- In the past, there existed a tradition of creating "Cabinets of Curiosities" - collections of outlandish artefacts. Is the Institute of Curiosities something different?

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A - At the heart of our collection lie not objects, not things, but rather phenomena and manifestations - something intangible. In addition, the Institute not only collects, but also investigates and identifies patterns. Since the focus is on exceptions to the rules, these patterns can be called the “Rules of Exceptions”. 

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- But they say that “exceptions prove the rule.”

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A - This is a reduced and therefore incorrect translation of Cicero’s phrase “Exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis." Its meaning is that exceptions from one rule point to another, which is their source. To a law of a different order, perhaps hidden for now. For example, Newtonian physics did a great job at low speeds. It is sufficient when you are slowly driving along a country road in a carriage. But when the speed increases to cosmic velocities, it turns out that all constants change, time strives towards zero, space behaves inconsistently, and a new physics is required.

 

N - But more radical changes also occur: not when a specific rule is just a special case of the next one, but when it is wrong. Conventional beliefs are by no means necessarily true. For a long time, the Earth was considered flat and for the assumption that it revolves around the Sun people were burnt at the stake.

 

A - Since any system is primarily interested in stability, exceptions are most often either ignored as insignificant "accidents," or perceived as threatening and therefore requiring therapeutic or surgical measures. But if careful observation brings to light more and more deviations from the learned picture, at some point they work like detonators, blowing it to pieces.