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The Library Of Babel
"The Library of Babel" ( es, La biblioteca de Babel) is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and character set. The story was originally published in Spanish in Borges' 1941 collection of stories '' El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan'' (''The Garden of Forking Paths''). That entire book was, in turn, included within his much-reprinted ''Ficciones'' (1944). Two English-language translations appeared approximately simultaneously in 1962, one by James E. Irby in a diverse collection of Borges's works titled '' Labyrinths'' and the other by Anthony Kerrigan as part of a collaborative translation of the entirety of ''Ficciones''. Plot Borges' narrator describes how his universe consists of an enormous expanse of adjacent hexagonal rooms. In each room, there is an entrance on one wall, the bare necessities for human sur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
WikiProject Novels
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labyrinths (short Story Collection)
''Labyrinths'' (1962, 1964, 1970, 1983) is an anthology of short stories and essays by the writer Jorge Luis Borges. It was translated into English, published soon after Borges won the International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett. It includes, among other stories, "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Garden of Forking Paths", and "The Library of Babel", three of Borges's most famous stories. The edition, published only in English, was edited by James E. Irby and Donald A. Yates, with a preface by André Maurois of the Académie française and an introduction by Irby. Contents Besides the different stories and essays by Borges mentioned below, the book also contains a preface and introduction, an elegy for Borges, a chronology of Borges's life, and a bibliography. Stories #"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" #"The Garden of Forking Paths" #" The Lottery in Babylon" #"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" #"The Circular Ruins" #"The Library of Babel" #"Funes the Memorious" #" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum and the wider Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Little is known about his life. Aristotle was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1901 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1901. Events *January 31 – Anton Chekhov's '' Three Sisters'' (Три сeстры, ''Tri sestry'') opens at the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Constantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko with Stanislavski as Vershinin, Olga Knipper as Masha, Margarita Savetskaya as Olga, Maria Andreyeva as Irina, and Maria Lilina (Stanislavsky's wife) as Natasha. *February 22 – Leo Tolstoy is excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. * May 1 – Publication of Maurice Maeterlinck's ''The Life of the Bee'' in Belgium. *May 6 – Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, 52, marries his third wife, the Swedish-Norwegian actress Harriet Bosse, 23, after an engagement in March during rehearsals for his play ''Easter (Påsk)''. *May 25 – Chekhov marries Olga Knipper in a quiet ceremony. *May 28 – '' Cherry v. Des Moines Leader'' is decided in the Iowa Supreme Court, upholding the right to publ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurd Lasswitz
Kurd Lasswitz (german: link=no, Kurd Laßwitz; 20 April 1848 – 17 October 1910) was a German author, scientist, and philosopher. He has been called "the father of German science fiction". He sometimes used the pseudonym ''Velatus''. Biography Lasswitz studied mathematics and physics at the University of Breslau and the University of Berlin, and earned his doctorate in 1873. He spent most of his career as a teacher at the Ernestine Gymnasium in Gotha (1876–1908). Works His first published science fiction story was ("To the Zero Point of Existence", 1871), depicting life in 2371, but he earned his reputation with his 1897 novel , which describes an encounter between humans and a Martian civilization that is older and more advanced. The book has the Martian race running out of water, eating synthetic foods, travelling by rolling roads, and utilising space stations. His spaceships use anti-gravity, but travel realistic orbital trajectories, and use occasional mid-course co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Total Library
The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times. However, the probability that monkeys filling the entire observable universe would type a single complete work, such as Shakespeare's ''Hamlet'', is so tiny that the chance of it occurring during a period of time hundreds of thousands of orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe is ''extremely'' low (but technically not zero). The theorem can be generalized to state that any sequence of events which has a non-zero probability of happening will almost certainly eventually occur, given enough time. In this context, "almost surely" is a mathematical term meaning the event happens with probability 1, and the "monkey" is not an actual monkey, but a metapho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1939 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1939. Events *Early – The Pocket Books mass-market paperback imprint is launched in the United States. The first of the nationally distributed titles is James Hilton's ''Lost Horizon''. *January **American literary magazine ''The Kenyon Review'' is founded and edited by John Crowe Ransom. **The American pulp science fiction magazine '' Startling Stories'' appears, edited by Mort Weisinger. It includes '' The Black Flame'' by Stanley G. Weinbaum as lead novel. **Eando Binder's story " I, Robot" appears in the U.S. science fiction magazine ''Amazing Stories''. **'' The Criterion'', a British literary quarterly, is founded and edited by T. S. Eliot. **W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood set sail from England for the United States. *January/February – '' Poetry London: a Bi-Monthly of Modern Verse and Criticism'', founded and edited by Tambimuttu (with Dylan Thomas and others), is first pub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Messianic Figure
In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias (; , ; , ; ) is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of '' mashiach'', messianism, and of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, and in the Hebrew Bible, in which a ''mashiach'' is a king or High Priest traditionally anointed with holy anointing oil. Χριστός, Greek for the Hebrew Messiah occurs 41 times in the LXX and the Hebrew Bible. ''Ha-mashiach'' (), often referred to as ' (), is to be a Jewish leader, physically descended from the paternal Davidic line through King David and King Solomon. He is thought to accomplish predetermined things in a future arrival, including the unification of the tribes of Israel, the gathering of all Jews to ''Eretz Israel'', the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the ushering in of a Messianic Age of global universal peace, and the annunciation of the world to come. The Greek translation of Messiah is ''Khristós'' (), anglicized as ''Christ''. Christians commonly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cult
In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This sense of the term is controversial and weakly defined—having divergent definitions both in popular culture and academia—and has also been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study. Richardson, James T. 1993. "Definitions of Cult: From Sociological-Technical to Popular-Negative." ''Review of Religious Research'' 34(4):348–56. . . An older sense of the word involves a set of religious devotional practices that are conventional within their culture, related to a particular figure, and often associated with a particular place. References to the "cult" of a particular Catholic saint, or the imperial cult of ancient Rome, for example, use this sense of the word. While the literal and original sens ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superstitious
A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and practices surrounding luck, amulets, astrology, fortune telling, spirits, and certain paranormal entities, particularly the belief that future events can be foretold by specific (apparently) unrelated prior events. Also, the word ''superstition'' is often used to refer to a religion not practiced by the majority of a given society regardless of whether the prevailing religion contains alleged superstitions or to all religions by the antireligious. Contemporary use Definitions of the term vary, but commonly describe superstitions as irrational beliefs at odds with scientific knowledge of the world. Stuart Vyse proposes that a superstition's "presumed mechanism of action is inconsistent with our understanding of the physical world", ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of methods, including spoken, sign, and written language. Many languages, including the most widely-spoken ones, have writing systems that enable sounds or signs to be recorded for later reactivation. Human language is highly variable between cultures and across time. Human languages have the properties of productivity and displacement, and rely on social convention and learning. Estimates of the number of human languages in the world vary between and . Precise estimates depend on an arbitrary distinction (dichotomy) established between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken, signed, or both; however, any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, writ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Permutation
In mathematics, a permutation of a set is, loosely speaking, an arrangement of its members into a sequence or linear order, or if the set is already ordered, a rearrangement of its elements. The word "permutation" also refers to the act or process of changing the linear order of an ordered set. Permutations differ from combinations, which are selections of some members of a set regardless of order. For example, written as tuples, there are six permutations of the set , namely (1, 2, 3), (1, 3, 2), (2, 1, 3), (2, 3, 1), (3, 1, 2), and (3, 2, 1). These are all the possible orderings of this three-element set. Anagrams of words whose letters are different are also permutations: the letters are already ordered in the original word, and the anagram is a reordering of the letters. The study of permutations of finite sets is an important topic in the fields of combinatorics and group theory. Permutations are used in almost every branch of mathematics, and in many other fields of s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
