The Book of Life

reached the point where a British shopkeeper remarked: “If I order a million items from Japan, I can be certain that not a single one will be defective.” As a result, Japanese products came to be trusted completely around the world. Their trade expanded rapidly, until they even dominated the American market—the very country from which they had first received this method through an American expert. In this world, those who achieve the greatest success are the ones who try to learn from everyone— whether friend or foe. CLOSED MIND T he Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) wrote that the perfect circle is the ideal form in geometry. On this basis, he argued that since nature always works in a perfect way, the paths along which it moves the heavenly bodies must also be perfect circles. This idea of Aristotle dominated people’s minds in ancient times. The astronomical systems developed in those days— for example, those of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Tycho Brahe—all assumed that the planets of the solar system revolve in perfect circles in space. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) was probably the first person to challenge this. In 1609, through calculation,