Stephen Jay Gould: ‘We have to extract meaning out of the confusion of the world around us. We do it by telling stories, and by looking for patterns. And whenever we see a pattern, we have to tell a story about it.’ David Layzer: ‘There is a peculiar synergy between mathematics and ordinary language. Without adequate verbal support, formulas and diagrams tend to lose their meaning; without formulas and diagrams, words and phrases refuse to take on new meanings.’ Richard Dawkins: ‘if solid things are mostly empty space, why don't we see them as empty space?" The answer lies in our own evolution. You might think that our sense organs would be shaped to give us a ‘true’ picture of the world as it ‘really’ is. Instead they have been shaped to give us a useful picture, designed to understand the mundane details of how to survive in the stone-age African savannah’