“To collect is to organize the world in your own image, and Aurora Sedge clearly had a very strong sense of who she was. You can tell a lot about a person by what they collect.

expressed the difference between zero and one. The problem of zero, or nonexistence, obsessed Leibniz. How could zero—pure potential—transform to one, a whole and complete material object? The transition between nothing and something is the central question of…well, everything. All our spiritual and intellectual systems—religion and science, but al

That is the nature of the puzzle: to offer pain and pleasure by turns.