This site deals with the intersections of science, art and religion. The site was launched when my book Creature and Creator was initially published in 2013.
The site provides information about the book with short excerpts from each of its chapters. Longer excerpts from the book in pdf format and colored versions of the book’s original diagrams in jpg format can be downloaded. The complete book can be purchased in paperback through Amazon.com.
The site also provides some brief biographical notes about myself, Terry Picton. The Science page linked to the biography deals with my scientific research. A review of my audiometric research is available on the Objective Audiometry page.
Over the years I have collected photographs by various masters of the black and white from Ansel Adams to Brett Weston. These are considered in several essays linked through the page A Way of Looking.
The Intersections page provides the notes for courses on Religion and Science presented to the Life Institute at Ryerson University and the Living and Learning in Retirement Group at Glendon College. These courses cover many of the issues considered in the book. The Brain and Mind, Voices and Story of Science pages link to teaching materials for other courses given at the LIFE Institute. The first deals with Human Neuroscience. The Voices page links to “Voices that Matter” on 20th Century Poetry and to “Northern Voices” on Canadian Poetry. The Story of Science page provides notes on the history of science.
An ongoing blog considers issues of interest to me. These are mainly related to the topics covered in the book. Comments are welcome.The most recent blog topics are listed at the right, and the actual blog page gives the beginnings of these recent posts. Earlier posts can also be accessed through the blog page. Popular older blog posts concern the sculptor Camille Claudel, the Chinese Communist Revolution, the painter Vilhelm Hammershoi, the composer Shostakovich, the story of Antigone, the musical form of the Folia, the experience of the Numinous, Stonehenge, and Bertha Pappenheim, one of Freud’s early patients.
The title banner for the site derives from the Still Life of Oranges and a Banana painted by John Frederick Peto in about 1890. As well as being beautiful, the painting suggests the wholeness, transience and goodness of the world, and serves notice that there is still life to be lived.
The name of this site and the book comes from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (1886):
In man creature and creator are united: in man there is material, fragment, excess, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but in man there is also creator, form giver, hammer, hardness, spectator divinity, and seventh day: do you understand this contrast?