I really enjoyed this post. And I do understand the lure of the impossible. When I was a teenager I spent weeks trying to square the circle. But after a while I realised I couldn't do it and gave up, which is probably better than if I had spent my life on a long series of futile attempts to solve the problem. It wasn't wasted time, though, because by trying to do the impossible you get a better sense of why it is impossible. This is what, apparently, it did for Leibniz. Then again, when Caligula in Camus' eponymous play declares that he has finally understood what absolute power is for, which is that "it gives the impossible a chance to exist", his more sensible mistress Caesonia replies: "The possible deserves its chance as well."
A great read
I really enjoyed this post. And I do understand the lure of the impossible. When I was a teenager I spent weeks trying to square the circle. But after a while I realised I couldn't do it and gave up, which is probably better than if I had spent my life on a long series of futile attempts to solve the problem. It wasn't wasted time, though, because by trying to do the impossible you get a better sense of why it is impossible. This is what, apparently, it did for Leibniz. Then again, when Caligula in Camus' eponymous play declares that he has finally understood what absolute power is for, which is that "it gives the impossible a chance to exist", his more sensible mistress Caesonia replies: "The possible deserves its chance as well."