Saturday, October 18, 2008

Pop Quiz Time!

Who wrote the following passage?

"Physics...is a narrow path drawn across a gulf that the human imagination cannot grasp. It is a set of answers to certain questions that we put to the world, and the world supplies the answers on the condition that we will not then ask it other questions, questions shouted out by common sense. And common sense? It is that which is understood by an intelligence using senses no different from those of a baboon. Such an intelligence wishes to know the world in terms that apply to its terrestrial, biological niche. But the world--outside that niche, that incubator of sapient apes--has properties that one cannot take in hand, see, sniff, gnaw, listen to, and in this way appropriate."

Is it...?

a) C. S. Lewis
b) Stanislaw Lem
c) H. P. Lovecraft
d) Michael Crichton

4 comments:

eykd said...

Stanislaw Lem, just because I know you're reading him. Lovecraft next. Lewis wouldn't do the baboon comparison--he'd go up, not down. Crichton? One of these guys is not like the others...

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Lem, for sure. Actually, I came to this page searching for this very quote on google.

What I now would need to know is... which Lem's book? I can't remember where I read it.

Unknown said...

Ok, found it, it's "Fiasco" ;-)