"The Ikhwan al-Safa' or Brethren of Purity were a highly secretive group of tenth-century Shi'ite thinkers, their identities remaining unclear even today. Renowned for creating the legendary Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', an encyclopedia of philosophical…
"One of the delights of life is the discovery and rediscovery of patterns of order and beauty in nature--designs revealed by slicing through a head of cabbage or an orange, the forms of shells and butterfly wings. These images are awesome not just…
"A book on Greek tragedy may be a work of historical scholarship or of literary criticism; this book professes to be a work of criticism. Criticism is of two kinds: the critic may tell the reader what he so beautifully thinks about it all, or he may…