We live in the best of all possible worlds
Gottfried LeibnizRead
Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that music engages our minds in a way that involves counting and rhythm, yet we don't consciously recognize this process.
Gottfried Leibniz's quote highlights the intrinsic relationship between music and mathematics, emphasizing how music can evoke pleasure through rhythm and structure. It suggests that the enjoyment derived from music is often linked to an unconscious understanding of patterns and counting, which stimulates the mind, allowing for a deeper emotional and intellectual experience without explicit awareness.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of arts education, one might quote Leibniz to emphasize the cognitive benefits of music.
We live in the best of all possible worlds
I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author.
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.
..This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.
Some artists I know, they would rather not see the audience or envision them. But for me, I'd rather see them. I feel like part of the reason I perform is to feel that connection. It's the reason I love it so much.
I'm a storyteller who wants to tell untold, meaningful, universal stories in unforgettable ways. I want to do it all, study it all, and find my place in it.
As creators, our pursuit of perfection might be misguided, particularly if it comes at the expense of the things that matter.
You can't work in the movies. Movies are all about lighting. Very few filmmakers will concentrate on the story. You get very little rehearsal time, so anything you do onscreen is a kind of speed painting.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass Hang all the furniture above the grass, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!
While we cannot describe its appearance (the equivalent), we can define its function. When a photograph functions as an Equivalent we can say that at that moment, and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed.
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