Both / And - Tolerance / Innovation

“Confluence” has been used to identify this special place on the State Street pedestrian mall on the University of Wisconsin - Madison campus. Confluence represents the merging of the City of Madison with the University. “Both/And - Tolerance/Innovation” speaks to the confluence of ideas and cultural diversity coming together in a dynamic cause and effect relationship. The installation represents a space where reality merges with abstraction. The space between the stone (reality) and the stainless-steel vertical sculpture (abstraction), embodies Aristotle’s philosophy of knowledge, “being qua being,” the metaphysical reasoning at the heart of learning. It is the space between “knowing” and “believing.”