How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph) Note that chapters aren't numbered, so need to be numbered manually, 1 to 14.
Quote #4
"You are going around in circles to satisfy the curiosity of a power we don't understand and can't control, and she is an aspect, a periodic manifestation of that power." (10.96)
Snow's language here, about powers and aspects and manifestations, seems theological rather than scientific. It's like he's saying, don't let God get you.
Quote #5
"[…] so like my father's, that head, not in its feature but in its expression of old-fashioned wisdom and honesty…" (11.25)
Kelvin here is saying that the picture of researcher Giese's head is similar to Kelvin's father's head. He's ruminating about this while having a semi-mystical experience as his brainwaves are measured, which suggests that the wise, old, honest father here is supposed to suggest the divine father as well. Is God Kelvin's dad? Or is God the big weird ocean? Could God be both at once? (Well, he's God, right? He can do whatever he wants.)
Quote #6
The quest for this key, the philosopher's stone of Solarist studies, had absorbed the time and energy of all kinds of people with little or no scientific training. (11.60)
The philosopher's stone was a mystical alchemical stone that could supposedly convert lead to gold (useful!). Kelvin is comparing the search to harness the Solaris ocean's energy to the search for the philosopher's stone. The stone was also supposed to grant immortality—and of course, the ocean gives Rheya a kind of immortality, or at least a second life. So religion, mysticism, and science are all transmuted into one another.