an atonic disease

All the Crichton books depend to a certain extent on a little frisson of fear and suspense: that’s what kept you turning the pages.

The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom. Whirling wreaths and columns of burning wind, rushed around and over them.

I’m using mathesis — a universal science of measurement and order … And there is also taxinomia a principle of 'classification' and ordered tabulation. Knowledge replaced universal resemblance with finite differences. History was arrested and turned into tables … Western reason had entered the age of judgement.