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“... Never before has so much been known about the world, and the time has long passed – if it ever existed – when one person could collect it all in a single consciousness. Science is the paradigmatic case of the accumulation of knowledge: it has given us knowledge in the truest, most certain and genuine sense, and has been fabulously successful at it ...”

“... Until roughly the 20th century, physics was concerned with the realities of ordinary experience: light, heat and sound; motion, acceleration, falling bodies; gases, fluids, solids; electricity, magnetism and so on and so forth through the world of phenomena. Then in 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays; in 1897, J.J. Thompson discovered the electron; in 1914, Rutherford discovered the proton – and all at once a new branch of physics had come into existence: elementary particle theory, dealing with the hidden realities, the fundamental entities that underlie the observed phenomena of everyday life ...”

“... Richard Feynman was the world’s number-one physicist (after Einstein), a well-known genius, a self-described ‘curious character’ who was involved in some of the formative events of 20th-century science: the Manhattan Project, quantum mechanics, the birth of quantum electrodynamics. Feynman’s mind roamed over every conceivable branch of Science ...”

“... a check on what is possible. So Newton, who dabbled in alchemy, would understand the characters in Ed Regis’s history of fin-de-siècle scientific hubris – subtitled ‘Science Slightly over the Edge’, it tells stories, mainly from the Seventies and Eighties, of some of the wilder projects of scientists, engineers and DIY enthusiasts. Once you start ...”

“... Here was the Sane Scientist – the heir of Benjamin Franklin. Feynman appears several times in Ed Regis’s wonderful book about the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (the members of which often appear in the Mad Scientist mode) as an advocate of worldly engagement. His words head an epilogue which asks difficult questions about the ...”

“... Waterdine and a Knight of the Garter) was on secondment from the British Army. On descending, Ed Hillary, as he is universally known, shouted to his fellow New Zealander George Lowe, another climber of great renown: ‘George, we knocked the bastard off.’ Some sensitive critics have detected in the seeming contrast between Mallory’s gnostic ‘because ...”

“... give it up after the First World War. Under the benign gaze of the British, the imams of the Hamid-ed-Din family took back control of the North. In 1948 the ruler, Yahya Muhammad, was assassinated by one of his bodyguards and his son Ahmad, a fierce isolationist, took over. For him the choice was simple: his country could be dependent and rich or poor but ...”

“... Althusser’s wife to the USSR: ‘well before the thaw in Russia … this philosopher … twist[ed] the neck of the very soviet union in which he was confined with his wife.’ Jean Allouch, another anti-Althussard, took the fact that Althusser used to refer to Hélène as an appareil idéologique de l’état (AIE) and that ‘aïe!’ was the very ...”

“... here we’re completely paralysed.’ And then, soon after the Labour Party lost the election and Ed Miliband resigned there was a fight for the succession, with most of the candidates offering more of the same. The Labour left under New Labour is often allowed a token candidate. This time the token won.Well, it was Corbyn’s turn, wasn’t it? He ...”