A spindly, middle-aged mathematician with a soaring mind, a sunken heart, and bad skin is being thrown about the back of a carriage in the bone-hollowing cold of a German January. Since his youth, he has been inscribing into family books and friendship albums his personal motto, borrowed from a verse by the ancient poet Perseus: "O the cares of man, how much of everything is futile." He has weathered personal tragedies that would level most. He is now racing through the icy alabaster expanse of the countryside in the precarious hope of averting another: Four days after Christmas and two days after his forty-fourth birthday, a letter from his sister has informed him that their widowed mother is on trial for witchcraft--a fact for which he holds himself responsible."
- Maria Popova, from Figuring.
Maria Popova, the author of The Marginalian blog (nee Brain Pickings), is one of the best authors I have ever read. She summarizes the thoughts of top-notch artists and scientists, and links their works to other artists and scientists in a beautiful, thoughtful analysis that also includes artistic imagery (as seen above). The first essay in Figuring is about Johannes Kepler followed by Maria Mitchell, and along the way touches on Emerson, Douglass, Caroline Herschel (the worlds first professional women astronomer) among others. Figuring looks to be a brilliant if unclassifiable examination of the thoughts of our best thinkers on the nature of reality and beauty. I'm relishing this one.
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