The Subnatural Realm: A Speculation

One of the great ironies of the history of ideas is the way that cultures and civilizations go out of their way not to follow up on their greatest intellectual achievements. Look at the trajectory of every great culture, and you’ll find that the supreme breakthroughs of its thinkers don’t happen at the beginning of an arc of intellectual achievement; they happen at the end, just before whatever field of work led to those breakthroughs gets abandoned.

Classical civilization is a case in point.  T...