I found this very interesting:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ed-in-science/
Quote:
Cormac McCarthy's Work Is Rooted in Science
In the many tributes to his lyrical and philosophical gifts that have been published over the past week, what’s most remarkable about the quotes from McCarthy’s novels they have included is just how many other passages could have been chosen. However perfect the lines one picks, strong rivals abound on every page. Nearly all the trees are tall.
Where did these astonishing powers come from? A partial answer is that McCarthy spent much of his last three decades at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, the research center devoted to the study of complex systems and big questions. There, he conversed with and befriended an eclectic group of physicists, mathematicians, biologists, archaeologists and other scientists who, whatever their special training, all shared a disregard for the rigid borders of conventional academia. McCarthy, who wrote several novels on-site, flourished in this atmosphere. He even wrote the institute’s operating principles, a sort of polymath’s manifesto. “We are absolutely relentless at hammering down the boundaries created by academic disciplines and by institutional structures,” one sentence reads.
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