Having visited Walden pond on my last visit here I scoured the works of Henry Thoreau, to not much avail. (although "Simplify, simplify" isn’t a bad mantra to adopt) As I was thinking about what perspective made the most sense of where we are Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and his popularisation of the word "paradigm" came to mind. Although published 40 years ago out of Berkeley California, it's clear from the author's preface that much of the intellectual work was done within a few miles of this building.