Saturday August 19, 2006

"With no means to verify its truth, superstring theory, in the words of Burton Richter, director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, may turn out to be 'a kind of metaphysical wonderland.' Yet it is being pursued as vigorously as ever, its critics complain, treated as the only game in town."

— "The Inelegant Universe," by George Johnson, in the Sept. 2006 Scientific American

Some may prefer metaphysics of a different sort:

"To enter Cervantes’s world, we cross a threshold that is Shakespearean and quixotic into a metaphysical wonderland where time expands to become space and vast vaulted distances bend back on themselves, where the threads of fiction and the strands of history shuttle back and forth in the great loom of the artist’s imagination."

As wonderlands go, I personally prefer Clive Barker's Weaveworld.