A bit from a review of Anathem that made me smile.

I like to read reviews of books after I've finished them, to see if the reviewer saw what I saw.  So I grilled my friend Hannah after I lent my copy of Anathem to her (she finished it in, like, a day and a half!  I know she's a fast reader but ?!$&?!$#!!)  and we had a great discussion.  

I also went looking online for reviews.  This passage caught my eye:

Stephenson suggests a new way of looking at science: Not as a bunch of guys hawking operating systems, but as a group of holy people whose work is profound enough to transcend time. It's impossible to convey how gorgeous and bewildering this view is for those of us who've been trained to view laboratories as the opposite of monasteries. And yet it works, and is a beautiful way of exploring what can only be called the spiritual aspects of rationality.

Because, of course, if it is that, it is also a beautiful way of exploring the rational aspects of spirituality.  The insight (or upsight, as Stephenson's characters would say) goes both ways.  

In the world of this book, within the walls that segregate thinkers from the rest of society, physics-religion-philosophy-mathematics all overlap and bleed together at the edges, a continuum, a single body of thought.   Here, Stephenson's just making obvious a reality that's often obscured.  He clears it up by setting a separate distinction between "enthusiasts," who when thinking about these things believe what theywant to believe, and "theors" who think about them rationally and dispassionately.   

Along the way there's a lot of exploration of the meaning and the utility of discipline, of ritual, of self-sacrifice and devotion, since in the book's world, physics and mathematics and most other material knowledge are served by structures that echo what in our world serves religious belief and practice.  One reviewer I saw thought the book might be seen as anti-religion; I can't fathom that. If anything, it looks to me to be an apology for discipline, ritual, and self-sacrifice, showing that they can't be dismissed as superstitious nonsense.  The only question is whether they are placed at the service of something intrinsically valuable.