Intellectual Elegance

“I would define intellectual elegance as a mind that is continually refining itself with education and knowledge. Intellectual elegance is the opposite of intellectual vulgarity.”
Massimo Vignelli

Intellectual elegance is that exalted level of intelligence which has produced all the masterpieces in the history of mankind. I believe it resides in the most beautiful emotion that we experience in the mysterious within us. The Hindu sages call it serpent shakti. The Chinese Masters call it chi. It is intellectual elegance that Einstein speaks about when he says: "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion."  

History and our post-modern society is interspersed with Intellectual Elegance. It is in the eloquence of the Pyramids, in the Renaissance paintings, in the sublime writings of Goethe, in Pythagorean Theorems, in Tesla Coil Theory. You name it, it is there. It is the golden thread that guides us to the best solution of whatever we do. It is the definitive goal of our minds - the one beyond compromises.

"It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science...To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly....." [Einstein 1930]....this is Intellectual Elegance.

Intellectual elegance is also our community consciousness and our moral imperative. It is the deepest meaning and the ethos of Design.

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