Kant distinguishes two notions of the sublime: the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. In the case of both notions, the experience of the sublime consists in a feeling of the superiority of our own power of reason, as a supersensible faculty, over nature... SEPNot sure that's quite the feeling I get from Pale Blue Dot, Contact, or Powers of Ten. But sorta. Not sure Kant's the great authority here, anyhow. We all have at least a slumbering aptitude for it, don't we?
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
More sublimity
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"the feeling of reason's superiority over nature takes the form"
ReplyDeleteThat's cute. Man overcoming nature.
That notion is always bothersome.
These videos can easily leave one in awe, or feeling so overwhelmed
and insignificant that the idea of the cosmos is just too insane!
Yet there is nothing really overwhelming in these videos.
Nothing beyond our comprehension, and more importantly
nothing beyond us.
We are the pale blue dot.
We are just as much a part of all this going on yet we may not feel so
important.
DeGrasse often talks of how we are the universe; billions of years old
the very molecules that make up our body are as old as the universe itself, and so are we! We are this.
The cosmos is not separate from us,
We came OUT OF IT.
Charles and Ray Eames are also the most important designers
and artists in the history of forever.
Well, Dieter Rams too...
Yes. Isn't that sublime!
ReplyDeleteWatched Powers of Ten with my mom last night, she'd never seen it! Silly goose.
ReplyDeleteEven to this day it gets me.
We are indeed a part of the universe; however, to think that man does not have a different sort of consciousness, control, or reign over his environment than say, billion year old star dust, or even an amoeba, I think is a bit of a stretch. One could never know though? I'd actually like to think that flecks of star dust are sentient beings, and that Stanley Kubrick is a glimmering sea of asteroids circling Jupiter, penning the screenplay for 2001 A Spacey Odyssey 3, but I digress.
We are both a part of the universe and apart from the universe, and that is the beauty and horror of human experience.
This reminds me of the Dust from Pullman's His Dark Materials series..
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