THE BURGESS BOYS (ELIZABETH STROUT) AND THE ORGANIC METAPHOR

 Pam had already established her own interest in science and she saw society as one large organism working with its million, billion cells heaving itself alive. Criminality was a mutation that interested Pam, and she joined tentatively in these discussions.

 

This is a really nice idea and I think it deserves more credit and appreciation. The term organic metaphor was coined by Herbert Spencer who is considered a forefather of Darwin. Society as one large organism or society as an ecosystem are both pretty images. We can compare many things to a living organism: a novel as a living organism, or a family as a living organism, or a school,…

How lucky was Herbert Spencer, a wise man of Science and Philosophy, with the time he lived! I can imagine him, in the 19th century in England, with some money and prestige enjoying in the Royal Society with his mates.

GILEAD (MARILYNNE ROBINSON) AND THE TRAJECTORY OF MOON

 It was one day as I listened to baseball that it occurred to me how the moon actually moves, in a spiral, because while it orbits the earth it also follows the orbit of the earth around the sun. This is obvious, but the realization pleased me.

 

Well done, Marilynne, the text illustrates the relativity of movement perfectly. And it´s also interesting the satisfaction in understanding a phenomenon, the feeling of pieces that fit together. When Physics is getting more and more complicate and you can´t understand anything in a intuitive way, this feeling disappears.

To add a pretentious remark, I´d dare to say that the moon would trace an helix more than a spiral in its trajectory