Koestler on Newton

“What he achieved was rather like an explosion in reverse. When a projectile blows up, its shiny smooth symmetrical body is shattered into jagged, irregular fragments. Newton found fragments and made them fly together into a simple, seamless, compact body, so simple that it appears as self-evident, so compact that any grammar-schoolboy can handle it.”

Koestler on Descartes

“Descartes’ wide-open mind boggled in horror at the idea of ghost arms clutching through the void- as unprejudiced intelligence was bound to do, until ‘universal gravity’ or ‘electromagnetic field’ became verbal fetishes which hypnotized it into quiescence, disguising the fact that they are metaphysical concepts dressed in the mathematical language of physics”

Like Stefan Zweig, Koestler, I just discovered, committed joint suicide with his wife.