness?

(The quotation is from On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry, © 2011, p. 3.)

The Cute, the Cuddly, and the Colossal

nine-banded armadillo

Contemporary psychologists have been able to figure out why human beings are drawn affectionately to certain animals.  The secret lies primarily in our emotions being easily captured by the round, big-eyed face of a baby, an instinct that has helped the human race protect its fragile offspring and thus endure.  This instinct is also revealed in our hearts' being easily tugged by paintings of big-eyed children, and by dogs bred to look more baby-faced.  That human instinct cannot explain, however, the seeming proclivity of Texans and other southerners to find armadillos cute. Those animals, with their long pointed noises and tiny eyes, have heads the very opposite of human babies.  There is a bit of a mystery here.  Behind armadillos also lies a story about how Darwin unraveled what was once called the "mystery of mysteries."  Namely, how new species evolve.

depction of
ancient armadillo (Glyptodon)

When Charles Darwin was on his groundbreaking trip on the Beagle around South America, he stopped many times to travel inland, studying the life-forms in that foreign land.  Darwin had a keen scientific eye for the similarities and dissimilarities between various species, both living and extinct.  Scientists at that time had been trying to piece together the puzzle of the fossil remains of some colossal species that no longer existed.  Darwin found the fossilized armor-plate of an extinct nine-foot cousin of today's armadillos (which in the U.S. are about one-and-a-half feet long).

Even though most of us today might be repulsed by the idea of eating an armadillo (either because of its possible taste or its cuteness), Darwin and his companions dined on a species of armadillo.  The preparation of that meal would have helped Darwin see the similarities and dissimilarities between the armor-like coverings of existing and extinct species of armadillos.  As he explained later in his autobiographical reflections:  "During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos...."

The relationships between the complex skeletons of existing and colossal extinct species (such as sloths) was challenging even to scientists.  Here is where the simpler armor of armadillos was something Darwin could take advantage of in Origin of Species, writing that a "relationship is manifest, even to the uneducated eye, in the gigantic pieces of armour like those of the [extinct] armadillo found in several parts of la Plata."

Now that Darwin and evolutionary biologists have done so much work on the background of these creatures, we are left with trying to understand ourselves:  Why are people so easily fascinated by armadillos, even finding them cute?  With their hard covering, they do not fit into the category of "soft, cute, and cuddly," which would latch in with our mammalian tactile affection.  Some of our delight in armadillos seems to come from their very oddness.  Also, when one is spotted in the wild, there can be the excitement and fun of trying to chase the small animal as it scurries in the underbrush.  We are just lucky those colossal nine- footers are no longer around!

~~~

Have you ever seen an armadillo or other peculiar-looking animal in the wild?  When?

(The Darwin quotes are, respectively, from

 The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. Nora Barlow, © 1958.  p. 118.

and from The Origin of Species [1959] by Charles Darwin.  Chap. 10.)

(The photo of a contemporary armadillo is by Jerry Segraves.

The artwork of extinct armadillo by Pavel Riha is used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.)

Our Life from a Dog’s Life

For several years now, I have been writing biweekly articles for this website knowing full well that I have not devoted an article to one very important topic:  Namely, dogs.  That omission has not been due to any disrespect for the canine race.  Quite to the contrary, it has been because of my great appreciation for all they have given to the human race.  How can any writer do justice to those contributions in only 500 to 600 words?

If I were to write an article worthy of dogs' contributions, I would have to mention that the canine trail stretches back into prehistoric times, where it intersects with early humans, thus keeping today's evolutionary biologists speculating about different scenarios.  I might list the variety of occupations dogs have specialized in:  watchdogs, hunting assistants, bloodhounds, rescue dogs, seeing-eye dogs, visitors to the lonely in hospitals and retirement homes, and plain old house companions.  But if I made such a list, someone would know of yet another role and catch my omission.

Because the articles on this website try to touch upon matters related to reading, any dog-article would need to mention some of the countless occasions on which dog-lovers have set pen to paper.  Would I mention the modern classic by animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz titled Man Meets Dog?  Or the noteworthy but almost forgotten essays of E. B. White?  Or would I instead mention some more popular fare adaptable into a movie, such as Marley & Me, the humorous adventures of one dog owner?  There's even a book by a Nobel Prize winner, John Steinbeck's light fare Travels with Charley.

I would also need to mention the cartoons that have apparently been inspired by dogs' instinctive love of play.  Such as the never-ending stream of talking dogs in The New Yorker's cartoons.  Or the very durable ones by James Thurber -- simple but expressive line-drawings.

With so much to give me pause, why have I now at last set pen to paper with this article?  It is because I stumbled upon what is perhaps the highest compliment ever paid to dogs (even if there is a bit of irony about this particular dog virtue).  The spiritual writer Karen Armstrong, contrasting humans to dogs, wrote:  "While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don't find some significance in our lives."

Her statement goes even deeper than the common observation that dogs do not stew over the day's events or worry about tomorrow.  (What a relief for a dog owner who returns home exhausted from a hard day!)  Armstrong's observation goes to the matter of the meaning of life, something humans very much need to search for but can never be absolutely certain about. Ironically, it is because dogs do not possess that human need that they can lightheartedly give meaning to our own lives.

~~~

Have you or your family ever had a dog?  Name something it contributed to your life.

(The Armstrong quote is from her article "Think Again: God" in Foreign Policy, Nov./Dec. 2009.)
(The photo of two dogs is by José Carlos Cortizo Pérez from Fuenlabrada, Spain.  That of the dog with sunglasses
 is by Chiniman123. Both are used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike licenses.)

A Rocky History Read Backwards

Writers in Western culture have long employed the metaphor of a "book" for depicting the natural world, with we being "readers" of that "book."  Theologians in both Christianity and Islam have said that the "Book of Nature" might even speak to us something about God.  It was a famous scientist, however, who in 1859 drew upon the "book" metaphor to explain an aspect of the geological record.  In Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote:

"I look at the natural geological record... as a history of the world imperfectly kept,

 and written in a changing dialect; of this history we possess the last volume alone....

 Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved;

 and of each page, only here and there a few lines."

Darwin was having to explain why -- unlike, other books that we haven't finished reading -- we know more about the last pages of the book of the Earth's geology than about the first.  Today, geologists have succeeded in reading more and more of those pages, going further and further back, despite the fragility of many fossils, and the fact that fossils were created only under special circumstances.  This geological "history book" is being read from the back towards the front.

It was not along a book-like, historical narrative that I first encountered the science of geology.  Instead, I first experienced the identity of rocks in compartmentalized categories. When I was of upper elementary-school age, I was given a boxed set of rocks.  It consisted of a white, plastic tray of 15 thumb-size rocks, each one in its open-topped compartment.  The makers of the set, knowing that children would want to take the rocks out of their cubbyholes, wisely managed to adhere a small, identifying nametag to each rock.

 I found the differences between those unpolished rocks fascinating.  White gypsum.  Yellow sulfur.  Black coal.  Even the feel of each one was different.  Despite that childhood enjoyment, when I had some brief encounters with geology books in high-school and college, I could never get the rocks to "speak" to me.  When those books tried to explain geological history, I could not create a powerful enough mental picture because those geological layers were out of sight, underground.

That changed one day when my wife and I were driving slowly through a mostly desert area of Big Bend Natl. Park in southwest Texas.  When our car turned around the corner of  a small projecting mass of rock that had been hiding part of our view, my wife exclaimed, "That field's growing boulders!"  And how striking indeed was that area of desert beside our car.  It was a flat, tan area of desert, on which it looked as if a giant had been playing with a set of dark-brown marbles ranging from one foot to several feet in diameter.  It was if the surface of the Earth had been turned inside out, with those out-of-place boulders shouting a message about how their lives that had once been underground.  Yet they now stood there before us, unmoving, like a moment frozen in time. A book held open to one page so that we might read it more carefully

~~~

Have you ever seen rocks or geological structures that were fascinating to you?

(The Darwin quote is from the last paragraph of

 Chapter IX of Origin of Species [orig. 1859].)

The Mathematics of Miracles

Although most people have never read Walt Whitman's long poem "Song of Myself" in its entirety, many people have heard or read stanzas taken from it.  One such stanza concerns a mouse.  The poem as a whole is Whitman's celebration of all people and all of the natural world as they resonate through Whitman's experience of himself in the world.  The mouse appears in these lines:

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,

... And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,

And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

Whitman has, of course, chosen a mouse in part because of its small size -- in contrast to many Christians of his day citing grand events as miracles. But when I first read that line in college, I was able to appreciate his choice of a mouse because I had for awhile had a pet white mouse when I was in high-school.  My mouse was part of a science project.  (The mouse was not going to be harmed in any way -- I was too soft-hearted for that.  I was just going to try to measure its output of carbon dioxide.)

Whitman's statement "a mouse is miracle" evoked my memory of my little white mouse's miraculous features when observed up close:  The slender flexibility of its tail.  The softness of its body despite so much energy.  Its countless white hairs.  Its small round eyes. (Can they really see like mine, although being so tiny?).  Its pointed nose, always seemingly sniffing.  The way it bent its body slightly from side to side as it explored its world.

John Donne

Whitman's line about the mouse came back to me recently when I read a quotation by a poet who lived two centuries before Whitman.  It was an observation by the poet and church minister John Donne, which struck me as being insightful:  "There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of Nature, and which is therefore done every day, but would seem a miracle and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once;... The ordinary thing in Nature would be greater miracles than the extraordinary, which we admire most, if they were done but once... and only the daily doing takes off the admiration."  Donne points us toward everyday miracles.

Today, most mainstream Christian, Jewish, and Islamic theologians would join John Donne in cautioning against searching for the miraculous in some rare interruption of the working of natural laws that science has discovered.  As I go about my day, from getting out of bed to going back to sleep at night, everything going on about me can on some level be described as being natural processes.  I might never find God if I expect to find the Divine only in some interruptions of natural laws.

Donne's theological observation, coupled with my memory of Whitman's mentioning a mouse, made me think about the sextillions of little mice throughout the world, sometimes labeled "pests," but each a little miracle in its own right if seen up close.

~~~

Is there something in Nature you encounter everyday that you think is marvelous?

(The Whitman line is from "Song of Myself,"

 originally in his 1855 collection Leaves of Grass.)

(The Donne line is from a March 25, 1627 sermon, as quoted in Rebuilding the Matrix by Denis Alexander, © 2001, p. 426.)