I'm finally reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Here's my favourite bit so far. This is from the chapter where Leibniz arrives on a boat to make connections with the natural philosophers in England. Our narrator Daniel Waterhouse is acting as host. Leibniz seems to know his way around already.
"You have been to London before, Dr. Leibniz?"
"I have been studying London-paintings."
"I'm afraid most of those became antiquarian curiosities after the Fire – like street-plans of Atlantis."
"And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle – all on the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe – for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient."
|
I'm finally reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. Here's my favourite bit so far. This is from the chapter where Leibniz arrives on a boat to make connections with the natural philosophers in England. Our narrator Daniel Waterhouse is acting as host. Leibniz seems to know his way around already.
"You have been to London before, Dr. Leibniz?"
"I have been studying London-paintings."
"I'm afraid most of those became antiquarian curiosities after the Fire – like street-plans of Atlantis."
"And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle – all on the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe – for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient."
- sally mckay 2-18-2005 7:31 am