Solaris Read Online Free PDF

of
scientists recommended an 'honorable' withdrawal from Solaris.
    Many people in the world of science, however, especially among
the young, had unconsciously come to regard the 'affair' as a
touchstone of individual values. All things considered, they
claimed, it was not simply a question of penetrating Solarist
civilization; it was essentially a test of ourselves, of the
limitations of human knowledge. For some time, there was a widely
held notion (zealously fostered by the daily press) to the effect
that the 'thinking ocean' of Solaris was a gigantic brain,
prodigiously well-developed and several million years in advance of
our own civilization, a sort of 'cosmic yogi,' a sage, a symbol of
omniscience, which had long ago understood the vanity of all action
and for this reason had retreated into an unbreakable silence. The
notion was incorrect, for the living ocean was active. Not, it is
true, according to human ideas—it did not build cities or
bridges, nor did it manufacture flying machines. It did not try to
reduce distances, nor was it concerned with the conquest of Space
(the ultimate criterion, some people thought, of man's
superiority). But it was engaged in a never-ending process of
transformation, an 'ontological autometamorphosis.' (There were any
amount of scientific neologisms in accounts of Solarist
activities.) Moreover, any scientist who devotes himself to the
study of Solariana has the indelible impression that he can discern
fragments of an intelligent structure, perhaps endowed with genius,
haphazardly mingled with outlandish phenomena, apparently the
product of an unhinged mind. Thus was born the conception of the
'autistic ocean' as opposed to the 'ocean-yogi.'
    These hypotheses resurrected one of the most ancient of
philosophical problems: the relation between matter and mind, and
between mind and consciousness. Du Haart was the first to have the
audacity to maintain that the ocean possessed a consciousness. The
problem, which the methodologists hastened to dub metaphysical,
provoked all kinds of arguments and discussions. Was it possible
for thought to exist without consciousness? Could one, in any case,
apply the word thought to the processes observed in the ocean? Is a
mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain?
Whatever the terminology, the new scale of size introduced new
norms and new phenomena.
    The question appeared as a contemporary version of the problem
of squaring the circle. Every independent thinker endeavored to
register his personal contribution to the hoard of Solarist
studies. New theories proliferated: the ocean was evidence of a
state of degeneration, of regression, following a phase of
'intellectual repletion'; it was a deviant neoplasm, the product of
the bodies of former inhabitants of the planet, whom it had
devoured, swallowed up, dissolving and blending the residue into
this unchanging, self-propagating form, supracellular in
structure.
    By the white light of the fluorescent tubes—a pale
imitation of terrestrial daylight—I cleared the table of its
clutter of apparatus and books. Arms outstretched and my hands
gripping the chromium edging, I unrolled a map of Solaris on the
plastic surface and studied it at length. The living ocean had its
peaks and its canyons. Its islands, which were covered with a
decomposing mineral deposit, were certainly related to the nature
of the ocean bed. But did it control the eruption and subsidence of
the rocky formations buried in its depths? No one knew. Gazing at
the big flat projection of the two hemispheres, colored in various
tones of blue and purple, I experienced once again that thrill of
wonder which had so often gripped me, and which I had felt as a
schoolboy on learning of the existence of Solaris for the first
time.
    Lost in contemplation of this bewildering map, my mind in a
daze, I temporarily forgot the mystery surrounding Gibarian's death
and the uncertainty of my own future.
    The different sections of the