SOURCE: “Juggler,” in The New York Review of Books, Vol. 36, No. 17, November 9, 1989, pp. 3-4.

In the following review, Adams commends Eco's achievement in Foucault's Pendulum.

The obsessed or distracted scholar, who knows so much about the cosmos in general that he doesn't see what’s under his nose, is an ancient figure of fun. Thales of Miletus was the first. The foremost astronomer of his age, he was walking home one night with his eyes fixed on the constellations when he stumbled and fell into a ditch. From the shadows where she was watching, a kitchen wench of Miletus saw the philosopher's pratfall and giggled “tee-hee.” The tinkle of her laughter has resounded down the ages—the twenty-five centuries—ever since.

Big thinkers are subject to big obsessions. Their eyes are fixed on the positive evidence, and oblivious of everything else; their busy minds expand theories, extrapolate hypotheses...