log bee: sucks to sips (M&D, spoiled brat)

[jporter]

How shall I say this- the relationship of the local to the universal? a
moment in time to the infinite past? dx to f(x)? infinitesimal- by its very
vanishing- turning any interval into the infinite....

My first "revelation" on reading M&D, p19 was not, as most have learnedly
posted to date....(see below)











...the appropriate lines of The Tempest. Romantic that I am, my ear was
tuned to Keats before Shakespeare, it was this verse from "Ode to
Melancholy" that lit up my cortex:

        She dwells with Beauty- Beauty that must die;
                And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
        Bidding Adieu: and aching Pleasure nigh,
                Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
        Ay, in the very temple of Delight
                Veil'd Melancholy has her sworn shrine...

And there, for me, is the rub...Sucks to sips. The law of diminishing returns.
Yet, just as each differntial has its day, so is every present second an
indefinite eternity of some incalculable future- as yet, unreduc'd to
certainty.

More, much more, of this later...when the reading is done and the
re-reading's begun. For now, M&D is a much deeper book than GR. In GR we
saw the scaffolding, nay, the very rivets- the pages of M&D are tattooed.

jody