This book's like black holes. It really engulfes you whole.
What is it, in fact, that we are supposed to abstract from, in order to get, for example, from the moon to the number 1? By abstraction we do indeed get certain concepts, viz. satellite of the Earth, satellite of a planet, non-self-luminous heavenly body, heavenly body, body, object. But in this series 1 is not to be met with; for it is no concept that the moon could fall under. In the case of 0, we have simply no object at all from which to start our process of abstracting. It is no good objecting that 0 and 1 are not numbers in the same sense as 2 and 3. What answers the question How many? is number, and if we ask, for example, "How many moons has this planet?", we are quite as much prepared for the answer 0 or 1 as for 2 or 3, and that without having to understand the question differently. No doubt there is something unique about 0, and about 1000; but the same is true in principle of every whole number, only the bigger the number the less obvious it is. To make out of this a difference in kind is utterly arbitrary. What will not work with 0 and 1 cannot be essential to the concept of number.
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What is it, in fact, that we are supposed to abstract from, in order to get, for example, from the moon to the number 1? By abstraction we do indeed get certain concepts, viz. satellite of the Earth, satellite of a planet, non-self-luminous heavenly body, heavenly body, body, object. But in this series 1 is not to be met with; for it is no concept that the moon could fall under. In the case of 0, we have simply no object at all from which to start our process of abstracting. It is no good objecting that 0 and 1 are not numbers in the same sense as 2 and 3. What answers the question How many? is number, and if we ask, for example, "How many moons has this planet?", we are quite as much prepared for the answer 0 or 1 as for 2 or 3, and that without having to understand the question differently. No doubt there is something unique about 0, and about 1000; but the same is true in principle of every whole number, only the bigger the number the less obvious it is. To make out of this a difference in kind is utterly arbitrary. What will not work with 0 and 1 cannot be essential to the concept of number.
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Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathized at least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to die painfully.
The shortest interval between two points is the awareness that they are not two.
He was following the Earth through its days, drifting with the rhythms of its myriad pulses, seeping through the webs of its life, swelling with its tides, turning with its weight.
[Some scientific] experiments_tell us that what we consider the objective world depends in some measure on our own conscious processes. There is no fixed eternal reality_ true understanding is not to be achieved with the rational mind.
This 'web of discourses' as Robyn called it...is as much a biological product as any of the other constructions to be found in the animal world. (Clothes too, are part of the extended phenotype of Homo Sapiens almost every niche inhabited by that species.An illustrated encyclopedia of zoology should no more picture Homo Sapiens naked than it should picture Ursus arctus-the black bear- wearing a clown suit and riding a bicycle.