Into thin air

摘要

HUMAN BEINGS are fond of certainty. They trust their own senses to report what is true about the world, and are mildly outraged when their eyes or ears play them false. They also, often unreasonably, want things to last. Though creation is in flux all around them, from the atoms that make up everything to global weather and the stock-market, from Moon and tides to the daily flakes and spasms of bodily decay, they like to think that things will stay as they are. Stability is the comforting illusion by which people try to organise their lives.