The Problem With Machiavelli's Interpretation of Nature

Greg Bear: Machiavelli is the founder of modernity, that probably needs to be explained. But we can trace his kind of understanding of nature, this reimagining of nature or philosophy and see how philosophers after him took that idea and changed the course of the world with them. He says if you want to succeed in life, you have to conquer nature. And so he flips back and forth between speaking about nature and fortune in these last few chapters. The ancients would have said the fact that your city flooded is a sign that you're heebristically building cities where you shouldn't be building them.