One Small Voice refers us to Alfred W. Crosby's The Measure of Reality.
How it is that Western European societies could have conquered so much of the world in the space of a few generations. The answer, he finds, is in certain agricultural and technological techniques. In this volume he turns to one set of techniques in particular: the precise measurement of time, number, and distance. That precise measurement enabled European armies to march in step, enabled navigators to find faraway ports, and enabled gunsmiths and chemists to formulate the weapons...
So much we take for granted! And the tares-and-wheat principle, how much of flexible plenty is intertwined with something other than the innocent pleasures of contemplating an inoffensive blossom. Maybe there is something to the metaphor of sand in the pearl, challenge and accomplishment, after all. It's all, somehow, the Flow.
As a man that is dancing, and keeps time with the music, cannot make a false step...
--Niccoló Machiavelli
Which makes us wonder, a kind of alternate history. What if Hagar
had fled into the desert, founded a flourishing oasis, and remembered
hers and Ishmael's history with bemusement, and forgiveness, without
resentment?
Unwritten novels are in the air today!
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