Thursday Thoughts...

Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous, no doubt, is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination.

Jorge Luis Borges

Sometimes I like a quote that says me to simply and sweetly what it is trying to say. Sometimes I like a quote that I read a few times over just to make sure that I get the intent. I read this one a few times.

Even though the physical book is an extension of the arms and hand in the making, the concept that drives the content is an extension of the mind - which is not a physical thing you can look at. You can look at a brain for sure - but it is involved in so many aspects it drives everything the eyes, the arms and so on.  The mind is more than a brain I think.

I think he is trying to get the view across in a way that each mind is also unique and therefore the knowledge, memory and imagination that is brought to bear upon a book is also incredibly unique.  If I look through a telescope and you look through a telescope, broadly speaking we may seem the same or very similar things.  Whereas if I fire up my imagination and you fire up yours, then the results would be vastly different. And books are formed by many of these independent imaginings, memories and learnings.

Lovely!

©2009 Artemis - poem by Robyn Nugent, book by Fiona Dempster