Suppose it were Friday cliii: And clear

The choice of an imagined future is always a matter of taste . .  I see human freedom as the goal and the creativity of small human societies as the means to achieve it. 

Freedom is the divine spark that causes human children to rebel against grand unified theories imposed by their parents.

At the age of 94, the theoretical physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson, has undertaken to present an unreasonably elegant review of a major new work of speculation in the social sciences. The extract, above, stands on its own, obviously, and suggests to me the spirit of the third figure in Dominique Isserman's image of the esplanade, more than Twombly's.

The choice of a vision of the present is always a matter of taste. With non-stop belligerent entertainment as the unified theory of the day, one turns with gratitude to the prospect of a weekend with the correspondences of a shimmering mentality. 

           A frequent contributor to The New York Review,

           Dyson laid out the stakes for the foregoing im-

           plication - that the mind most necessary to cri-

           tique is one's own - in a deeply well-informed

           review of the biography of Robert Oppenheimer,

           by Wittgenstein's leading biographer. (Kai Bird,

           author of the review cited here of Dyson's let-

           ters, wrote another one). Against the prodigious

           negative pressure of the day, to critique the un-

           ruly mentality of misrule in the nation, then and

           now, Dyson presented a devastating depiction of

           the cost the embattled path imposed on a stronger

           mind than most - and the rôle of companionship -

           [His wife} came to me with a cry for help. She

           implored me to collaborate with Robert in a piece

           of technical scientific work. She said Robert was

           desperate because he was no longer doing science,

           and he needed a collaborator to get him started ..

           His days as a scientist were over. It was too 

           late to cure his anguish with equations.

          

iv  Joe Collier

v   Oliver Houlby