"Every mental state is irreducible: the mere fact of naming it-i.e., of classifying itimplies a falsification.
From which it can be deduced that there are no sciences on Tlön, not even reasoning.
The paradoxical truth is that they do exist, and in almost uncountable number.
The same thing happens with philosophies as happens with nouns in the northern hemisphere.
The fact that every philosophy is by definition a dialectical game, a Philosophic des Als Ob, has caused them to multiply.
There is an abundance of incredible systems of pleasing design or sensational type.
The metaphysicians of Tlön do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding.
They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature. They know that a system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one such aspect.
Even the phrase "all aspects" is rejectable, for it supposes the impossible addition of the present and of all past moments.
Neither is it licit to use the plural "past moments,"since it supposes another impossible operation . . .
One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present hope, that the past has no reality other than as present memory.
Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.
Another, that the history of the universe-and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives-is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon.
Another, that the universe is comparable to those cryptographs in which not all the symbols are valid and that only what happens every three hundred nights is true.
Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men."
from Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius by Borges