Profound Insights

Reached the end of Book One of Quicksilver  today. Each of the three books in Quicksilver is about three hundred pages long. Each of the three volumes in the Baroque Cycle is comprised of three three-hundred page books. Such satisfying symmetry.

What a marvelous quote to open Book Two with. I am thoroughly enjoying Quicksilver. There are so many wonderful scenes, but perhaps the part which resonated most deeply with me was the observation made by Robert Hooke, who really was a natural philosopher in the Royal Society, regarding the difference between natural and artificial forms. 

"True beauty is to be found in natural forms. The more we magnify, and the closer we examine, the works of Artifice, the grosser and stupider they seem. But if we magnify the natural world it only becomes more intricate and excellent."

Four hundred years later, ever more powerful microscopes have proven that assertion to be ever more true. Allied with Euclid's theory of infinite regression, we are approaching something incredibly profound here through the mediums of science and maths. 

I love books like this that make me feel more intelligent than I really am.

That point where the observer becomes the observed.