Imagination at Work!

by Trieu Nguyen

I would like to share something about the second picture that  impressed me a lot. In my opinion, the picture shows us where human wisdom comes from.
Firstly, I see that man receives his knowledge from two sources: human

experiences and divine revelation. To acquire the human wisdom, we cannot do it by ourselves, we receive what our ancestors had done. That is human wisdom which is the heritage of all human beings. At the same time, we have to receive it through something from above that I will call divine revelation. We can only acquire throughout human reason which is depicted by the instrument in the left hand of figure in the picture. 

         Secondly, we receive our wisdom from different kinds of knowledge. On the left of picture, we see two containers which come from different places: one from the wall which is presented by human work, two others on the floor which are presented by human sources. On the left side of picture, we see the light which comes from above and only one source, but when it goes through human reason which is presented in the left side of the picture, it becomes three. For me, the three is a symbol that expresses three kinds of philosophy: philosophy of God, philosophy of human nature, and that of world. We also can understand three as the representation of totality. It expresses human relationship because humans are themselves social beings. It means that to live our lives we need others. A relationship of love needs three because love cannot close itself in two. For example, man loves a woman and the fruit of love is a child, and three expresses that relationship which is one important element in human life.