The book of Ecclesiasticus, or Sirach, opens with a stupendous question:* Who can number the sand of the sea, and the drops of rain, and the days of eternity? Who can find out the height of heaven, and the breadth of the earth, and the deep, and wisdom? Not much longer after these lines were composed, another great text was written, with an opening that still resounds: Some think, O King Hiero, that the grains of sand cannot be counted. This is the opening of Psammites (The Sand Reckoner) by Archimedes, in which the greatest scientist of antiquity . . . counts the grains of sand in the
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