"Why does Pliny the Elder of Awake divide nature expecting to discover unity? Why does Brahe bother to measure the “cracks and imperfections” in the “mighty lid” of our collective funeral urn? If Voetmann has expressed anything in the first two translations of this marvelous triptych, it’s that the soul and nature reflect and contain each other; that questions of one necessitate questions of the other, even if the answers are miserable. It is a perilous game acquiring knowledge of the universe for no other reason than curiosity. But perhaps we too cannot help ourselves, even today."

For as much as we know today that was not known hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of years ago, we're still roughly the same humans.

Curiosity killed the cat, and may well kill us, too, which at least makes for an interesting story for alien anthropologists digging around the ruins we leave behind.