The icon for Quicksilver.app is derived from the alchemical symbol for mercury, which is the modern name for the liquid metal quicksilver. Alchemists viewed mercury as a manifestation of the Primal Matter, the undifferentiated, basic form of matter from which all others were derived. Alchemists thus also believed that by adding other elements to mercury in just the right way, they could create and/or transform other metals with it—which I suppose is conceptually similar to having a flexible basic form to which plugins are added to create new powers and abilities.
Significantly for the question of why Alcor decided to name his software "Quicksilver," the concept of Primal Matter bears some similarity to the concept of the Tao in Lao-Tze's philosophy. The Tao is the fundamental, undifferentiated whole from which all things derive, as well as the natural way of things and of the universe as a whole. According to Lao-Tze, living in accordance with Tao allows one to practice *wei wu wei*, to "act without doing," which anyone who has ever looked at Quicksilver's About box will recognize. Also notable, but probably less directly significant for why our beloved software has the name it does, is the fact that the Roman god Mercury, equivalent to the Greek god Hermes, was associated with speed (he was the one with the winged shoes). Hopefully that provides some good material for inspiration for people. :) On Monday, September 16, 2013 9:29:19 AM UTC-4, 1.61803 wrote: > > On Monday, September 16, 2013 6:55:54 AM UTC+2, philostein wrote: > >> Blimey, this is going to be easy if no one else enters. :) >> > > For inspiration's sake, it might remotely help to know where QS got its > name from. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Quicksilver" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/blacktree-quicksilver. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
