NextNow Previews SHAPE OF THOUGHT

“Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. The psychological entities that serve as building blocks for my thought are certain signs or images, more or less clear, that I can reproduce at will.”

Albert Einstein

Shape of Thought Preview

Two NextNow co-founders, Bonnie DeVarco and Eileen Clegg, have published a preview of their 5-year “Shape of Thought” exploration.  Visit http://tinyurl.com/38rm6go.  Please visit their blog; they’d love to see your comments.  Follow them on Twitter – http://twitter.com/shapeofthought

The Intersection of Nature, Geometry, and Communication

“Words Capture Ideas; Images Free Them”  Bonnie DeVarco

In Brief

“Across cultures and throughout time, certain shapes have carried the power to inspire, intimidate, delight and inform. A spiral, a pentagram, a labyrinth may invoke momentary longing, fear, or curiosity, although we may not know why.  Over the millennia, many mathematicians, artists and scientists studied the secrets of timeless symbols—shapes that seem to resonate with Nature and the human mind. But only in modern times, with the explosion of new tools and technologies, has science enabled us to experience the profound truth:

“Certain shapes and symbols draw our attention because they mirror the building blocks of our bodies, the arrangement of distant galaxies, and the complex proportions of Nature’s mechanisms, including the very nature of time itself.  Appearing all around us—from our grandmother’s quilts to Islamic tilings to maps of scientific data—these resonant shapes represent a universal language.  The ancient patterns that humans have drawn in the sand, carved into stone, painted on the skin, woven into textiles and written on countless media from papyrus to paperless cyberspace, tell us a story about who we are and how we make sense of the universe around us.”