In 1998, one of the most respected scholars in the world made a profound decision. It was a decision that seemed at odds with much of what had previously happened in his life. Jaroslav Pelikan was born in Akron, Ohio, in 1923 to devout Lutheran parents. His father was a Lutheran pastor and his grandfather a bishop in the Lutheran Church. By the age of twenty-two he had completed both a seminary degree from Concordia Lutheran Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.
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One of the most perplexing and discouraging realities the modern world confronts us with is a disconnection from our past and the past in general. We are separated from the first European settlers of West Tennessee by just less than 200 years, but we have less in common with those ancestors than they themselves would have had with the Ancient Greeks or Romans. Time is a relative construction in this sense, just like it is in physics.
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Gravity, the force that an object exerts on those things around it, is directly proportional to its mass. This is basic physics and one of the most basic principles that shape our physical world. It is the reason why our world is the way it is, but there are other types of gravity beyond a physical force pulling us constantly toward the center of the earth.
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The greater the idea the more beautiful the building—a statement that should be true, and is true in an abstract sense. The most beautiful manmade space I have ever entered is also one inspired by what I consider to be the greatest idea.
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Buildings, like last time with the Greyhound Station, are the expression of ideas that find a place in the imagination or consciousness of a culture. American and European culture in the early decades of the twentieth century were fascinated by the concept of speed. In the lifespan of the of a single person men went from moving at the speed of a horse to being able to leap over oceans in the space of hours.
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