A case for books

12 Jun 2023

A.

13 Nov 2022

There is nothing to match the elation of riding a bicycle, of leaning over and swooping through the curves. On his Smiths he rides to school every morning, the half-mile from Reunion Park to the railway crossing, then the mile on the quiet road alongside the railway line. Summer mornings are the best. Water murmurs in the road side furrows, doves coo in the bluegum trees; now and then there is an eddy of warm air to warn of the wind that will blow later in the day, chasing gusts of fine red clay-dust before it. 

In winter he has to set out for school while it is still dark. With his lamp casting a halo before him, he rides through the mist, breasting its velvety softness, breathing it in, breathing it out, hearing nothing but the soft swish of his tyres. Some mornings the metal of the handle bars is so cold that hisbare hands stick to it.

30 Sep 2022

Heart-rendingly beautiful human condition before prophets, language, before myths lulled us to sleep...

15 Nov 2021

For Aristotle motion included pushing, pulling, carrying, and twirling; combining and separating; waxing and waning. Things in motion included a peach ripening, a fish swimming, water warming over a fire, a child growing into an adult, an apple falling from a tree. Some motion is natural; some violent and unnatural.

**

Repeatedly Newton started a new page—in November 1665, in May 1666, and in October 1666—in order to essay a system of propositions needed “to resolve Problems by motion .” On his last attempt he produced a tract of twenty-four pages, on eight sheets of paper folded and stitched together. He considered points moving toward the centers of circles; points moving parallel to one another; points moving “angularly” or “circularly”—this language was unsettled—and points moving along lines that intersected planes. A variable representing time underlay his equations—time as an absolute background for motion. When velocity changed, he imagined it changing smoothly and continuously—across infinitesimal moments, represented by that o (notation).

1 Nov 2020

Lay him next to Darwin, sad and a bit strident too.

30 Sep 2020

There are ancient cathedrals which, apart from their consecrated purpose, inspire solemnity and awe. Even the curious visitor speaks of serious things, with hushed voice, and as each whisper reverberates through the vaulted nave, the returning echo seems to bear a message of mystery. The labor of generations of architects and artisans has been forgotten, the scaffolding erected for the toil has long since been removed, their mistakes have been erased, or have become hidden by the dust of centuries. Seeing only the perfection of the completed whole, we are impressed as by some superhuman agency. But sometimes we enter such an edifi ce that is still partly under construction; then the sound of hammers, the reek of tobacco, the trivial jests bandied from workman to workman, enable us to realize that these great structures are but the result of giving to ordinary human effort a direction and a purpose. Science has its cathedrals, built by the efforts of a few architects and many workers. . . .

—Gilbert Newton Lewis, from the preface to Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of  Chemical Substances

14 Aug 2019

'.. a competent commander, a shrewd politician, a statesman of supreme realism, but above all he was a man of the Enlightenment, and the Enlightenment was not made by saints.'

8 Jul 2019

"Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a colossus shall we be."

21 May 2019

..a persistent purposeful dynamic stability. 

5 October 2018

I had suspected that charity might well be more important than Truth itself, and friendship more so than any ship or shipment.

17 Apr 2018

'.. bir iç fetih ya da iç kolonizasyon sürecidir. [...] devlet elitinin Osmanlı klasik devirlerinde fetihler yoluyla dışarıda toprak kazanmak suretiyle elde ettiği rantı bu kez fetih yoluyla değil, toprak üzerinde yeni iç yağma alanları oluşturmak suretiyle [...] İçe dönük bu fethin ilk uygulama alanı, tabii ki Ankara olmuştur. '

28 Feb 2018

Also by the author, The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad.