[Insert Lame Spherical Joke]

From what I can tell, the chapter isn't so much about failed nerves as much as various astronomers and scientists desperately trying to find explanations for piss poor hypotheses and/or statements by great philosophers taken for truth.

The little section about Plato in chapter four compared with the diagrams on page 49 (see left) really made me, perhaps wrongly, giggle. It was just too perfect. Plato, this great know-diddly about astronomy making great claims about things needing to be perfect and in the end these astronomers were only trying to figure out logical explanations for the movements of these planets (bottom left of picture at right was quite ingenious, even if erroneous) while still maintaining this "natural perfection" of spheres and circles. The Plato vs. Aristotle section was interesting, too (starting page 53), including the section comparing Plato's Utopia to Orwell's 1984. Not having read 1984 (I know, right, what high school did I come from?), I guess I sort of miss much of the point, but I get the gist of it and it is indeed interesting.

As for the Greeks and their linear knowledge, I agree that knowledge progresses. I mean, we may agree that sometimes we may backtrack to old abandoned ideas and try to make them work again in new ways, but I wouldn't necessarily write that off as anti-progressive. I would not agree however, given the definition of linear (in a line or nearly straight line; or progressing from one stage to another in a single series of steps), that the pursuit of knowledge is linear. It may have the same sort of form as linear (an upward movement of more and more knowledge) but I see it more as a bunch of different lines instead of one single line-- and what is the line moving towards anyway? Is the upward movement signifying the volume of knowledge, per say? Imagine a tower of babel that keeps building upwards anyway despite the language/culture barrier and perhaps, expounding on this analogy, the tower is built in many a fashion and many a method, but continues to be build nonetheless.

Yeah, that just got a little out of hand.