654
In certain early writings of Plato and Theophrastus (the latter, a student whose
affiliations linked to both Plato and Aristotle), local changes on the landscape mosaics of the Mediterranean littoral were noted.
2
Dimensions relating to cause and
effect left instant impressions, as would any contemporary wildlands reduced by
fire or some other human agency, to a depauperate aftermath. Science historian
Barbara Maria Stafford confronted such impressions at a multitude of levels.
Writing in her engrossing Voyage into Substance, Stafford comments, “Energetic
spatial metaphors – tearing, crossing, immersing, penetrating – structure the images
of the factual relations… The issue of an individual consciousness locating itself
2 See Traces on the Rhodian Shore - Nature And Culture In Western Thought From Ancient Times
To The End Of The Eighteenth Century, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles,
CA, 1967, pp. 121 and 130.
Fig. 71.1 “Manujvajramandala, Containing 43 Deities,” Tibetan, ca. 1400–1500, Representing
Transcendent Wisdom, A Buddhist Wormhole into Infinity, Held at the Museo d’Arte Orientale,
Turino. (Public Domain)
71 The Concept of Zero