The Floating World of Science
Scientists inhabit a kind of Floating World of their own, a kind of Global Village, in which they have friends, or friends
of friends, everywhere. Rather like the members of a religious order, they can go to any laboratory dealing with their field of study and be hospitably received. Travel is part work, part pleasure, part state of mind. Scientific travelers could be described as pilgrims taking the Golden Road to Samarkand (to study at the Òbig machineÓ - the Observatory of Ulugh Beg, of course), 'for lust of knowing what should not be known'. Others perhaps see the scientists as more like the mendicant monks of Japan who go round with their heads in baskets playing the flute and knocking at doors to beg for food.