В начале были Начала ( Read more... )

Как все московские детки, увлекающиеся математикой, в нежном возрасте я прочитал "Флатландию". Книга преподносилась, как занимательное описание геометрии "изнутри", перемежающeeся едкой сатирой на чопорных викторианцев. И то и другое показалось нудноватым ( Read more... )

Деятели Просвещения были слишком заняты, чтобы дать определение своей деятельности. Если не считать парадные портреты набальзамированного трупа, изготовленные людьми, которые и калоши-то вряд ли смогли бы определить, за последние 250 лет серьезных попыток было две - Кантом и Фуко, причем второе - горькое осмысление первого ( Read more... )

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today...I do not need to imagine ALL the people living for today. I’ve seen such people both individually and en masse. They were not doing any better than the rest of us. They quickly rediscover that heaven isn't above and hell isn't ( Read more... )

An admission: I do not fancy leafy salads, despite the chorus of medical opinion telling me how wonderfully healthy and refreshing these herbs are supposed to be. As my wife stands firmly by their beneficial effects, I cannot escape their attractions, and many a dinner has been ruined by this unwelcome presence. For whose sins am I suffering ( Read more... )

...He that is to govern a whole nation must read in himself mankind. When I shall have set down my own reading orderly and perspicuously, the pains left another will be only to consider if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of doctrine admitteth no other demonstration. Read more... )

Plato did not think small. You have to give it to him ( Read more... )

Любимое место у Спенсера ( Read more... )

(for FB, who promised a versified epitaph ( Read more... )

This is something I hear every day: how a person should make a difference in the world. Presumably, this is about "improving the world." Then why is it called "making a difference?" What does it mean ( Read more... )