Faldoni, parts 2592 - 2595

 2592. You can see the hopeless muddle a person like Faldoni or myself can get into when they desire over and over again, to apply absolute measurements to things which are so variable. But I ask you in all seriousness: how is it to be avoided.

 2593. It is the same as complaining that a ruler keeps giving you dimensions in inches, or that a wheel has a tendency to roll around. It is like wondering why snow always appears to be cold, and sugar invariably tastes sweet. Things have there properties because of the nature of the mechanisms that measure them, so the machine produces exactly the observations it was constructed to find.

 2594. The idea that there must be an absolute color of green and a finite measurable specific shade of red, and also that there is an up and a down,  a hot and a cold, near and far, big and small, all of these are a product and expression of the construction of the  brain that was put into our skull, and the more we become aware of the capricious and evasive nature of reality, the more hopelessly inadequate that brain turns out to be.

 

 2595. But, as inadequate as the brain is, it is in its element when asked to simplify reality down to a pencil drawing or any kind of little painting.