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and open the door. Even if there's only the darkness ticking, even if there's only the hollow wind, even if nothing is there, go and open the door.5 As a scientist, Holub is concerned not only with asking questions, but also with methodology: how we try to answer those questions. In "Brief Re-flection on Cats Growing on Trees," Holub de-scribes how a kingdom of moles investigated the unknown world above ground. They elected a committee to supervise the project. This committee sent up a quick and clever mole who, when he left the motherland 
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underground, spotted a bird sitting in a tree. And so a theory was established; up there birds are growing on trees.6 Holub cautions against easy or obvious answers. His background as a scientist compels him to make the reader acutely aware of the challenges of science and of seeking knowledge. For example, in "Brief Reflection on Accuracy," Holub relates how two local timekeepers-one a clock maker and the other a soldier who fires a cannon at "six o'clock sharp" each day-unwittingly rely on each other for an authoritative time standard.7 Also, he notes how slow and piecemeal intellectual progress can prove. In "Brief Reflection on the Theory of Relativity," the French poet and penseur Paul Valéry asks Einstein how he approaches new ideas. The re-nowned physicist replies:  |
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