Invariants
In 1666, an apple traced its geodesic descent onto Newton’s shoulder. Three centuries on, the cup slipping from your grasp still obeys the same unyielding laws of motion.
In 1655, Louis XIV stood before the Parlement of Paris and proclaimed, “I am the state,” enshrining the age of absolute monarchy. Yet, scarcely a century later, Louis XVI would meet his fate beneath the blade of the guillotine.
Ideas are not eternal.
What once seemed like the immutable fabric of reality is destined to dissolve into the dust of history. The Greek city-states upheld slavery as a pillar of civilization; by the 19th century, abolitionist movements recharted humanity’s moral compass. Medieval scholars clung to the belief that Earth was the center of the cosmos. Today, even children know our blue planet drifts within a cosmic web stretching across 13.7 billion light-years.
The evolution of thought is like tectonic drift. Every upheaval in civilization emerges from the slow, relentless shifting of its deepest foundations.
When Galileo turned his telescope to Jupiter’s moons, when Voltaire deconstructed monarchy in his Philosophical Letters, the world witnessed not sudden ruptures but the culmination of silent centuries of intellectual momentum.
As quantum entanglement reminds us of spacetime’s nature: every speck of stardust we touch carries the faint pulse of supernovae that exploded eons ago.
Huizhou Is Not in the Sky—Walk, and You Will Arrive
“Set vast intentions, take small steps, journey far, bow deeply, persist without pause, and never rush.”
On the Second Floor of Crosland Tower
The air is calm. Sunlight spills across the room. White clouds drift past. Floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides invite the world in. The bench beneath me breathes with the day.