In 2019, astronomer Britt Lundgren of the University of North Carolina Asheville visited the Guggenheim Museum in New York City to take in an exhibit of the works of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint. Lundgren noted a striking similarity between the abstract geometric shapes in af Klint's work and scientific diagrams in 19th century physicist Thomas Young's Lectures (1807). So began a four-year journey starting at the intersection of science and art that has culminated in a forthcoming paper in the journal Leonardo, making the case for the connection.
Rather than for the base-layered, fleeced and cramponed person in your life, Mountainish is more for those who would arrive to have a look at some huge mountains and then, weirded out, instantly turn round and go home, to somewhere reassuringly flat and low.
“We have two lives,” Dr Matt Morgan writes, before clarifying: “The second begins when you realise you have [only] one.” Sometimes, as the case studies in this book detail, this realisation comes more suddenly and profoundly than most of us can imagine. For more than 20 years, Morgan has been a specialist doctor in intensive care, labouring at the extreme margins of life. Just occasionally, in his day-to-day education in human mortality, he has witnessed what might, in other traditions, be thought of as supernatural events: people whose vital signs have flatlined, but who have returned to tell the tale. The stories in this book – a sequel to his bestselling Critical – are his accounts of those impossible second acts, and his reflections on what we can learn from those lucky few who have experienced both possible answers to the question of “to be or not to be”.