Friday, July 19, 2013

"The Pyramids of Chaos" -- Stanislaw Lem -- The Investigation


What if there isn't anything to imitate?  
What if the world isn't scattered around us like a jigsaw puzzle-- 
what if it's like a soup with all kinds of things floating around in it, 
and from time to time some of them get stuck together by chance to make some kind of whole?  

What if everything that exists is fragmentary, incomplete, aborted, events with ends but no beginnings, events that only have middles, 
things that have fronts or rears but not both, 
with us constantly making categories, seeking out, and reconstructing, 
until we think we can see total love, total betrayal and defeat, 
although in reality we are all no more than haphazard fractions. 

[...] 

The mathematical order of the universe is our answer to the pyramids of chaos.


--Lt. Gregory from The Investigation
by Stanislaw Lem

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More on Chaos...

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