- Thoughts
- It was very hard initially to understand the book because of the nature of vocabulary used; author inventing new words for things that exist in the Earth. First few chapters were very slow, often needing re-read to understand the contexts.
- Once I started to understand the plotline as it progressed, I loved the chapters and characters. Based on the alternate fiction that closely resembles “Earth”, I loved every bits of it that touch upon different philosophical aspects of the world, existence and nature of things around. Sometimes it goes towards cosmic scale and other times quantum level. Some thought experiments are very interesting, particulaly when talking about bat-fly-worm.
- I had no idea eventually the storyline would converge around alien spaceship and parallel universe (polycosm). It took me by surprise and the ending also provides closure to that idea.
- I think in all the book touches upon 2 distinct things: Objective Truth and Long-Term Thinking in a world distracted by noise and gadgets. And also no matter what: there exists things in the universe that are universal (eg: geometry).
- The central philosophical conflict in the book is between two views:
- The Procians (Rhetors): They believe truth is just a social construct. If you can talk people into believing something, it’s true. (This represents moral relativism or “fake news”).
- The Halikaarnians (Incanters): They believe truth is objective and exists outside of us. Even if humans die out, the Pythagorean theorem is still true.
- The central philosophical conflict in the book is between two views: