Word: cartesian
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Revolutions in Science is a book readily comprehensible to the layman Cohen has synthesized complicated scientific concepts such as quantum theory and Cartesian metaphysics, making them not only palatable but engaging. Revolutions in Science does not offer a revolution in itself. Yet Cohen's superb scholarship, his eloquent synthesis of hundreds of year of critical thought fits Alexander Pope's perception of wit; his book contains ideas "which have often been thought but never before been so well expressed...
...features are as austere and regular as a mathematical formula, his carriage as straight as the vertical axis in a Cartesian graph. Teacher John Saxon's eyes are the one variable in the equation: they burn with a visionary gleam. His vision is simple: a future in which the basics of algebra, the building blocks of all higher mathematics, become understandable to all American students...
...overstatement) regarded themselves as the world's master exaggerators: spinners of all tall tales, an abundantly fabulous people, full of Whitman and vinegar. But this is probably mere cultural narcissism. Other people have spent many centuries perfecting their techniques of overstatment. The French for all their Cartesian precision have a strangely unstable hyperbolic side; a casual acquaintance who cannot make it to lunch one day will tell you he is "desolate" because of it. Such linguistic inflation can leave people with their vocabularies depleted when hard times come; what is that man say of his condition...
Fountains, statues and aviaries suggest the Cartesian excesses of Versailles. Other English formal gardens such as those at Sissinghurst Castle, Blenheim Palace and Henry VIII's Hampton Court featured mazes, topiary animals, tiny canals and ornate fountains
...gradual renunciation of the simplicity of the world." Lem's own worlds are complex, twittering word machines ingeniously wired to philosophy, probability theory, cybernetics and literary conventions, which he parodies brilliantly. Unlike most science-fiction writers, he animates his creatures with lively explanations, as in the Cartesian send-up from The Cyberiad: "Mymosh, thus booted, went flying into the nearby puddle, where his chlorides and iodides mingled with the water, and electrolyte seeped into his head and, bubbling, set up a current there, which traveled around and about, till Mymosh sat up in the mud and thought the following...