"In the history of philosophy, poetry, and art we find the interaction of two personality types which I call prickles and goo.

The prickly people are advocates of intellectual porcupinism. They want a rigor with very precise statistics and they have a certain clipped attitude in their voices. This is very well known in academic circles where certain people always tend to be a little edgy like that. They accuse other people of being disgustingly vague, miasmic, and mystical .

However, the vague, miasmic, and mystical people accuse the prickly people of being mere skeletons with no flesh on their bones. They say, You just rattle. You're not really a human being. You know the words, but you don't know the music.

Therefore, if you belong to the prickly type, you hope that the ultimate constituent of matter is particles. If you belong to the gooey type you hope it's waves. If you are prickly, you are a classicist; and if you are gooey, you are a romanticist. Going back to medieval philosophy, if you are prickly you are a nominalist; if you're gooey you are a realist, and so it goes.

Yet we know very well that this natural universe is neither prickles nor goo exclusively. It's gooey-prickles and prickly-goo, depending on your level of magnification.

If you have focussed your magnification on something so the focus is clear, then you have a prickly point of view, allowing you to see structure and shape, clearly outlined and sharply defined. If you turn the dial a little, you've got goo.

But we are always playing with the two."

-Alan Watts, The Tao of Philosophy

For this and more read by Alan Watts (and animated by Parker and Stone of South Park), check out Alan Watts Theater