"He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth", so said Goethe, as quoted in Jostein Gaarder's philosophy primer-cum-mystery novel Sophie's World.
Like AC Grayling cutting across the "-ologies", Halcyon is convinced that our framework for making sense of the world is best underpinned by a strong grounding in historical narrative.
One example: without such interdisciplinary curiosity, how could we appreciate why Tolstoy had Pierre felt that he must try and kill Napoleon, even while Beethoven and many of the 19th century Romantic intelligentsia were waiting in the wings in adoration of the little corporal?
"I do not study to know more, but to disregard less" - Sor Juana In
As different as we humans are from one another, we all age along the same great sequence, and the shared patterns of our lives pass into the pages of the books we love. Journalist Joshua Prager explores the stages of life through quotations from great writers, claiming "books tell us who we've been, who we are, who we will be, too".