Re: [F_MINOR] Gould quote

[Ed Price <edp@PANIX.COM>]

> Gould delivered a speech at the graduation ceremony of some music
> students in which he talked about "that which is and is not". I read
> this passage I think in the book that was written by this physician
> (can't remember his name).

Peter Ostwald.  Page 222...

> Can anybody point me to the correct quote?

You can find the text in the _Glenn Gould Reader_.

I like this excerpt:

"The trouble begins when we start to be so impressed by the strategies
of our systematized thought that we forget that it does relate to an
obverse, that it is hewn from negation, that it is but very small
security against the void of negation which surrounds it.  And when
that happens, when we forget these things, all sorts of mechanical
failures begin to disrupt the functions of the human personality.
When people who practice an art like music become captives of those
positive assumptions of system, when they forget to credit that
happening against negation which system is, and when they become
disrespectful of the immensity of negation compared to system -- then
they put themselves out of reach of that replenishment of invention
upon which creative ideas depend, because invention is, in fact, a
cautious dipping into the negation that lies outside system from a
position firmly ensconced in system."

 -- Glenn Gould
    [_GGR_ p5]

Here are some other quotes which I've filed near that one:

"No one will ever have a truly philosophic mastery over the law who
does not habitually consider the forces outside of it which have made
it what it is."

 -- Oliver Wendell Homes
    [quoted by David Hall, dean of NU Law School;
    Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, 4 July 1995, p21]

"It is equally fatal to have a system and not to have a system.  One
must try to combine them."

 -- Friedrich Schlegel, _Anthenaeum Fragments_
    [Rosen, _The Romantic Generation_]

"We who consider ourselves informed often need to go to the most
ignorant peoples, to learn from them the origin of our knowledge; for
we need this origin above all; we are ignorant of it because it has
been a long time since we were disciples of nature."

 -- Condillac
    [_The Geometric Spirit_ p144]

"Norton's great strength as a teacher is that, unlike the vast
majority of other people writing about computers, he combines
technical expertise with an ability to imagine what it must be like
to know nothing at all."

 -- David Owen
    ["The Straddler", _New Yorker_, 30 January 1995]

HTH :)
-ed

**************************************************
Signoff instructions, and user preference interface:
http://email.rutgers.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=f_minor&A=1

F_minor Website (with early archive):
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mwatts/glenn
**************************************************