As I, like so many other naturalists, have long kept a dated record of the natural events I witness occurring around me throughout the year, I was recently delighted to discover when and how the practice is able to be documented as beginning.
John Philoponus, in his Commentary on the Soul, records that above the entrance to Plato’s Academy was inscribed ἀγεωμέτρητος μὴ εἰσίτω (“Let None But Geometers Enter Here”). It may have been equally appropriate to have posted a sign reading “A Knowledge of Mathematics Is Required” above the doorways to the early meeting places of the […]
One of the sublime joys in my life is the making of connections. I receive an inexpressible tingle of delight each time I discover a link between two – or more – things of which I hd previously known no such linkage. Not surprisingly, more often than not, at least one of the things I am able to connect is a book.
“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “First Inaugural Address” As I have watched many of my fellow citizens, as well as others from all […]