Bernard Werber
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge
Let's not forget that intelligence tests are designed to prove that those who have an intelligence ... the same as those of the test takers are intelligent.
[Foreword]
To bring together everything that was known in his time - such was the ambitious goal of Professor Edmond Wells. Mixing exact and human sciences, quantum physics and culinary recipes, this strange lone scientist collected amazing, little-known information throughout his life. One property unites all the passages presented in this book: they are suggestive, as he said, "make the neurons sparkle."
Edmond Wells did not put any rules, dogmas, all kinds of "what they will say" into anything. “It is important for me not to shake the truth,” he argued, “but to open new horizons.” And he added: "The question is sometimes more interesting than the answer."
He told those who wanted to listen that much of today's "official" scientific data would be overturned by tomorrow's discoveries, and so he called his book "The Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge."
Professor Edmond Wells, according to the testimonies of those who knew him, was a very witty man and gave great importance paradoxes. But the most amazing paradox was, of course, himself, a man who, as we now know... never existed!
Modern Captain Nemo, vulnerable and unsociable, led the reader from science to philosophy in all the novels of Bernard Berber.
Everything is in one (Abraham).
Everything is love (Jesus Christ).
Everything is sex (Sigmund Freud).
Everything is economics (Karl Marx).
Everything is relative (Albert Einstein).
Turning this page, you notice that you are touching a point on the paper with your index finger. This causes a slight heating of this very point. Minor, but completely real. In the world of infinitesimals, heating causes the electron to move out of its atom and collide with another particle.
But this particle is actually “relatively” huge. And the impact of the electron becomes a real shock for her. Until that moment, it had been inert, empty, and cold. Because of your "jump" from page to page, she has a crisis. With your gesture, you provoked changes whose consequences you will never even know.
An explosion in the world of infinitesimal quantities.
Fragments of matter flying in different directions.
Released energy.
Perhaps microworlds were born, perhaps people live in them, and they will discover metallurgy, a method of steaming food and interplanetary travel. And they will even be smarter than us. They would never have happened if you had not taken this book in your hands, and if your finger had not produced heat in this particular section of the page.
At the same time, our Universe itself is undoubtedly in the corner of a page of a giant book, in the sole of a shoe or in the foam of a beer mug of some civilization of giants. Our generation will never know among what infinitesimal and what infinitely large quantities we are. But we know that a long time ago our Universe, in any case, the particle that makes up our Universe, was empty, cold, black and motionless. And then someone (or something) caused the crisis. They turned the page, stepped on a pebble, blew the foam off a mug of beer. Some impact has been made. In our case, as you know, it was the Big Bang.
Just imagine an endless silent space, suddenly awakened by a titanic flash. Why did they turn the page somewhere at the top? Why blew the foam off the beer?
Precisely in order for everything to evolve up to this very second in which you, a certain reader, are reading a certain book where you are now.
And maybe every time you turn the page of this book, somewhere in the world of infinitesimals, a new universe emerges.
Think of your infinite power.
[Parkinson's Law]
Parkinson's Law (which has nothing to do with the disease of the same name) states that the larger a business gets, the more often it hires incapable and well-paid employees. Why? Simply because the people already working on it want to avoid competition. The best way not to face a dangerous opponent - to hire incompetent workers. The best way to lull in them the desire to take the initiative is to overpay. Thus the leading castes secure unshakable confidence in their position. According to the same law, on the contrary, everyone who is full of ideas, original solutions or a desire to improve the work of the enterprise is systematically fired. Thus, the paradox of modernity lies in the fact that the larger the enterprise, the longer it has been operating on the market, the more vigorously it discards dynamic low-paid personnel, replacing them with inert personnel with exorbitantly high salaries. And all this for the peace of mind of the company's team.
[Charade Victor Hugo]
The first is a chatterer. (French for "bavard".)
The second is a bird. (French for "oiseau".)
Third - in a cafe. (French for "au cafe".)
All together - dessert.
Think a little without reading the answer. But for the impatient...
The first is bavard, that is, a talker. (Sounds like "bavar".)
The second is oiseau, that is, a bird. (Sounds like "wazo".)
The third is au cafe, that is, "in a cafe." (Sounds like "cafe".)
Answer: bavard-oiseau-au cafe. Bavaroise au cafe. (A play of consonances: the first expression means "talkative bird in a cafe", the second - "coffee jelly", both expressions are perceived the same by ear.)
See how simple it is.
[Dream People]
In the seventies, two American ethnologists discovered in the wilds of the forests of Malaysia a primitive Senua tribe, whose whole life was subordinated to dreams. The tribe was called so - "the people of dreams."
Every morning at breakfast around the fire, everyone talked only about what they had seen in a dream at night. If one of the senua committed an injustice towards someone in a dream, he had to give the victim a gift. If someone attacked a fellow tribesman in a dream, then he had to apologize and make a gift to the victim in order to earn forgiveness.
The dream world of the Senua was more educational than real life. If a child said that he met a tiger in a dream and ran away, he was forced to see the predator the next night, fight with him and kill him. The old men explained to the child how to achieve this. If a child failed to defeat a tiger in a dream, he was condemned by the entire tribe.
"Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge" - a book-legend! With her, Werber's ascent to the heights of world fame began! Every second Frenchman read it!
Now in Russian!
[Foreword]
To bring together everything that was known in his time - such was the ambitious goal of Professor Edmond Wells. Mixing science and the humanities, quantum physics and cooking recipes, this strange lone scientist has collected amazing, little-known information throughout his life. One property unites all the passages presented in this book: they are suggestive, as he said, "make the neurons sparkle."
Edmond Wells did not put any rules, dogmas, all kinds of "what they will say" into anything. “It is important for me not to shake the truth,” he argued, “but to open new horizons.”
And he added: "The question is sometimes more interesting than the answer."
He told those who wanted to listen that much of today's "official" scientific evidence would be overturned by tomorrow's discoveries, and so he called his book "The Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge."
Professor Edmond Wells, according to the testimonies of those who knew him, was a very witty man and attached great importance to paradoxes. But the most amazing paradox was, of course, himself, a man who, as we now know... never existed!
The modern captain Nemo, vulnerable and unsociable, led the reader from science to philosophy in all the novels of Bernard Berber.
Everything is in one (Abraham).
Everything is love (Jesus Christ).
Everything is sex (Sigmund Freud).
Everything is economics (Karl Marx).
Everything is relative (Albert Einstein).
[You]
Turning this page, you notice that you are touching a point on the paper with your index finger. This causes a slight heating of this very point. Minor, but completely real. In the world of infinitesimals, heating causes the electron to move out of its atom and collide with another particle.
But this particle is actually “relatively” huge. And the impact of the electron becomes a real shock for her. Until that moment, it had been inert, empty, and cold. Because of your "jump" from page to page, she has a crisis. With your gesture, you provoked changes whose consequences you will never even know.
An explosion in the world of infinitesimal quantities.
Fragments of matter flying in different directions.
Released energy.
Perhaps microworlds were born, perhaps people live in them, and they will discover metallurgy, a method of steaming food and interplanetary travel. And they will even be smarter than us. They would never have happened if you had not picked up this book and if your finger had not produced heat in this particular section of the page.
At the same time, our Universe itself is undoubtedly in the corner of a page of a giant book, in the sole of a shoe or in the foam of a beer mug of some civilization of giants. Our generation will never know among what infinitesimal and what infinitely large quantities we are. But what we do know is that a long time ago our Universe, at least the particle that makes up our Universe, was empty, cold, black and immobile. And then someone (or something) caused the crisis. They turned the page, stepped on a pebble, blew the foam off a mug of beer. Some impact has been made. In our case, as you know, it was the Big Bang.
Just imagine an endless silent space, suddenly awakened by a titanic flash. Why did they turn the page somewhere at the top? Why blew the foam off the beer?
Precisely in order for everything to evolve up to this very second in which you, a certain reader, are reading a certain book where you are now.
And maybe every time you turn the page of this book, somewhere in the world of infinitesimals, a new universe emerges.
Think of your infinite power.
[Parkinson's Law]
Parkinson's Law (which has nothing to do with the disease of the same name) states that the larger a business gets, the more often it hires incapable and well-paid employees. Why? Simply because the people already working on it want to avoid competition. The best way to avoid facing a dangerous adversary is to hire incompetent workers. The best way to lull in them the desire to take the initiative is to overpay. Thus the leading castes secure unshakable confidence in their position. According to the same law, on the contrary, everyone who is full of ideas, original solutions or a desire to improve the work of the enterprise is systematically fired. Thus, the paradox of modernity lies in the fact that the larger the enterprise, the longer it has been operating on the market, the more energetically it discards dynamic low-paid personnel, replacing them with inert personnel - with exorbitantly high salaries. And all this for the peace of mind of the company's team.
[Charade Victor Hugo]
The first is a talker. (French for "bavard".)
The second is a bird. (French for "oiseau".)
Third - in a cafe. (French for "au cafe".)
All together - dessert.
Think a little without reading the answer. But for the impatient...
The first is bavard, that is, a talker. (Sounds like "bavar".)
The second is oiseau, that is, a bird. (Sounds like "wazo".)
The third is au cafe, that is, "in a cafe." (Sounds like "cafe".)
Answer: bavard-oiseau-au cafe. Bavaroise au cafe. (A play of consonances: the first expression means "talkative bird in a cafe", the second - "coffee jelly", both expressions are perceived the same by ear.)
Bernard Werber
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge
Let's not forget that intelligence tests are designed to prove that those who have an intelligence ... the same as those of the test takers are intelligent.
[Foreword]
To bring together everything that was known in his time - such was the ambitious goal of Professor Edmond Wells. Mixing science and the humanities, quantum physics and cooking recipes, this strange lone scientist has collected amazing, little-known information throughout his life. One property unites all the passages presented in this book: they are suggestive, as he said, "make the neurons sparkle."
Edmond Wells did not put any rules, dogmas, all kinds of "what they will say" into anything. “It is important for me not to shake the truth,” he argued, “but to open new horizons.” And he added: "The question is sometimes more interesting than the answer."
He told those who wanted to listen that much of today's "official" scientific data would be overturned by tomorrow's discoveries, and so he called his book "The Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge."
Professor Edmond Wells, according to the testimonies of those who knew him, was a very witty man and attached great importance to paradoxes. But the most amazing paradox was, of course, himself, a man who, as we now know... never existed!
Modern Captain Nemo, vulnerable and unsociable, led the reader from science to philosophy in all the novels of Bernard Berber.
Everything is in one (Abraham).
Everything is love (Jesus Christ).
Everything is sex (Sigmund Freud).
Everything is economics (Karl Marx).
Everything is relative (Albert Einstein).
Turning this page, you notice that you are touching a point on the paper with your index finger. This causes a slight heating of this very point. Minor, but completely real. In the world of infinitesimals, heating causes the electron to move out of its atom and collide with another particle.
But this particle is actually “relatively” huge. And the impact of the electron becomes a real shock for her. Until that moment, it had been inert, empty, and cold. Because of your "jump" from page to page, she has a crisis. With your gesture, you provoked changes whose consequences you will never even know.
An explosion in the world of infinitesimal quantities.
Fragments of matter flying in different directions.
Released energy.
Perhaps microworlds were born, perhaps people live in them, and they will discover metallurgy, a method of steaming food and interplanetary travel. And they will even be smarter than us. They would never have happened if you had not taken this book in your hands, and if your finger had not produced heat in this particular section of the page.
At the same time, our Universe itself is undoubtedly in the corner of a page of a giant book, in the sole of a shoe or in the foam of a beer mug of some civilization of giants. Our generation will never know among what infinitesimal and what infinitely large quantities we are. But we know that a long time ago our Universe, in any case, the particle that makes up our Universe, was empty, cold, black and motionless. And then someone (or something) caused the crisis. They turned the page, stepped on a pebble, blew the foam off a mug of beer. Some impact has been made. In our case, as you know, it was the Big Bang.
Just imagine an endless silent space, suddenly awakened by a titanic flash. Why did they turn the page somewhere at the top? Why blew the foam off the beer?
Precisely in order for everything to evolve up to this very second in which you, a certain reader, are reading a certain book where you are now.
And maybe every time you turn the page of this book, somewhere in the world of infinitesimals, a new universe emerges.
Think of your infinite power.
[Parkinson's Law]
Parkinson's Law (which has nothing to do with the disease of the same name) states that the larger a business gets, the more often it hires incapable and well-paid employees. Why? Simply because the people already working on it want to avoid competition. The best way to avoid facing a dangerous adversary is to hire incompetent workers. The best way to lull in them the desire to take the initiative is to overpay. Thus the leading castes secure unshakable confidence in their position. According to the same law, on the contrary, everyone who is full of ideas, original solutions or a desire to improve the work of the enterprise is systematically fired. Thus, the paradox of modernity lies in the fact that the larger the enterprise, the longer it has been operating on the market, the more vigorously it discards dynamic low-paid personnel, replacing them with inert personnel with exorbitantly high salaries. And all this for the peace of mind of the company's team.
[Charade Victor Hugo]
The first is a chatterer. (French for "bavard".)
The second is a bird. (French for "oiseau".)
Third - in a cafe. (French for "au cafe".)
All together - dessert.
Think a little without reading the answer. But for the impatient...
The first is bavard, that is, a talker. (Sounds like "bavar".)
The second is oiseau, that is, a bird. (Sounds like "wazo".)
The third is au cafe, that is, "in a cafe." (Sounds like "cafe".)
Answer: bavard-oiseau-au cafe. Bavaroise au cafe. (A play of consonances: the first expression means "talkative bird in a cafe", the second - "coffee jelly", both expressions are perceived the same by ear.)
See how simple it is.
[Dream People]
In the seventies, two American ethnologists discovered in the wilds of the forests of Malaysia a primitive Senua tribe, whose whole life was subordinated to dreams. The tribe was called so - "the people of dreams."
Every morning at breakfast around the fire, everyone talked only about what they had seen in a dream at night. If one of the senua committed an injustice towards someone in a dream, he had to give the victim a gift. If someone attacked a fellow tribesman in a dream, then he had to apologize and make a gift to the victim in order to earn forgiveness.
The dream world of the Senua was more educational than real life. If a child said that he met a tiger in a dream and ran away, he was forced to see the predator the next night, fight with him and kill him. The old men explained to the child how to achieve this. If a child failed to defeat a tiger in a dream, he was condemned by the entire tribe.
According to the Senua system of concepts, if you see sexual intercourse in a dream, you must definitely reach orgasm, and then real world thank your partner with a gift. If you have a nightmare, you need to defeat the enemies, and then demand a gift from them in order to turn them into your friends. The most desirable subject for sleep was flight. The whole tribe congratulated the one who flew in a dream. The first flight in a child's dream was like the first communion. The child was overwhelmed with gifts, and then explained how in a dream to fly to distant lands and bring outlandish gifts from there.
Senua conquered Western ethnologists. The tribe did not know violence and mental illness. It was a society without stress and wars. Senua worked just enough to provide the minimum necessary for survival. The Senua disappeared when the forests they lived in began to be cut down. But we can still try to use their knowledge. In the morning, you should write down a dream seen at night, give it a name and indicate the date. Then tell the dream to loved ones, for example, at breakfast. Then it is necessary to move on, applying the basic rules of the science of dreams. Before falling asleep, you need to determine the theme of the dream, decide what you will do: move mountains, change the color of the sky, travel to distant lands, see outlandish animals.
In a dream, we are omnipotent. The first test of mastering the science of dreams is flight - stretch out your arms, glide, fall in a corkscrew, gain altitude.
The science of dreams must be learned gradually. "Flight" watches give you confidence and imagination. It takes five weeks for children to learn how to manage their dreams. Adults sometimes take many months.
[Score and Tale]
The words account (compte) and fairy tale (conte) sound the same in French. This coincidence, by the way, exists in almost all languages. In English, count "to count", say "to recount". In German, count "zahlen", say "erzahlen". In Hebrew, say "le saper", count "il saper". In Chinese, count "shu", say "shu". Numbers and letters have been united since ancient times, when language was still babbling.
[Mayan Horoscope]
V South America Among the Maya Indians, astrology was an official and obligatory science. For each, a special prophetic calendar was compiled, in which the whole future life of a person was described: when he starts working, when he gets married, when misfortune happens to him, when he dies. These prophecies were sung over the cradle of an infant. The child memorized them and began to hum himself, reminding himself at what stage of life he is now.
Current page: 1 (total book has 27 pages) [available reading excerpt: 7 pages]
Bernard Werber
The New Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge
1. Between us
Meanwhile
What I think
What do I want to say
What I think what I'm saying
What am I saying
What do you want to hear
What do you think you hear
What do you hear
What do you want to understand
What do you think you understand
What do you understand
There are ten to one chances that communication difficulties will arise.
But let's try anyway...
2. Uncertainty
Most people are afraid of the unknown. Once this unknown, however hostile, is identified, he is relieved. Ignorance makes the imagination work. Then each one manifests his inner demon, his “worst personal”. Thinking that he is facing darkness, a person meets the phantasmagoric monsters of his own subconscious. However, it is precisely at the moment when a person is faced with something new and unknown that his consciousness works most efficiently. He is attentive. He is alert. With all his senses, he tries to understand the unknown in order to get rid of fear. He discovers in himself talents that he did not suspect. The unknown excites and attracts. A person is afraid of it and at the same time expects that his brain will be able to find the right solutions and adapt to it. Until a thing is named, it is a challenge to humanity.
3. Chocolate Cake Recipe
For 6 people: 250 g dark chocolate, 120 g butter, 75 g sugar, 6 eggs, 6 tablespoons flour, 3 tablespoons water.
Training: 15 minutes. Cooking: 25 minutes.
Pour water into a saucepan and melt the chocolate in it over very low heat to make a soft paste. Add butter and sugar, then flour, whisking continuously until the mixture is smooth. Continuing to stir, add the yolks one at a time.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff and carefully fold into the chocolate mixture. Pour the resulting mass into a pre-greased mold. butter. Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes at 200°C (thermostat 7).
The art is to make the top hard, and inside the mass remains soft. To do this, you need to monitor the cake and after it has been in the oven for 20 minutes, take it out from time to time. The cake is ready when it is no longer liquid inside and the knife with which you pierce the top crust comes out only lightly smeared with chocolate.
Serve warm.
4. Superluminal Man
Among the most avant-garde theories about the phenomenon of consciousness, the one proposed by Régis Duteuil, professor of physics at the Faculty of Medicine of Poitiers, stands out in particular. The basic thesis developed by this researcher is based on the work of Feinberg. According to them, there are three worlds, determined by the speed of movement of their constituent elements.
The first is the "sub-light world" in which we live, the world of matter, subject to the laws of classical Newtonian physics and the laws of gravity. This world consists of bradyons, that is, particles whose speed is less than the speed of light.
The second world is "light". This world consists of particles moving at a speed close to light, luxons, obeying Einstein's laws of relativity.
Finally, there is a "superluminal" space-time. This world consists of particles whose speed exceeds the speed of light. They are called tachyons.
According to Regis Duteuy, these three worlds correspond to the three levels of human consciousness. The level of feelings that comprehends matter; the level of local consciousness, which is a thought of light, that is, that which moves at the speed of light; and the level of superconsciousness, thought moving faster than light. Dutey believes that superconsciousness can be achieved through sleep, meditation, and certain drugs. But he also speaks of a broader concept: Knowledge. Thanks to a genuine knowledge of the laws of the universe, our consciousness would accelerate and reach the world of tachyons.
Dutey believes that "for a being living in a superluminal universe, all the events of his life would occur simultaneously." Thus, the concepts of past, present and future are mixed and disappear. Joining the conclusions of David Bohm, Dutay believes that after death our "superluminal" consciousness reaches another, higher energy level: the time-space of tachyons. At the end of his life, Regis Dutay, with the help of his daughter Bridget, developed an even more daring theory, according to which not only the past, present and future are brought together here and now, but all our lives, previous and future, flow simultaneously with our current life in the superluminal dimension.
5. Murphy's laws
In 1949, American engineer Captain Edward A. Murphy was commissioned by the US Air Force to work on the MX 981 project. He had to study what a pilot experiences during an accident. For the experiment, it was necessary to place sixteen sensors on the pilot's body. This was entrusted to a technician who knew that each sensor can be installed in two positions: correct and incorrect. The technician installed all the sensors incorrectly. Then Murphy said the phrase If anything can go wrong it will(“If something can fail, it won’t work”). This pessimistic law, which is also called "the law of meanness" or "the law of the sandwich" (because the sandwich always falls butter side down), became so popular that other "Murphy's laws" began to appear, based on the same principle and similar to sayings. Here are some of them:
"If everything is going well, you must have missed something."
"Every solution brings new problems."
"Everything that goes up eventually comes down."
"The next line always moves faster."
"Really interesting men and women are already taken apart, and if not, then there is a hidden reason.
"If it's too good to be true, then it probably is."
“A woman is attracted to a man for precisely those qualities that in a few years she will not be able to endure.”
“Theory is when nothing works, but you know why. Practice is when nothing works, and you don't know why. When theory is backed up by practice, nothing works, and no one knows why.”
6. Three insults
Humanity has been dealt three insults.
The first is when Nicolaus Copernicus proved that the Earth is not the center of the universe.
The second is when Charles Darwin came to the conclusion that man descended from a monkey, and therefore, also an animal.
Third, when Sigmund Freud explained that the basis of most of our political demarches or artistic manifestations is sexuality.
7. Magicians
In an Egyptian papyrus from 2700 B.C. e. The performance of a magician is mentioned for the first time. His name was Meidum, and he belonged to the court of Pharaoh Cheops. He struck the imagination of the audience by cutting off the duck's head, and then returning it to its place, and the living bird calmly left. Complicating his trick, Meidum once cut off the head of a bull and also then revived it.
In the same era, Egyptian priests were engaged in sacred magic - using mechanical devices, they created the illusion that the doors of the temple open by themselves.
During Antiquity, magicians used balls, dice, coins and cups with might and main. The first arcanum of the Tarot is "Jester", a wandering magician who performs at the fair.
The New Testament tells of Simon Magus (magician or conjurer), who was greatly appreciated by Emperor Nero. Saint Peter measured his strength with him. The defeated Simon decided to show the last miracle: to jump from the Capitoline temple and fly into the sky. To prove the superiority of their faith over magic, the apostles prayed to make him fall. Subsequently, the apostle Peter began to call false faith "Simonism."
In the Middle Ages, the first card tricks appeared, and later tricks based on sleight of hand. Magicians were often suspected of witchcraft and burned at the stake.
The difference between witchcraft and magic was finally established only in 1584, when the English magician Reginald Scott published a book revealing the secrets of his skill in order for King James I of Scotland to stop the execution of magicians.
At the same time in France, magic began to be called "entertaining physics", conjurers - "physicists" and began to arrange public performance using curtains, screens and various hidden mechanisms.
Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, a hereditary watchmaker, became the forerunner of modern illusionists, staging Fantastic Evenings performances. For his tricks, he used complex mechanisms and automata created by him. The French government even sent him to Africa to demonstrate to the Algerian rebels that he could perform miracles no worse than their sorcerers.
A few years later, Horace Goldin came up with the trick of "cutting a woman in half." The American illusionist Houdini, nicknamed the “king of escapes” for his ability to get out of any trap, traveled the whole world with his ideas.
8. Symbolism of numbers
The symbolism of numbers tells (or calculates) the history of the development of consciousness. Any novel, any drama can be included in the drawing, which is always before our eyes, although we do not take the trouble to peer into it.
To decipher it, you need to know that horizontal lines mean affection, curved lines mean love, and the intersection of lines (cross) symbolizes a choice or test.
Thus, this is what happens.
1 - mineral. Vertical bar. There are no horizontal lines expressing attachment to anything. No curved lines means no love. The stone is not connected with anything and loves nothing. There are no intersecting lines in the unit, it does not imply tests. We are at the very beginning of the development of matter. The unit is an inert matter.
2 - plant. Life begins. The horizontal line at the bottom means the connection of the plant with the earth. The roots hold it in place, it cannot move. The curved line at the top means the love that the plant has for the sky, the sun, the light. The plant is tied to the earth and loves the sky.
3 - animal. Two curved lines. The animal loves heaven and earth, but is not attached to them. Three is two mouths, one kisses, the other bites. The animal is emotion in its purest form. It lives torn between fear and desire. No attachments.
4 is a person. Line crossing. The crossroads between the three-animal and the next stage, the five.
5 - a conscious person. The opposite of two. The upper line means that the person is attached to the sky, the lower curve indicates that the person loves the earth. This is the sage. He rose above his animal nature. He distances himself from circumstances and is free from instincts and emotions. He conquered fear and desire. He loves his planet. He also loves those who inhabit it, but tries to stay away from them.
6 - angel. An enlightened soul, freed from the need to be reborn in a bodily shell. A soul that has fallen out of the cycle of rebirth. Now it is a pure spirit that does not feel pain, does not have primitive needs. This is the curve of love that spirals up from the very heart to the sky, descends to earth to help people, and rises again to reach the highest level.
7 - God. Or at least a god-disciple. The angel, rising up, reaches a new step. Like "5", he has a trait that binds him to the sky. But it is not a bend that goes down, but a straight line. "7" influences the lower world. "7" is also a cross, like an inverted "4". This is a challenge. Crossroads. To be successful, "7" must continue on its way.
9. Encyclopedists
To compile a compilation of all the knowledge of the era is a challenge that many scientists have accepted over the centuries.
The first extensive encyclopedic works date back to the 3rd century BC. BC e. Wealthy Chinese merchant Lu Buwei, who became prime minister during the centralized Qin Empire, summoned 3,000 educated people so that they write down everything they know.
Then he set up a thick stack of sheets of paper they had written at the entrance to the capital's market and placed a thousand gold coins on top. Nearby, he posted an announcement saying that anyone who could add anything to the knowledge collected there would receive the money.
In the West, Isidore of Seville began in 621 to compile the first modern encyclopedia called Etymologies, which collected the knowledge of the Romans, Greeks and Jews of his time.
In 1153, "Secretum Secretorum" appears - "The Secret of Secrets" by Johann Hispalensis. This work is written in the form of a letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great during the Persian campaign. Advice in the field of politics and morality side by side in this book with the rules of hygiene and medicine, knowledge in the field of alchemy and astrology, observations of plants and minerals. Translated into all European languages, The Secret of Secrets enjoyed great success until the Renaissance.
In 1245, the initiative was taken up by Albert the Great, who taught at the University of Paris, the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. He compiled an encyclopedia, which included information about plants and animals, philosophy and theology.
The rebel and merry fellow Francois Rabelais in his works written since 1532 pays a lot of attention to medicine, history and philosophy.
He dreams of an education that would stimulate the thirst for knowledge, and the process of transferring information would take place in a joyful atmosphere.
The Italians Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci and the Englishman Francis Bacon also wrote their own encyclopedias.
In 1746, the publisher André François Le Breton received a royal license for twenty years, giving the right to publish the Encyclopedia, or explanatory dictionary sciences, arts and crafts. He entrusted its editing to Denis Diderot and d'Alembert. Together with the greatest scientists and thinkers of that time, among whom were Voltaire, Montesquieu and Jean Jacques Rousseau, they gave a description of all the knowledge and technologies of their time.
At the same time, in China, under the leadership of Chen Meng Li, the “Highest approved complete collection of books, maps, drawings and drawings from antiquity to our time” was compiled, on which more than 2000 scientists and 200 scribes worked. This encyclopedia of 800,000 pages was printed in sixty-five copies. But the emperor died, and the eldest son, who fought for power, expelled Chen Men Li.
10. What if we are alone in the universe?
One day a strange thought came to my mind: “What if we are alone in the Universe?” Even complete skeptics in their hearts hope that aliens exist and if we fail, then perhaps other intelligent beings living somewhere very far away will be more lucky. And that gives us hope... But what if we're alone? All alone? What if in the infinite space there is no longer anything alive and endowed with intelligence? If all the planets are similar to those we see in solar system, - too cold or too hot, consisting of gaseous magma or stones? What if earthly experience is a unique chain of accidents and coincidences, and this experience has not been repeated anywhere else? What if this is the one and only miracle?
This means that if we fail the exam, if we destroy our planet (and since recently we can do this with nuclear weapons, environmental pollution, etc.), there will be nothing left. After us maybe game over, and you won't start a new game. Maybe we are the last chance. Then our failure will be monstrous. The thought that there are no aliens is much more unsettling than the fact that they are ... It makes my head spin. What a responsibility lies with us! Apparently, this is the most ancient and most terrible message: “Perhaps we are alone in the Universe, and if we fail, there will be nothing anywhere else.”
11. Blue color
For a long time, the blue color was underestimated. The ancient Greeks did not consider it a color at all and recognized only white, black, yellow and red. In addition, fabric dyers and artists simply did not know how to dye the canvas blue.
In ancient Egypt, blue was considered a color afterlife. The Egyptians mined this color from copper. V Ancient Rome blue was the color of the barbarians, perhaps because the Germans painted their faces blue-gray to look like ghosts. In Latin or Greek, the word "blue" has a rather vague meaning, often combined with gray or green. The very word blue, meaning in French "blue", comes from the Germanic blau. The Romans considered women with blue eyes to be vulgar, and men to be rude and stupid.
Blue is rarely mentioned in the Bible—much less often than gem sapphire.
Blue was despised in the West until the Middle Ages. Red, on the contrary, symbolized wealth, and the more intense it was, the better. The clothes of the clergy - cardinals and popes - became red. In the XIII century. everything changed: artists finally learned how to get blue paint from lapis lazuli, cobalt and indigo. Blue became the color of the Mother of God. She is depicted wearing blue clothes because she lives in heaven or because blue was considered the forerunner of black, the color of mourning.
The skies used to be black or white, but now they are blue. The formerly green sea in the engravings also turned blue.
Blue comes into fashion, becomes the color of the aristocracy. Dyers immediately begin to invent new shades of it.
Woad dye, a plant used to make blue dye, began to be grown in Tuscany, Picardy and around Toulouse. Entire provinces began to prosper through the production of blue dye.
Woad merchants financed the construction of Amiens Cathedral, while the Strasbourg merchants of madder, a plant from which red dye is extracted, were still struggling to raise funds for the construction of their cathedral. It is interesting that on the stained-glass windows of the Alsatian churches the devil was depicted in blue. A war of cultures began between the "blue" and "red" provinces.
During the era of Protestant reforms, Calvin proclaimed that some colors are "honest" - black, brown, white, blue, and others "wicked" - red, orange, yellow.
In 1720, a Berlin pharmacist invented "Prussian blue", which made it possible to diversify shades of blue. With the development of navigation in Europe from the Antilles and from Central America, they began to import indigo, a much stronger dye than all known until then.
Politics has not been left out either. In France, blue became the color of the rebellious republicans who opposed the white monarchists and the black Catholic parties.
Later, the Blue Republicans opposed the Red Socialists and Communists.
In 1850, the garment that gave blue its last laurels was created: jeans, invented in San Francisco by tailor Levi Strauss.
Today in France, most consider blue to be their favorite color. Only one European country prefers red - in Spain.
The food industry is the only area where blue is not popular. Yoghurts in blue jars sell worse than white or red ones. And it seems that there is not a single blue product that we would eat.
12. Four levels of love
Educational psychology distinguishes four levels of love.
First level:"I need Love".
This is the children's level. A baby needs affection, kisses, an older child needs gifts. He asks those around him, “Do you love me?” and demands proof of love. At the first level, we ask this question to others, then to one person - the one whose opinion is most important to us.
Second level:"I can love."
This is the adult level. There is a discovery of one's ability to have feelings for another person, which means to pour out one's love outside, and especially on one's chosen one. This feeling is much more intoxicating than knowing that someone loves you. The more you love, the more clearly you understand what power this feeling gives you. The need to love becomes necessary, like a drug.
Third level:"I love myself".
By extending his love to others, a person learns that he can love himself.
The advantage of this stage over the previous two is that you are not dependent on others. You don't need anyone to receive love or to give it. Therefore, there is no longer any risk of being disappointed or betrayed by a loving or beloved being. Love can be measured strictly according to one's own needs, without resorting to someone else's help.
Fourth level:"Love for the whole world."
This is boundless love. After a person learns to receive and give love and love himself, he begins to spread love around him in all directions. And get it the same way.
Depending on personal preferences, people can give love different names: Life, Nature, Earth, Universe, Ki, God, etc.
We are talking about a concept that, when you comprehend it, expands the horizons of our consciousness.
Bernard Werber
Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge
The encyclopedia of relative and absolute knowledge is a legendary book!
Werber's ascent to the heights of world fame began with her!
Every second Frenchman read it!
Now in Russian!
Let's not forget that intelligence tests are designed to prove that those who have an intelligence ... the same as those of the test takers are intelligent.
[Foreword]
To bring together everything that was known in his time - such was the ambitious goal of Professor Edmond Wells. Mixing science and the humanities, quantum physics and cooking recipes, this strange lone scientist has collected amazing, little-known information throughout his life. One property unites all the passages presented in this book: they are suggestive, as he said, "make the neurons sparkle."
Edmond Wells did not put any rules, dogmas, all kinds of "what they will say" into anything. “It is important for me not to shake the truth,” he argued, “but to open new horizons.” And he added: "The question is sometimes more interesting than the answer."
He told those who wanted to listen that much of today's "official" scientific data would be overturned by tomorrow's discoveries, and so he called his book "The Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge."
Professor Edmond Wells, according to the testimonies of those who knew him, was a very witty man and attached great importance to paradoxes. But the most amazing paradox was, of course, himself, a man who, as we now know... never existed!
Modern Captain Nemo, vulnerable and unsociable, led the reader from science to philosophy in all the novels of Bernard Berber.
Everything is in one (Abraham).
Everything is love (Jesus Christ).
Everything is sex (Sigmund Freud).
Everything is economics (Karl Marx).
Everything is relative (Albert Einstein).
So what is next?
Turning this page, you notice that you are touching a point on the paper with your index finger. This causes a slight heating of this very point. Minor, but completely real. In the world of infinitesimals, heating causes the electron to move out of its atom and collide with another particle.
But this particle is actually “relatively” huge. And the impact of the electron becomes a real shock for her. Until that moment, it had been inert, empty, and cold. Because of your "jump" from page to page, she has a crisis. With your gesture, you provoked changes whose consequences you will never even know.
An explosion in the world of infinitesimal quantities.
Fragments of matter flying in different directions.
Released energy.
Perhaps microworlds were born, perhaps people live in them, and they will discover metallurgy, a method of steaming food and interplanetary travel. And they will even be smarter than us. They would never have happened if you had not taken this book in your hands, and if your finger had not produced heat in this particular section of the page.
At the same time, our Universe itself is undoubtedly in the corner of a page of a giant book, in the sole of a shoe or in the foam of a beer mug of some civilization of giants. Our generation will never know among what infinitesimal and what infinitely large quantities we are. But we know that a long time ago our Universe, in any case, the particle that makes up our Universe, was empty, cold, black and motionless. And then someone (or something) caused the crisis. They turned the page, stepped on a pebble, blew the foam off a mug of beer. Some impact has been made. In our case, as you know, it was the Big Bang.
Just imagine an endless silent space, suddenly awakened by a titanic flash. Why did they turn the page somewhere at the top? Why blew the foam off the beer?
Precisely in order for everything to evolve up to this very second in which you, a certain reader, are reading a certain book where you are now.
And maybe every time you turn the page of this book, somewhere in the world of infinitesimals, a new universe emerges.
Think of your infinite power.
[Parkinson's Law]
Parkinson's Law (which has nothing to do with the disease of the same name) states that the larger a business gets, the more often it hires incapable and well-paid employees. Why? Simply because the people already working on it want to avoid competition. The best way to avoid facing a dangerous adversary is to hire incompetent workers. The best way to lull in them the desire to take the initiative is to overpay. Thus the leading castes secure unshakable confidence in their position. According to the same law, on the contrary, everyone who is full of ideas, original solutions or a desire to improve the work of the enterprise is systematically fired. Thus, the paradox of modernity lies in the fact that the larger the enterprise, the longer it has been operating on the market, the more vigorously it discards dynamic low-paid personnel, replacing them with inert personnel with exorbitantly high salaries. And all this for the peace of mind of the company's team.
[Charade Victor Hugo]
The first is a chatterer. (French for bavard.) The second is a bird. (French for "oiseau".) The third is in a cafe. (French for "au cafe".) All together - dessert.
Think a little without reading the answer. But for the impatient...
The first is bavard, that is, a talker. (Sounds like "bavar".)
The second is oiseau, that is, a bird. (Sounds like "wazo".) The third is au cafe, that is, "in a cafe." (Sounds like "cafe".)
Answer: bavard-oiseau-au cafe. Bavaroise au cafe. (A play of consonances: the first expression means "talkative bird in a cafe", the second - "coffee jelly", both expressions are perceived the same by ear.)
See how simple it is.
[Dream People]
In the seventies, two American ethnologists discovered in the wilds of the forests of Malaysia a primitive Senua tribe, whose whole life was subordinated to dreams. The tribe was called so - "the people of dreams."
Every morning at breakfast around the fire, everyone talked only about what they had seen in a dream at night. If one of the senua committed an injustice towards someone in a dream, he had to give the victim a gift. If someone attacked a fellow tribesman in a dream, then he had to apologize and make a gift to the victim in order to earn forgiveness.
The dream world of the Senua was more educational than real life. If a child said that he met a tiger in a dream and ran away, he was forced to see the predator the next night, fight with him and kill him. The old men explained to the child how to achieve this. If a child failed to defeat a tiger in a dream, he was condemned by the entire tribe.
According to the Senua system of concepts, if you see sexual intercourse in a dream, you must definitely reach orgasm, and then in the real world thank your partner with a gift. If you have a nightmare, you need to defeat the enemies, and then demand a gift from them in order to turn them into your friends. The most desirable subject for sleep was flight. The whole tribe congratulated the one who flew in a dream. The first flight in a child's dream was like the first communion. The child was overwhelmed with gifts, and then explained how in a dream to fly to distant lands and bring outlandish gifts from there.
Senua conquered Western ethnologists. The tribe did not know violence and mental illness. It was a society without stress and wars. Senua worked just enough to provide the minimum necessary for survival. The Senua disappeared when the forests they lived in began to be cut down. But we can still try to use their knowledge. In the morning, you should write down a dream seen at night, give it a name and indicate the date. Then tell the dream to loved ones, for example, at breakfast. Then it is necessary to move on, applying the basic rules of the science of dreams. Before falling asleep, you need to determine the theme of the dream, decide what you will do: move mountains, change the color of the sky, travel to distant lands, see outlandish animals.
In a dream, we are omnipotent. The first test of mastering the science of dreams is flight - stretch out your arms, glide, fall in a corkscrew, gain altitude.
The science of dreams must be learned gradually. "Flight" watches give you confidence and imagination. It takes five weeks for children to learn how to manage their dreams. Adults sometimes take many months.
[Score and Tale]
The words account (compte) and fairy tale (conte) sound the same in French. This coincidence, by the way, exists in almost all languages. In English, count "to count", say "to recount". In German, count "zahlen", say "erzahlen". In Hebrew, say "le saper", count "il saper". In Chinese, count "shu", say "shu". Numbers and letters have been united since ancient times, when language was still babbling.
[Mayan Horoscope]
In South America, among the Maya Indians, astrology was an official and compulsory science. For each, a special prophetic calendar was compiled, in which the whole future life of a person was described: when he starts working, when he gets married, when misfortune happens to him, when he dies. These prophecies were sung over the cradle of an infant. The child memorized them and began to hum himself, reminding himself at what stage of life he is now.
This system worked well, as Mayan astrologers tried to make their predictions match. If a young man had a meeting with a girl in his horoscope song on a certain day, it happened, because the girl also had this meeting marked in her horoscope. The same thing happened in the business sphere: if someone in his horoscope of such and such a date bought a house, the seller in his song had to sell the house on that very day. If a fight was to take place at a certain time, its participants were notified in advance about this.
Everything went like clockwork, the system supported itself. Wars have been declared and described. The winners were known, astrologers specified how many wounded and killed would remain on the battlefield. If the number of corpses did not reach the prediction, prisoners were sacrificed.
How did these musical horoscopes make life easier! Nothing depended on the will of chance. Nobody was afraid of tomorrow. Astrologers have illuminated every human life from beginning to end. Everyone knew where fate was leading him and even where it was leading others. The apotheosis of Mayan art was the prediction ... of the end of the world. It was supposed to take place in the 10th century according to the chronology, which will be called Christian. Mayan astrologers even named the exact hour. Not wanting to witness the catastrophe, the men set fire to the city the day before, killed all their loved ones and then committed suicide. The few survivors fled the blazing cities and became lost in the plains.
Meanwhile, the Maya civilization was not at all the creation of primitive and naive people. The Maya knew zero, the wheel (although they did not understand the full benefits of this discovery), they built roads, their calendar with thirteen months was more accurate than ours.
The Spaniards, having arrived in the Yucatan in the 16th century, could not even get pleasure from destroying the famous Mayan civilization, since it destroyed itself long before their arrival.
However, even today there are still Indians who claim to be distant descendants of the Maya. They are called "lacandons". And the strange thing is, the children of the Lacandons sing ancient songs recounting events human life. But no one understands the exact meaning of the words.
[Paul Kamerer]
Writer Arthur Koestler decided one day to write a work on scientific fraud. He questioned the researchers, and they assured the writer that the most shameless of scientific deceptions was that committed by Dr. Paul Kamerer.
Kamerer was an Austrian biologist who made his major discoveries between 1922 and 1929. An excellent speaker, charming and fanatically dedicated to his work, the scientist argued that “any living creature is able to adapt to changes in environment and pass on acquired properties to offspring. This theory directly contradicted Darwin's. In order to prove the validity of his conclusions, Dr. Kamerer set up a very spectacular experiment.
He took the eggs of the mountain toad, which breeds on land, and placed it in the water. The cubs that hatched from this caviar adapted to the new conditions and acquired features characteristic of lake toads. They developed black copulatory bumps on their thumbs, allowing male aquatic toads to attach themselves to the female's slippery skin for copulation in the water. Adaptation to the aquatic environment was passed on to offspring who were born already with a dark-colored bump on the thumb. Thus, it was proved that living beings can change their genetic program to adapt to the aquatic environment.
Kamerer proved the soundness of his theory with some success all over the world. One day, scientists and university representatives expressed a desire to "objectively" study his experiment. A lot of people gathered in the amphitheater, among which there were many journalists. Dr. Kamerer hoped this time to prove to everyone that he was not a charlatan.
On the eve of the experiment, a fire broke out in the laboratory, and all the toads, with the exception of one, died. Therefore, Kamerer was forced to present to the public a single surviving toad with a dark bump. Scientists examined the amphibian under a magnifying glass and burst out laughing. It was clearly seen that the black spot on the bump of the toad's thumb was made artificially by injecting Chinese ink under the skin. The scam has been exposed. Hall laughed.
In one minute, Kamerer lost both trust and hope that his work would be recognized. He left the audience to a general hoot.
Rejected by everyone, he became an outcast in the world of science. The Darwinists have won.
In desperation, he took refuge in the forest and put a bullet in his mouth, leaving a brief suicide letter, in which he once again confirmed the authenticity of his research and announced "the desire to die among nature, and not among people." Suicide completed his discredit. Meanwhile, Arthur Koestler, in search of materials for the book "Embrace of the Toad", met with the former assistant of Camerer. And he confessed to the writer that he was the culprit of the disaster. Instigated by a group of Darwinian scientists, the assistant set fire to the laboratory and replaced the last mutant toad with another, ordinary one, which was injected with Chinese ink into the thumb.
