Highly correlated brown and black noise patterns do not seem to have seem to have attractive counterparts in the visual arts. There, over-correlation… - John Barrow

The abstractions of Einstein's curved space and time gave rise to analogies and pictures that played a new explanatory role. Space and time gave way to space-time, visible light was augmented by images across the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we realised that we could see back towards the apparent beginnings of time.

A less inflexible picture of mathematics is one that focuses on the fact that it is an open-ended human activity. Inventionism is the belief that mathematics is nothing more than what mathematicians do. ...We invent mathematics; we do not discover it. ...The independent discovery of the same mathematical theorems by different mathematicians from totally different economic, cultural, and political backgrounds—often at widely separated times in history—argues against such a simple view. The inventionist could respond by pointing to the universality of human languages. ...One might expect that those aspects of this universal grammar that share features of logic, and hence counting, would also make counting appear instinctive. In fact, although simple counting... is fairly universal in ancient and primitive cultures, virtually none of them went on to carry out mathematical operations more sophisticated than counting. This suggests that these higher mathematical operations are not genetically programmed into the human brain... They are more likely to be by-products of multi-purpose pattern-recognition capabilities.

The spooky ether was persistent. It took an Einstein to remove it from the Universe. ...Gradually, over the last twenty years, the vacuum has turned out to be more unusual, more fluid, less empty, and less intangible than even Einstein could have imagined. Its presence is felt on the very smallest and largest dimensions over which the forces of Nature act.