Exactitude in Science – Borges (1946) [pdf]

I can't get enough of Borges.

His way with words and way to highlight to absurdity of situations is first class.

My favorite is the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. It's a critique of the classification used by the Institute of Bibliography which he considered nonsensical. He claims to have found the list in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia:

- those belonging to the Emperor

- embalmed ones

- trained ones

- suckling pigs

- mermaids

- fabled ones

- stray dogs

- those included in this classification

- those that tremble as if they were mad

- innumerable ones

- those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush

- et cetera

- those that have just broken the vase

- those that from afar look like flies

Ficciones is full of mockings of intellectualism. I Particularly like the critique on the critical philosophical work of Menard's Quixote. Where Menard, the subject of the story, carefully writes parts of a novel that is word-for-word a copy of Cervante's Quixote, but shaped by Menard's intellectual efforts, one is to draw the opposite appreciations than from the one written by Cervantes.

His stories are such a strange read. The plot, the characters, the mentions, all feel almost secondary to the feeling they evoke.

While we're Borges-posting, I recommend "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"

https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content...

"The House of Asterion" is the most beautifully written thing I have ever read. https://klasrum.weebly.com/uploads/9/0/9/1/9091667/the_house...

The most avid members of the Cartographers Guilds had even proposed a Map of the Empire several times larger than the Empire itself to depict microscopic details that would otherwise be invisible. Such proposals were considered the peak of academic excess after the Study of Cartography fell out of favor.

This seems like a good place to ask: I have a memory of a longer story along very similar lines. Maps are made that are increasingly larger, but in the version I'm remembering the maps are in a room of a palace or something?

Does this ring a bell to anyone?

I think it's a message about how science is really about effective sampling.

"I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.' I spent last summer folding it. People ask me where I live, and I say, 'E6."

Steven Wright

Though it's not as funny without his delivery