Golan Levin and Collaborators

Flong Blog + News

Praxis, Theoria, Poesis

16 May 2009 / external, general, reference, thanks

I’m grateful to Stewart Butterfield for making me aware of this quote by John Adams, which I here repost from his Sylloge blog, for the purposes of my own reference and safekeeping:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

As I lack a very substantial connection with tapestry and porcelain, I confess to admiring Stewart’s synopsis of this quote even more than the original quote itself: “some bloke who had to do something praxis-y so his sons could do something theoria-y so their kids could do something poesis-y.”


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