NGC 3324 in Carina

NGC 3324 is also called the Gabriela Mistral nebula, because of the striking resemblance with the Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet, who was born and raised in the Elqui region, home to the Cerro Tololo, Cerro Pachon and Cerro Morado professional observatories.

A man that looks on glasse

On it may stay his eye,

Or if he pleaseth, through it passe

And then the heav’n espie

George Herbert

If the glass through which we look is the sensible world, then with ‘heav’n’ we have Platonism. Substitute ‘atoms and void’ and it is Democritean. If the word were ‘real’, it would fit either philosophy.

W.K.C.Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, The Presocratic tradition from Parmenides to Democritus (vol. 2), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 464

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