Silhouette Meaning Quotes

When you took me from the witch trial at Cranesmuir--you said then that you would have died with me, you would have gone to the stake with me, had it come to that!" He grasped my hands, fixing me with a steady blue gaze. "Aye, I would," he said. "But I wasna carrying your child." The wind had frozen me; it was the cold that made me shake, I told myself. The cold that took my breath away. "You can't tell," I said, at last. "It's much too soon to be sure." He snorted briefly, and a tiny flicker of amusement lit his eyes. "And me a farmer, too! Sassenach, ye havena been a day late in your courses, in all the time since ye first took me to your bed. Ye havena bled now in forty-six days." "You bastard!" I said, outraged. "You counted! In the middle of a bloody war, you counted!" "Didn't you?" "No!" I hadn't; I had been much too afraid to acknowledge the possibility of the thing I had hoped and prayed for so long, come now so horribly too late. "Besides," I went on, trying still to deny the possibility, "that doesn't mean anything. Starvation could cause that; it often does." He lifted one brow, and cupped a broad hand gently beneath my breast. "Aye, you're thin enough; but scrawny as ye are, your breasts are full--and the nipples of them gone the color of Champagne grapes. You forget," he said, "I've seen ye so before. I have no doubt--and neither have you." I tried to fight down the waves of nausea--so easily attributable to fright and starvation--but I felt the small heaviness, suddenly burning in my womb. I bit my lip hard, but the sickness washed over me. Jamie let go of my hands, and stood before me, hands at his sides, stark in silhouette against the fading sky. "Claire," he said quietly. "Tomorrow I will die. This child...is all that will be left of me--ever. I ask ye, Claire--I beg you--see it safe.

I took a final look at my mother’s silhouette in the doorway and tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Hades followed my gaze. “She was trying to protect you.” “I know. That’s the worst part. I’m just tired of her deception. I mean, keeping the fact that I was a goddess from me my whole life was one thing, but to still keep something from me? That’s just…” I couldn’t put words to the feelings that were bothering me. “You wanted her to be as honest as you’ve always perceived her to be.” “Yes.” “It could be worse.” “How?” “My father ate me.

I start the engine and shoot a glance through the tinted window, figuring if anyone is still watching, they can no longer see past my silhouette. Gray seems to have been waiting for a movement like this. He's waving like a dork and swinging my long forgotten pink hoodie high in the air so I can see it. He's yelling, “Bye Jess!” He flips my hoodie onto his shoulders and ties it around his neck until it looks like a ridiculous scarf—as though he means to wear it like that for a long time.

It is often said of people with second sight that their soul leaves the body. That doesn't happen to the glacier. But the next time one looks at it, the body has left the glacier, and nothing remains except the soul clad in air... the glacier is illuminated at certain times of the day by a special radiance and stands in a golden glow with a powerful aureole of rays, and everything becomes insignificant except it. Then it's as if the mountain is no longer taking part in the history of geology but has become iconic... A remarkable mountain. At night when the sun is off the mountains the glacier becomes a tranquil silhouette that rests in itself and breathes upon man and beast the word never, which perhaps means always. Come, waft of death.

On my drive from Salt Lake City to Moab, Utah, I passed an eighteen-wheeler with mud flaps on the rear tires. The flaps were black and featured the silver silhouette of a very statuesque naked woman. I’m sure you’ve seen this artistic expression in your travels. I wondered: has this ploy ever worked, like some kind of perverted fishing lure?

It's like some part of me is always with you" she said. I looked at the sky and smiled.

...punishment evokes sexual feelings in him; skin is logically connected in his mind with force, because sex is what he feels when he feels the urge to hurt her. [...] Force is suggested by the skin, because both to him mean real touch; [...] still conditioned by civilization to have abstract sexual impulses, he is drawn most by the silhouette, halfway between the fictive and the real.

Tree' is the title of a dance, is the cadence of a song. The black silhouette is only a moment of stillness caught by the shutter of the eye. It is finely tuned to the harmonics of the air. It loves both the sun and the wind and is let turn towards its beloved and so become itself. This is the dance of all living things. This is why endangered peoples say if they have their dance they will never die.

Of the nine million Harlequin Romance and Silhouette Ecstasy books for women today, sold and read by the ton, no hero appears whose primary quality isn’t arrogance. If any man appears at first helpful, cheerful, and polite, he’s the villain. The man who at first appears hopelessly mean and insensitive, he’s the hero. It’s cornography. Margaret Mitchell’s inspiration for Rhett Butler was Valentino in that tango. It’s a twentieth-century malaise.

Conscious” and “unconscious” are only too obviously derivatives of “above ground” and “below ground.” In modern theories of the Will we meet with all the vocabulary of electrodynamics. Will functions and thought functions are spoken of in just the same way as the function of a system of forces. To analyze a feeling means to set up a representative silhouette in its place and then to treat this silhouette mathematically and by definition, partition, and measurement. All soul examination of this stamp, however remarkable as a study of cerebral anatomy, is penetrated with the mechanical notion of locality, and works without knowing it under imaginary coordinates in an imaginary space.

I count the stars," she says softly. "To help me sleep." I roll my head toward her, watching her silhouette stare up into the sky. Awe laces each word from her soft lips. "I always wondered how something could shine so bright, even while being swallowed in darkness." My eyes run over the shadowed outline of her face. "I've been trying to figure that out myself." "I hope they know how admired they are up there," she murmurs. "I mean, I count them before bed every night." I shake my head at the sight of her admiring something far duller than she. "I'm quite sure that even the stars are envious of you.

Before I leave, I glance over my shoulder and see him standing on the dark lawn, his silhouette illuminated by the light from the living room windows. Gratitude radiates out of him and into me, floods me with love. This, I think, is what it means to be selfless, to be good. How could I ever have thought of myself as helpless when I alone have the power to save him?

Simplicity has always been looked upon as a token, not only of truth, but also of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought expressed, while with those writers who only pretend to think it is their thoughts that are said to be fine because of their style. Style is merely the silhouette of thought; and to write in a vague or bad style means a stupid or confused mind.

That is why it is praise to an author to say that he is naïve; it means that he need not shrink from showing himself as he is. Generally speaking, to be naïve is to be attractive; while lack of naturalness is everywhere repulsive. As a matter of fact we find that every really great writer tries to express his thoughts as purely, clearly, definitely and shortly as possible. Simplicity has always been held to be a mark of truth; it is also a mark of genius. Style receives its beauty from the thought it expresses; but with sham-thinkers the thoughts are supposed to be fine because of the style. Style is nothing but the mere silhouette of thought; and an obscure or bad style means a dull or confused brain.

The pressure is on. They've teased me all week, because I've avoided anything that requires ordering. I've made excuses (I'm allergic to beef," "Nothing tastes better than bread," Ravioli is overrated"), but I can't avoid it forever.Monsieur Boutin is working the counter again. I grab a tray and take a deep breath. "Bonjour, uh...soup? Sopa? S'il vous plait?" "Hello" and "please." I've learned the polite words first, in hopes that the French will forgive me for butchering the remainder of their beautiful language. I point to the vat of orangey-red soup. Butternut squash, I think. The smell is extraordinary, like sage and autumn. It's early September, and the weather is still warm. When does fall come to Paris? "Ah! soupe.I mean,oui. Oui!" My cheeks burn. "And,um, the uh-chicken-salad-green-bean thingy?" Monsieur Boutin laughs. It's a jolly, bowl-full-of-jelly, Santa Claus laugh. "Chicken and haricots verts, oui. You know,you may speek Ingleesh to me. I understand eet vairy well." My blush deepends. Of course he'd speak English in an American school. And I've been living on stupid pears and baquettes for five days. He hands me a bowl of soup and a small plate of chicken salad, and my stomach rumbles at the sight of hot food. "Merci," I say. "De rien.You're welcome. And I 'ope you don't skeep meals to avoid me anymore!" He places his hand on his chest, as if brokenhearted. I smile and shake my head no. I can do this. I can do this. I can- "NOW THAT WASN'T SO TERRIBLE, WAS IT, ANNA?" St. Clair hollers from the other side of the cafeteria. I spin around and give him the finger down low, hoping Monsieur Boutin can't see. St. Clair responds by grinning and giving me the British version, the V-sign with his first two fingers. Monsieur Boutin tuts behind me with good nature. I pay for my meal and take the seat next to St. Clair. "Thanks. I forgot how to flip off the English. I'll use the correct hand gesture next time." "My pleasure. Always happy to educate." He's wearing the same clothing as yesterday, jeans and a ratty T-shirt with Napolean's silhouette on it.When I asked him about it,he said Napolean was his hero. "Not because he was a decent bloke, mind you.He was an arse. But he was a short arse,like meself." I wonder if he slept at Ellie's. That's probably why he hasn't changed his clothes. He rides the metro to her college every night, and they hang out there. Rashmi and Mer have been worked up, like maybe Ellie thinks she's too good for them now. "You know,Anna," Rashmi says, "most Parisians understand English. You don't have to be so shy." Yeah.Thanks for pointing that out now.

Eyes of the Cat I wrote this little story for the schoolgirl who said my stories weren’t scary enough. Her comment was ‘Not bad’, and she gave me seven out of ten. Her eyes seemed flecked with gold when the sun was on them. And as the sun set over the mountains, drawing a deep red wound across the sky, there was more than gold in Kiran’s eyes. There was anger; for she had been cut to the quick by some remarks her teacher had made—the culmination of weeks of insults and taunts. Kiran was poorer than most of the girls in her class and could not afford the tuitions that had become almost obligatory if one was to pass and be promoted. ‘You’ll have to spend another year in the ninth,’ said Madam. ‘And if you don’t like that, you can find another school—a school where it won’t matter if your blouse is torn and your tunic is old and your shoes are falling apart.’ Madam had shown her large teeth in what was supposed to be a good-natured smile, and all the girls had tittered dutifully. Sycophancy had become part of the curriculum in Madam’s private academy for girls. On the way home in the gathering gloom, Kiran’s two companions commiserated with her. ‘She’s a mean old thing,’ said Aarti. ‘She doesn’t care for anyone but herself.’ ‘Her laugh reminds me of a donkey braying,’ said Sunita, who was more forthright. But Kiran wasn’t really listening. Her eyes were fixed on some point in the far distance, where the pines stood in silhouette against a night sky that was growing brighter every moment. The moon was rising, a full moon, a moon that meant something very special to Kiran, that made her blood tingle and her skin prickle and her hair glow and send out sparks. Her steps seemed to grow lighter, her limbs more sinewy as she moved gracefully, softly over the mountain path. Abruptly she left her companions at a fork in the road. ‘I’m taking the short cut through the forest,’ she said. Her friends were used to her sudden whims.

The "Monalisa Lisa" is an optical illusion created by Leonardo Da Vinci. The woman in the painting "The Mona Lisa" doesn't appear to be always smiling. When you look at the mouth you feel she looks sad, melancholic, and hostile. But when you look at the eyes you feel she is happy and cheerful. Leonardo perfected the "sfumato technique," which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated." He created imperceptible transitions between light and shade, and sometimes between colors. "Why the Silhouette?" appears as a simple story of a few individuals, but when you look at it from a distance, it appears to show you the philosophy of life. I have tried to create imperceptible transitions between light and darkness and sometimes between colors. Hope you see the illusion in "Why the Silhouette?

The "Mona Lisa" is an optical illusion created by Leonardo Da Vinci. The woman in the painting "The Mona Lisa" doesn't appear to be always smiling. When you look at the mouth you feel she looks sad, melancholic, and hostile. But when you look at the eyes you feel she is happy and cheerful. Leonardo perfected the "sfumato technique," which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated." He created imperceptible transitions between light and shade, and sometimes between colors. "Why the Silhouette?" appears as a simple story of a few individuals, but when you look at it from a distance, it appears to show you the philosophy of life. I have tried to create imperceptible transitions between light and darkness and sometimes between colors. Hope you see the illusion in "Why the Silhouette?

The "Mona Lisa" is an optical illusion created by Leonardo Da Vinci. The woman in the painting "The Mona Lisa" doesn't appear to be always smiling. When you look at her mouth you feel she looks sad, melancholic, and hostile. But when you look at her eyes you feel she is happy and cheerful. Leonardo perfected the "sfumato technique," which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated." He created imperceptible transitions between light and shade, and sometimes between colors. "Why the Silhouette?" appears as a simple story of a few individuals, but when you look at it from a distance, it appears to show you the philosophy of life. I have tried to create imperceptible transitions between light and darkness and sometimes between colors. Hope you see the illusion in "Why the Silhouette?

You know what Love is, it's believing in him, even when he stops believing in himself, it's finding and reminding him of his lost dreams, it's walking him through his visions and watching him grow in everything that shapes him in his true self, it's finding a thousand ways to simply talk to each other and being fluent in each other's silences, it's watching the stars glow at night to chasing a sunrise in each other's embrace, it's kissing a millionth time and know that's just not enough, it's praying for him before you even start praying for your self, it's choosing him over and over again and growing old in each other's silhouette, it's making him know each moment of every single day of how special he is, it's finding him in everything that he loves and searching for the littlest ways to bring that smile in his heart that makes your Soul smile the most, it's fighting for him and standing up for him every single time, it's making efforts and taking time for each other, it's just literally breathing in your lifeforce in him when he finds life a bit blurry, it's simply a beautiful tornado of finding the most foolish reasons to never leave him to making the most concrete decision that no matter what you would stand right beside him, in every time, in every breath, in every tunnel of Life. Because that's what Love is, it simply means you love him more than you love yourself.

I didn't know it could be like this," she said later. Not later that night. But on a night a lot like that one. A night that ended with Beth in his arms, with her everywhere against him. Lincoln was almost asleep. "Like what?" he asked. "I didn't know love could leave the lights on all the time. Do you know what I mean?" "Not exactly," he said, finding a way to pull her closer. He could just make out her silhouette in the dark, her head lifted, her hair falling on his chest. "I thought it took more naps," she said, struggling to find the right words. "Or blinked. I didn't know it could go on and on and like this without falling off an edge. Like pi." "What kind of pie?" he murmured. "No, pi...," she said. "Lincoln? Are you asleep? "I didn't know someone could love me like this," she said. "Could love me and love me without... needing space." Lincoln wasn't asleep. He rolled on top of her. "There's no air in space," he said.

Did you just say that bustles are expected to get even larger?” Miss Griswold nodded. “I’m afraid so. According to one of my sources—er . . . friends, I mean—quite a few designers are beginning to contemplate a new silhouette for ladies—one that will require bustles to achieve the size of a large birdcage in order to pull off the look designers are convinced will be complimentary to every lady’s figure.” “Who in the world would want to wear a birdcage on their behind?” Miss Cadwalader asked, once again in possession of the platter of treats, treats she immediately began perusing, looking completely delighted. Miss Griswold reached out, snagged a sugar biscuit, popped it into her mouth, and shrugged even as she swallowed. “I’m sure there are very few ladies who’d appreciate such an appendage attached to them, but evidently the gentlemen in charge of our fashions seem to believe that larger behinds are . . .” She stopped talking, shot a look to Edgar, turned pink in the face, and immediately returned her attention to Wilhelmina.

China, talking about restrooms is very important, especially when seconds count. Memorize these characters: (Nán) is male, (Nǚ) is female. Often they may be more prominently displayed than the words “Men” or “Women” or even the familiar gender-specific silhouettes we are accustomed to seeing. Not to worry, however, if you can’t read the Chinese characters for the two gender choices. The general rule of thumb in almost all of China is “men left, women right,” meaning that the men’s restroom will be on the left-hand side and women’s on the right. Only in the areas populated primarily by minority peoples is the opposite true. If you’re female, and at least half the human race is of that persuasion, then you have a special treat in store at some Chinese airport restrooms outside of the largest cities like Beijing and Shanghai. You may walk into one of the lovely modern stalls provided for you. Lulled into a sense of security and familiarity by such a modern-looking restroom so far from home, you don’t even think to check to see if there is any toilet paper in the stall. That’s because in America there are always several giant-sized rolls in industrial-looking acrylic dispensers.

The hydra became a means of exploring multiplicity, movement, and connection, the long waves and planetary currents of humanity. The multiplicity was indicated, as it were, in silhouette in the multitudes who gathered at the market, in the fields, on the piers and the ships, on the plantations, upon the battlefields. The power of numbers was expanded by movement, as the hydra journeyed and voyaged or was banished or dispersed in diaspora, carried by the winds and the waves beyond the boundaries of the nation-state. Sailors, pilots, felons, lovers, translators, musicians, mobile workers of all kinds made new and unexpected connections, which variously appeared to be accidental, contingent, transient, even miraculous.

Devil Like Me My heart and soul were never mine to own, what you care to die for? What you care to die for? We die alone, we'll all die young, what you care to die for? What you care to die from? Snow glistens on the ledge, whiskey on the bed, shake it out and light a cigarette Miss me when you, you wish you weren't right. Shake me all out if I'm wrong, for you, for you. Shake it all out when I'm gone, I, for you. Is the devil so bad if he cries in his sleep, while the earth turns, and his kids learned to say, fuck you they don't, love you. Does the devil get scared if she dies in her dreams, where the earth burns, she cries 'cause she's nothing like, is she like you? What you want from a devil like me, devil like me? You see the devil don't mean to be evil, he just regrettably forgets to exceed expectation. Holes riddled in your head, little bit of lead, shake it out and line silhouette Miss me when you, you wish weren't kind of glad. Shake me all out when you're done, for you, for you Shake it all out when I'm gone, I, for you Is the devil so bad if he cries in his sleep, while the earth turns, 'cause his kids learned to say, fuck you they don't, love you. Does the devil get scared if she dies in her dreams, while the earth burns, she cries 'cause she's nothing like, is she like you? What do you want from a devil like me, am I, like you?

All science, like all religion, like most history, like philosophy and probably all great art, addresses a set of universal, enduring questions: how did we get here? Why are things as they are? Where are we going? What does it all mean? Is there an ultimate purpose to our existence, or is what we can see around us just the result of a horrible accident, or a sublime one? What science--and in this story, physics--does is take a little piece of one of those questions and, systematically and provisionally, deliver an answer. This answer on its own may help nobody and answer nothing. But physics goes on to another little question within that bigger question, and then another and then another, and sooner or later, the mosaic of little answers starts to deliver something of more substance: a pattern, a direction of travel, a model that seems to make sense. Actually, substance might not be the right word: we can never be sure that what we see is reality: we may be observing a mirage, or a reflection of reality, or just the silhouette of reality, as if a figure through an opaque glass door,

Sam was hovering right beside me, watching my face intently. "You ok, sweetie?" I looked at him with a smile. "I did it! I just asked, and she started pushing. I had no idea it would be so easy. I mean, I figured there was some mental magic you had to pull to get people to die for you, but it's so easy! And she gave me all her life, just boom." He stared at me in shock for a moment, his eyes flicking between mine as I rambled on. Gently, he pulled me away from the neon reflection of the daughter and the grey silhouette of the corpse, easing me out of the room without saying a thing. That in itself was enough to make me worried, replaying what had happened over and over in my mind as I tried to figure out where I'd made some kind of horrendous mistake. "Sia?" he finally asked when we reached the hall. "You know it's ok to be sad about this, right?" "Why would I feel bad? I didn't know her." "Because her daughter was there?" I waved that away. "Her daughter was telling her to let go. The old woman was suffering, and I found a way to make it better." "You know you killed her, right?" Those words made me finally understand the problem. "Sam, that woman was going to die. She could've rolled around in pain, groaning in misery until her heart clenched or her lungs gave out. As her body failed her, she would've panicked. It's kinda what we do. Instead, I made her smile. In her last moments on Earth, I made her feel comforted and protected, like this was just moving to the next step. She wasn't afraid." He nodded, taking that in. "Ok?" "You don't get it because you can't die. Death? It's the monster in the dark. It's the one thing we all fear the most, and in her last seconds, she wasn't afraid. She was thrilled. She knew she'd had a good life, and seeing me proved it to her. That's all we want. People pray to die in their sleep so they don't have to face that one terrifying second. We think about it our whole lives, refusing to talk about it because no one knows the answer, but now I do. I finally understand, and I made her death into something beautiful. Something her daughter will look back on and think is proof that she's in a better place.

How to Speak Directly with Robinhood Support – Easy Contact Guide

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I can’t spend all day explaining what this means or what that implies, there wouldn’t be any time left for family, friends, casual lovers, or the quick drag of a cigarette ruining the environment. I can’t spend a lifetime endlessly justifying myself to the real and the unreal, to silhouettes both solid and imagined, to beautiful and bitter words, praise and criticism, none of it entirely real.

omplementarity This duality might leave you feeling a bit unsettled. “At the end of the day,” you might ask, “which is it really, fundamentally?” Is your body a unitary entity or is it a phenomenon arising from its smaller parts, the interacting cells? The answer is, of course, both, equally and unequivocally. This kind of doubling of reality is a form of what quantum physicists call a complementarity. Perhaps the most famous example of complementarity is embedded in the now well-known, if perhaps not well-understood, notion that “light is both a wave and a particle.” Complementarity was originally framed in regard to the “double-slit” experiment,4 which showed that streams of light behave like beams of individual particles if observed in one way, but behave like continuous, undulating waves if observed in a different way. This dependence on the experimental setup, on the method of observation, for whether light appeared as waves or particles was called wave-particle duality. It became clear that either description, on its own, was incomplete, insufficient to describe the nature of light in its totality. These two partial descriptions—waves and particles—complemented each other. Only together could they capture the full nature of light, each view providing information the other excluded. Their relationship was recognized as a complementarity. Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, thought the most deeply about this concept after he announced it in 1928. It had become clear that no single experiment could ever demonstrate both aspects of wave-particle duality at the same time. All agreed that, at the quantum level, the impossibility of capturing both states at once was a fundamental principle of the nature of existence. Bohr, however, went further, asserting that complementarity was fundamental not just for describing existence at the incredibly minute scales of the quantum realm but for describing living beings at our normal everyday scale as well.1 Furthermore, Bohr saw complementarity as a fundamental property of existence at every scale. It was so central to his thinking that, when he was awarded Denmark’s highest honor, the Order of the Elephant, he designed a coat of arms for himself that featured a perfect symbol for complementarity, the yin-yang. Alas, perhaps due to the increasing subspecialization across all fields of science as the twentieth century rolled forward, these ideas about generalized complementarity were explored only in small corners of philosophy and science. Nonetheless, they remain very much alive. The coat of arms of Niels Bohr. “Contraria sunt complementa” means “Opposites are complementary.” Here is another way to envision complementarity, the classic black-and-white image of two profiles viewed in silhouette and the space between them looking like a vase. Which is it? Two faces? Or a vase? Of course, it is both, equally. Neither view describes the whole image, each one leaving out something essential. A complete description requires both opposite views to be united in a single complementarity. In just the same way, whether a body is a singular entity in itself or a phenomenon arising from the nimble interactions of cells is a question easily answered. It is a complementarity as well. It is both, equally, though which of these it appears to be depends on your observational stance. Are you seeing it at the everyday scale or at the microscopic scale? At the everyday scale your body is a unitary whole. At the microscopic scale, that whole disappears into its parts—the ceaseless, dynamic cellular dance; cells in cooperation with other cells, in space and in time.

Complementarity. This duality might leave you feeling a bit unsettled. “At the end of the day,” you might ask, “which is it really, fundamentally?” Is your body a unitary entity or is it a phenomenon arising from its smaller parts, the interacting cells? The answer is, of course, both, equally and unequivocally. This kind of doubling of reality is a form of what quantum physicists call a complementarity. Perhaps the most famous example of complementarity is embedded in the now well-known, if perhaps not well-understood, notion that “light is both a wave and a particle.” Complementarity was originally framed in regard to the “double-slit” experiment,4 which showed that streams of light behave like beams of individual particles if observed in one way, but behave like continuous, undulating waves if observed in a different way. This dependence on the experimental setup, on the method of observation, for whether light appeared as waves or particles was called wave-particle duality. It became clear that either description, on its own, was incomplete, insufficient to describe the nature of light in its totality. These two partial descriptions—waves and particles—complemented each other. Only together could they capture the full nature of light, each view providing information the other excluded. Their relationship was recognized as a complementarity. Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, thought the most deeply about this concept after he announced it in 1928. It had become clear that no single experiment could ever demonstrate both aspects of wave-particle duality at the same time. All agreed that, at the quantum level, the impossibility of capturing both states at once was a fundamental principle of the nature of existence. Bohr, however, went further, asserting that complementarity was fundamental not just for describing existence at the incredibly minute scales of the quantum realm but for describing living beings at our normal everyday scale as well.1 Furthermore, Bohr saw complementarity as a fundamental property of existence at every scale. It was so central to his thinking that, when he was awarded Denmark’s highest honor, the Order of the Elephant, he designed a coat of arms for himself that featured a perfect symbol for complementarity, the yin-yang. Alas, perhaps due to the increasing subspecialization across all fields of science as the twentieth century rolled forward, these ideas about generalized complementarity were explored only in small corners of philosophy and science. Nonetheless, they remain very much alive. The coat of arms of Niels Bohr. “Contraria sunt complementa” means “Opposites are complementary.” Here is another way to envision complementarity, the classic black-and-white image of two profiles viewed in silhouette and the space between them looking like a vase. Which is it? Two faces? Or a vase? Of course, it is both, equally. Neither view describes the whole image, each one leaving out something essential. A complete description requires both opposite views to be united in a single complementarity. In just the same way, whether a body is a singular entity in itself or a phenomenon arising from the nimble interactions of cells is a question easily answered. It is a complementarity as well. It is both, equally, though which of these it appears to be depends on your observational stance. Are you seeing it at the everyday scale or at the microscopic scale? At the everyday scale your body is a unitary whole. At the microscopic scale, that whole disappears into its parts—the ceaseless, dynamic cellular dance; cells in cooperation with other cells, in space and in time.

Complementarity. This duality might leave you feeling a bit unsettled. “At the end of the day,” you might ask, “which is it really, fundamentally?” Is your body a unitary entity or is it a phenomenon arising from its smaller parts, the interacting cells? The answer is, of course, both, equally and unequivocally. This kind of doubling of reality is a form of what quantum physicists call a complementarity. Perhaps the most famous example of complementarity is embedded in the now well-known, if perhaps not well- understood, notion that “light is both a wave and a particle.” Complementarity was originally framed in regard to the “double-slit” experiment,4 which showed that streams of light behave like beams of individual particles if observed in one way, but behave like continuous, undulating waves if observed in a different way. This dependence on the experimental setup, on the method of observation, for whether light appeared as waves or particles was called wave-particle duality. It became clear that either description, on its own, was incomplete, insufficient to describe the nature of light in its totality. These two partial descriptions—waves and particles—complemented each other. Only together could they capture the full nature of light, each view providing information the other excluded. Their relationship was recognized as a complementarity. Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, thought the most deeply about this concept after he announced it in 1928. It had become clear that no single experiment could ever demonstrate both aspects of wave-particle duality at the same time. All agreed that, at the quantum level, the impossibility of capturing both states at once was a fundamental principle of the nature of existence. Bohr, however, went further, asserting that complementarity was fundamental not just for describing existence at the incredibly minute scales of the quantum realm but for describing living beings at our normal everyday scale as well.1 Furthermore, Bohr saw complementarity as a fundamental property of existence at every scale. It was so central to his thinking that, when he was awarded Denmark’s highest honor, the Order of the Elephant, he designed a coat of arms for himself that featured a perfect symbol for complementarity, the yin-yang. Alas, perhaps due to the increasing subspecialization across all fields of science as the twentieth century rolled forward, these ideas about generalized complementarity were explored only in small corners of philosophy and science. Nonetheless, they remain very much alive. The coat of arms of Niels Bohr. “Contraria sunt complementa” means “Opposites are complementary.” Here is another way to envision complementarity, the classic black-and-white image of two profiles viewed in silhouette and the space between them looking like a vase. Which is it? Two faces? Or a vase? Of course, it is both, equally. Neither view describes the whole image, each one leaving out something essential. A complete description requires both opposite views to be united in a single complementarity. In just the same way, whether a body is a singular entity in itself or a phenomenon arising from the nimble interactions of cells is a question easily answered. It is a complementarity as well. It is both, equally, though which of these it appears to be depends on your observational stance. Are you seeing it at the everyday scale or at the microscopic scale? At the everyday scale your body is a unitary whole. At the microscopic scale, that whole disappears into its parts—the ceaseless, dynamic cellular dance; cells in cooperation with other cells, in space and in time.