We know so much about planets and the universe and small particles and we do not know anything about the inner state of our own bodies, we do not know about this microcosm we have inside our skin.
Interpretation
The quote highlights our vast knowledge of the external universe compared to our limited understanding of our own bodies.
Olga Tokarczuk's quote emphasizes the ironic disparity between our extensive knowledge of the cosmos and our lack of understanding regarding the intricate workings of our own bodies. Despite advancements in science and technology that allow us to explore planets, stars, and subatomic particles, we often overlook the complex 'microcosm' that exists within ourselves, suggesting a call to delve deeper into self-awareness and the biological marvels that constitute our inner being.
In practice
During a health seminar, one could use this quote to illustrate the importance of understanding one's own body and health.
But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.
My books are not 'political.' I don't make political demands. They actually describe life. But when we look at human life, politics creeps in everywhere.
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
I first read Sigmund Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' as a young girl, and it helped me to understand that there are thousands of possible ways to interpret our experience, that everything has a meaning, and that interpretation is the key to reality. This was the first step to becoming a writer.
Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.
A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.
This investigation has yielded an unanticipated result that reaction of cyanic acid with ammonia gives urea, a noteworthy result in as much as it provides an example of the artificial production of an organic, indeed a so-called animal, substance from inorganic substances.
Science operates in the natural, not the supernatural. In fact, I go so far as to state that there is no such thing as the supernatural or the paranormal.
Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation.
Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.
It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket.
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