Beard of the Week XXXII: Beard Eroica

This week's rather elegant beard belong to the Belgian composer Joseph Jongen (1873–1953). His reputation was built largely on his success as an organist, although his smallish catalog of works is diverse. (Wikipedia bio; a brief appreciation in French)

This past Sunday we had a cultural outing with friends to Baltimore, where we attended an organ recital performed by Dame Gillian Weir, in Griswold Hall at the Peabody Institute. (I like Peabody's event listing, because the small photographic strip along the top shows the lovely staircase in the main hall, which we passed on our way to the recital hall, and under which I used the lovely, recently remodeled restroom.) Griswold Hall is a very nice, modestly sized recital hall with a beautiful Holtkamp organ, which is relatively new. (About the installation; small photograph) Dame Gillian is currently a "Distinguished Visiting Artist" at Peabody.

Dame Gillian played a very nice program, and I mean that in two ways. One is that the program itself was interesting, with a minimum of recital war-horses and a maximum of interest and balance. Second is that Dame Gillian's playing was quite enjoyable listening; while her performance histrionics were significantly more modest than some, her technique and musicianship were admirable. Perhaps we can chalk the difference up to British reserve.

All in all it was a delightful afternoon in a beautiful setting with a beautiful instrument played by a worth organist performing interesting and challenging music.

The program reveals now why Joseph Jongen is our beard of honor today:

   Joseph Jongen (1873–1953): Sonata Eroica
   Nicolas de Grigny (1672–1703): Récit de Tierce en Taille
   Nicolas de Grigny: Dialogue sur les Grands Jeux
   Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750): Partita: Sei gegrüsset, Jesu gütig
     intermission
   Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992): Messe de la Pentecôte
   Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986): Scherzo
   Sergei Slonimsky (b. 1932): Toccata
   Georgi Mushel (1909–1989): Toccata

As you might imagine, the program also provided a bit of a work-out for Dame Gillian, but she rose to the task. I was most interested in the second half to hear the Messiaen followed by the Duruflé. At first hearing, Messiaen and Duruflé have very little in common stylistically, although they both were French and lived roughly at the same time; Duruflé was more the post-Romantic while Messiaen was something of an avant-garde mystic. However, hearing the Duruflé immediately after the Messiaen was an ear-opener: there were remarkable similarities in the musical language that I never would have suspected nor likely ever noticed without the juxtaposition.

Cinematic Penises

The last two films that we watched here at Björnslottet were

1. Mrs. Henderson Presents (directed by Stephen Frears; official site; Wikipedia on)
2. Black Book (directed by Paul Verhoeven; official site for "Zwartboek" {english option available}; Wikipedia on)

One thing that that two films had in common, in addition to both being seen here recently, is that they both had scenes featuring penises. Hooray!

In "Black Book" it was just one penis, creating a naturalistic effect–something Verhoeven seems more inclined to do in his Dutch films. In "Mrs. Henderson Presents", there was a small ensemble of penises that made for a nice comic effect in the dramatic development.

Were they gratuitous scenes or was there artistic merit? What a ridiculous distinction. They were there, they were part of the story. Obviously both films could have been made without, and they would have been different films. Both directors chose to include the scenes, and I applaud the choice.

Was there a prurient aspect? I hope so. There certainly was for me, largely because we get to see so few penises in nonpornographic films. Not to mention that I rather like appeals to the prurient interests, and I'd like to see more of it. Until we do, all expansive flashes of flesh or glimpses of genitalia, buttocks, or breasts will pique the interest of the heavy-breathers in all of us. Perhaps it's for the best, since it can perk up some otherwise tediously uninspired narratives.

Both movies, by the way, were engaging and told very good stories, and the casts turned in very good performances. In particular, I thought Verhoeven's screenplay was outstanding; I wanted to mention it since he got half the screenwriting credit.

Dueling Punch-Lines

I don't even remember how I ended up looking at the b3ta.com photoshop challenge on the subject of "pylons", but I doubt that it matters. All I wanted to mention was

• This cartoon, in which a man finds a pylon in his soup, I find hysterically funny every time I read it, and I can't really figure out why. I mean, of course it's the reaction of the manager and the timing of the punch-line, but why?
• I enjoyed this poem from one of the entries: Mary had a little lamb, she tied it to a pylon / ten thousand volts shot up its arse, and turned its wool to nylon. Inspired!

Within the British Isles

Just in case, like me, you've long had trouble sorting out which of the following are strictly subsets of the other

• Great Britain
• United Kingdom
• British
• British Isles

not to mention what to call someone from Scotland, whether they are also British, and what's the deal with Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland, may I direct your attention to the most elegant and most concise "Great British Venn Diagram". So many things clarified, so few words.

Vogel's Cat's Paws and Catapults

More catching up. Months ago I finished reading Steven Vogel's Cat's Paws and Catapults : Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People (New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, 382 pages). I enjoyed it immensely. Here's my book note.

This book comes with a confession on my part, all about judging a book by its cover. I bought my copy of the book at my local library's book store, for $1. Evidently it had been donated to the library (a name is written inside the cover). Good value and it makes it worth taking the risk that the book might not be top notch. Because of that, and because the title + subtitle seemed a little over the top to me, I feared that the book would be a light-weight, pop-journalism contribution to the currently fashionable topic of biomechanics, or bioengineering, or bio-something-or-other.

Now, pop-journalistic treatments are not a bad thing–at least, I don't object so long as the pop-journalist pays some attention to scientific accuracy. For instance, I mostly enjoyed reading Peter Forbes' The Gecko's Foot : Bio-Inspiration : Engineering New Materials from Nature (book note) and didn't find it scientifically irritating, although I felt that it could have been more than it was. It would suit other people's taste quite nicely. I think my fear was that I found the proposed topic quite appealing and worried that the writing might be annoyingly breezy.

Well, I was wrong about Mr. Vogel, so I want to apologize to him here. His book was admirable and met my requirements for outstanding scienticity quite handily. Despite its high density of analytical insight and bioengineering understanding, I found it quite engaging and pleasant to read, just not a fast read.

Now, on to the left-over excerpt. You may recall, if you were paying very close attention, that I have a nostalgic fascination with the "Hedge-Apple", or "Osage Orange" tree, and wrote about that once. In that piece I came upon the extraordinary statement:

The widespread planting of Osage-orange stopped with the introduction of barbed wire.

and didn't bother to explain it very thoroughly.

Well, here is Mr. Vogel on the hedge-apple and the introduction of barbed wire, to lay it all out for us:

Barbed Wire. Keeping livestock pinned within hedgerows of thorny plants is an old practice, one especially useful where wood or stone for fencing is in short supply. Settlers of the North American prairies faced an ever-worsening wood shortage as they moved westward. The plant of choice for the Midwest was a shrubby tree native to East Texas and nearby areas–the Osage orange (Maclura pomifera)–and a small industry during the 1860s and 1870s supplied its seeds and seedlings for use farther north. This thorny bush, though, had substantial disadvantages. Growing an effective hedge took about three years, the grapefruit-size but inedible fruits were a nuisance, and the hedge was both immovable and a nuisance to maintain. Michael Kelly's patent of 1868 for an early form of barbed wire was explicit: "My invention [imparts] to fences of wire a character approximating to that of a thorny hedge. I prefer to designate the fence so produced as a thorny fence." Indeed, the wire was produced by an enterprise called the Thorn Wire Hedge Company, perhaps advertising its utility by drawing attention to a familiar antecedent. Figure 12.10 shows the similarity of plant thorns such as those ont he Osage orange to this early form of barbed wire.

Kelly barbed wire was eclipsed by two competing brands of cheaper wire after 1874; as with wings, spinnerets, and telephone transmitters [examples previously discussed as inventions inspired by nature], fidelity to nature guarantees no economic magic. Patents for the new types were held by Joseph Glidden and Jacob Haish. With the usual personification of invention, Joseph Glidden is often listed as the inventor of barbed wire. Haish, almost certainly not coincidentally, had a lumberyard that sold Osage orange seed. As the historian George Basalla puts it, "barbed wire was not created by men who happened to twist and cut wire in a peculiar fashion. It originated in a deliberate attempt to copy an organic form that functioned effectively as a deterrent to livestock." Barbed wire has been an enduring success. Current consumption in the United States runs to well over a hundred thousand tons a year. [pp. 266–267]

Long Ago & Far Away

In a recent comment to a post I made about reading Chet Raymo's book Walking Zero, Bill asked an interesting question:

Jeff, there's a question that has always bothered me. Raymo's talk about the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field image (page 174) raised it for me again. I'm sure you have the answer, or the key to the flaw in my "reasoning," such as it is. The most distant of the thousands of galaxies seen in that image is 13 billion light years away. "The light from these most distant galaxies began its journey when the universe was only 5 percent of its present age" (174-175), and presumably only a small proportion of its present size. Now, the galaxies are speeding away from each other at some incredible speed. So if it has taken 13 billion years for light to come to us from that galaxy where it was then (in relation to the point in space that would become the earth at a considerably later date), how far away must it be now? Presumably a lot farther away than it was then?

Before we talk about the universe, I do hope you noticed that the background image I used for the "Science-Book Challenge 2008" graphic, which you will see at right if you are reading this from the blog site (rather than an RSS feed), or which you can see at the other Science-Book Challenge 2008 page, is actually part of the Hubble Deep-Field image. If you follow the link you can read quite a bit about the project, which was run from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is relatively nearby, in Baltimore. It's the science institute that was established to plan and execute the science missions for the HST; flight operations are handled at Goddard, which is even closer, in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Now let's see whether we have an answer to Bill's question.

I think you may be able to resolve the quandary if you focus on the distance of the object seen, rather than when the light through which we see it left its bounds.

The object's distance is the thing that we can determine with reasonable accuracy (and great precision) now, principally through measuring red shifts in spectra of the object.^* One of astronomer Hubble's great achievements was determining that the amount of red-shift, which depends on our relative velocity, corresponds directly with the distance between us and the observed object.^# So, take a spectrum, measure the red shift of the object, and you know more-or-less exactly how far away it was when the light left it.

Oh dear, but that doesn't really settle the issue, does it? On the other hand, it may be the most precise answer that you're going to get.

Saying that, when the light left the object, the universe was only 5% its current size should be seen more as a manner of speaking than a precise statement. It can be a rough estimate, along these lines. Say the universe is about 14 billion years old and this object's light is 13 billion years old, and if the universe has been expanding at a uniform rate, the the universe must have been (14-13)/14ths or about 7% its current size (which is about 5% its current size).

But I'd say you should treat that just as something that makes you say "Wow! That was a long time ago and the universe must have been a lot different", and don't try to extrapolate much more than that.

It's probably true that the universe hasn't been expanding at a uniform rate, for one thing. There's a theory that has had some following for the past 25 years, called the theory of inflation.^** For reasons that have to do with the properties of matter at the extreme compression of the very, very early universe, the theory suggests that there was an "inflationary epoch" during which the universe expanded at a vastly faster rate than is visible currently. Now, some of the numbers involved are astonishing, so hold on to your seat.

The inflationary epoch is thought to have occurred at a time of about seconds after the big bang, and to have lasted for about seconds.^## During this time, it is thought that the universe may have expanded by a factor of . (One source points out that an original 1 centimeter, during inflation, became about 18 billion light years.)

So, inflation would rather throw a kink into the calculation, not to mention the possibility that the universe is not expanding in space, but that space itself is expanding. That can make calculations of what was where when a touch trickier.

But that's not the only problem, of course. I can hear Bill thinking, well, that may all be so, but if we're seeing the distant object as it was 18 billion light years ago, what's it doing now.

I'm afraid that's another problem that we're not going to resolve, and not for lack of desire or know-how, but because of physical limitation. The bigger, tricker issue is — and I almost hate to say it — relativity. No doubt for ages you've heard people say of relativity that it imposes a universal speed limit: the speed of light. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light. That's still true, but there's an implication that's not often spelled out: the breakdown of simultaneity, or what does it mean for thing to happen at the same time?

It's not usually a tricky question. Generally speaking, things happen at the same time if you see them happen at the same time. Suppose you repeat Galileo's famous experiment of dropping two different weights from the leaning tower of Pisa at the same time (he said he would), and you observe them hitting the ground at the same time. No real problem there: they fell right next to each other and everyone watching could see that they happened at the same time.

Suppose the objects are not next to each other though. Suppose instead that we observe some event, say, a meteor lands in your front yard. 8.3 minutes later you observe a solar flare on the sun through your telescope. "Isn't that interesting," you say, "since the Earth is 8.3 light-minutes from the Sun, that flare and my meteor's landing happened at the same time."

Well, the problem here, as you may have heard about before, is that an observer traveling past the Earth at very high speeds and using a clock to measure the time between the two events, your meteor and the solar flare, would deduce that the two events did not happen at the same time. The mathematics is not so difficult, but messy and probably not familiar. (You can see the equations at this page about Lorentz Transformations, or the page about Special Relativity.)

What happens is that in order for the speed of light to be constant in all inertial reference frames–the central tenet of special relativity–causality breaks down. Events that appear simultaneous to one observer will, in general, not appear simultaneous to another observer traveling at a uniform velocity relative to the first observer. (This cute "Visualization of Einstein's special relativity" may help a little, or it may not.) Depending on the distance between two events, different observers may not even agree on with event happened first.

So, the not-so-satisfactory answer, Bill, is a combination of 1) because of inflation, it may not be so very much further away than it was 13 billion years ago; but 2) because of the breakdown of simultaneity due to special relativity, we can't say what it's doing now anyway, because there is no "now" common to us and the object 13 billion light-years away.^%

Gosh, I do hope I answered the right question!
———-
^* You may recall that red shift refers to the Doppler effect with light: when objects move away from us, the apparent wavelength of their light stretches out–increases–and longer wavelengths correspond to redder colors, so the light is said to be red-shifted. This happens across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, by the way, and not just in the visible wavelengths.

^# Applying Hubble's Law involves use of Hubble's Constant, which tells you how fast the expansion is occurring. The curious thing about that is that Hubble's Constant is not constant. I enjoyed reading these two pages: about Hubble's Law and Hubble's Constant. The second one is rather more technical than the first, but so what.

^**Two useful discussions, the first shorter than the second: first, second.

^## Yes, if you want to see how small a fraction of a second that was, type a decimal point, then type 31 zeroes, then type a "1".

^% I leave for the interested reader the metaphysical question of whether this statement means that universal, simultaneous "now" does not exist, or that it is merely unknowable.

When Celsius = Fahrenheit

A while back, someone ended up at a page on this blog by asking Google for "the temperature at which the Celsius scale and Fahrenheit scale are the same number". I don't think they found the answer because I'd never actually discussed that question¹, but I thought the question was pretty interesting and discussing the answer might be a bit of good, clean rocket-science fun.

Actually, there is a prior question that I think is interesting, namely: how do we know that there is a temperature where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales agree? The answer to that question is related to a simple mathematical idea.² We can picture this mathematical idea by drawing two lines on a chalkboard (or whiteboard) with a rule.

First, draw line A any way you want, but make it more horizontal than vertical, just to keep things clear. Now, draw line B in such a way that it's point farthest left is below line A, but its point farthest right is above line A. What you will always find that that line B and line A will cross at some point. This may seem like an obvious conclusion but it is also a very powerful conclusion. Now, knowing where they will cross is another, often more difficult, question to answer.

How do we know, then, that the Fahrenheit and Celsius lines cross? Well, the freezing point of water, say, on the Celsius scale is 0°C, and on the Fahrenheit it is 32°F. On the other hand, absolute zero is -273.15°C, but -459.67°F. So, at the freezing point of water the Fahrenheit line is above the Celsius line, but at absolute zero that situation is reversed.

Finding the point where they cross is a simple question to answer with algebra. The equation that converts Fahrenheit degrees into Celsius degrees is

The equation that goes the other way is

To find the temperature where the two lines cross, take one of the equations and set

so that

and then solve for . The result is that

[Addendum: 19 February 2008, for the Kelvin & Fahrenheit folks]

The Kelvin scale of temperatures is a thermodynamic temperature scale: it's zero point is the same as zero temperature in thermodynamic equations. It used Celsius-sized degrees, and there is indeed a temperature at which the Kelvin and Fahrenheit scales cross. The relation between the two is

(Note that the absolute temperature scale uses "Kelvins" as the name of the units, and not "degrees Kelvin".) As in the Fahrenheit / Celsius example, set and solve for , with the result that

As before, Fahrenheit degrees are larger than Kelvins and will eventually overtake them, but the initial difference between the zero points is much larger, so the crossing point is at a much higher temperature.
———-
¹Because of the way links on blogs select different combinations of individual posts, by days, by months, by topics, etc., internet search engines often present the least likely links as solutions to unusual word combinations in search strings. I find this phenomenon endlessly fascinating.

²The mathematical idea is one that I've always thought was a "Fundamental Theorem of [some branch of mathematics]", but I've forgotten which (if I ever knew) and haven't been able to identify yet. This is probably another effect of encroaching old-age infirmity.
I imagine — possibly remember — the theorem saying something like:

For a continuous function defined on the interval , for , takes on all values between and .

On Reading Doubt, A History

At the end of 2007 I finished reading Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt, A History : The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickenson (New York : HarperSanFrancisco, 2003, 551 pages). What a fun book it was to read, too! I thoroughly enjoyed both the reading and the having read. Here is my book note.

Her subject is religious doubt–really it is, and it's a fascinating history that touches not only on religion but on culture and science and a dozen other things. Ms. Hecht found just the right amount of detail, anecdote, and analysis for my taste to keep things moving along at a good pace and to keep my interest stoked. I found it a very stimulating book to read, with lots of insight and, in addition to its own provocative ideas, ideas that provoked ideas in me. There's my recipe for a good read. It was one outstanding and influential book for me in a year full of outstanding and influential books.

There were some sections I wanted to excerpt, as usual.

First, word origins:

In 270, the year that Constantine was born, a Christian Syrian farmer named Anthony did what preachers in that area of the world had long done: he gave up the world. This meant celibacy and a wandering, lonesome life, and the name such people earned, monachos–which became monk— simply meant solitary one. Anthony wandered into the desert and stayed for decades, emerging about 310 as the first "man of the desert," erémétikos, which became hermit, a Christian monk. Christians in the West found this a fascinating option of total commitment. [p. 188]

Then there's this idea that mere belief became a target of doubt that I find fascinating. (I included this in the book note, too.)

By the time we get to the thinker who most shaped Christianity for the six centuries of the early Middle Ages [Augustine, 354-430 AD], orthodox Christianity had already had to reconcile itself not only with the ancient philosophers but also with diverse variations of the Christian vision. Furthermore, although Paul had insisted on faith over law and words, various factors—most notably the influence of the Manichaean religion—had placed faith in the context of strict physical challenges, beginning with chastity, poverty, and fasting and eventually including self-flagellation and the wearing of hair shirts. Christianity inaugurated a harrowing new form of doubt: doubting one's ability to believe "enough", and to enact that belief in dramatically painful processes. The story of doubt would now include all those who struggled to meet those challenges and who, at least for a while, found that they could not do it. It was doubt's time for dark nights of the soul. [p. 193]

Now, a tiny little observation tucked away in a discussion of Christian doubt in its early days.

There was never an original time when everyone believed the same thing in Christianity, as if it were as obvious as the rocks and the trees. [p. 200]

Here she quotes Augustine's brilliant argument for his own existence. I wish I'd thought of this one.

"I am quite certain that I am, that I know that I am, and that I love this being and this knowing. Where these truths are concerned I need not quail before the Academicians [Skeptics] when they say: "What if you should be mistaken?" Well, if I am mistaken, I exist. For a man who does not exist can surely not be mistaken either, and if I am mistaken, therefore I exist." p. 201]

And now, a moment spoken on behalf of doubt. She's writing about the book Of Wisdom, published in 1601 by Pierre Charron:

For centuries the book would be described as a seminary of atheism. Right away, it was a triumph: it was put on the Index of Forbidden Books fast, in 1605, but it sold like hotcakes right through the century. Charron even came out with a mini version of it the next year. Here he dealt with his surprise that people could find doubt uncomfortable. Charron said of doubt:

It alone can provide true repose and security of our spirits. Have all the greatest and most noble philosophers and wise men who have professed doubt been in a state of anxiety and suffering? But they say: to doubt, to consider both points of view, to put off a decision, is this not painful? I reply, it is indeed for fools, but not for wise men. It is painful for people who cannot stand freedom, for those who are presumptuous, partisan, passionate, and who, obstinately attached to their opinions, arrogantly condemn all other….Such people, in truth, know nothing. They do not even know what it is to know something.

It was a claim that doubt can make you happy, can ease your pain, and can be a home. It may have been the first time anyone in modernity spelled it out like that. [p. 307]

Now, a brief note on the decline and fall of a certain civilization, often thought to have declined and fallen at the hands of you-know-who:

Edward Gibbon's (1737-1794) Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire inaugurated the development of a new, careful, secular history. Before it, the accepted understanding was that Christianity took over the Roman Empire because it was ordained by God, that the horrible Roman emperors martyred the early Christians in droves, and that Christians prevailed through the power of God. In this model, Rome was the best humanity could do until we had further revelation, then God stepped in, fixd the world, and Rome sank away. Not only did Gibbon tell the story without any intervention from God, he also told the story of Rome's decline as due to the disease of Christianity's spreading through the roman Empire and rotting it. This was powerful stuff. [p. 354]

Finally, a brief history lesson about myths of the Christian origin of the United States.

In Cold War America, atheist meant communist. In 1954 a law was passed changing the national motto of the United States from "E Pluribus Unum" to "In God We Trust." In 1955 another law required the new motto to be on all U.S. currency (it had been there occasionally since 1863), and in 1956 yet another law added the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. These laws had largely been initiated yb Lyndon Johnson when he was Speaker of the House, and were put through by Presidents Nixon and Eisenhower. The Congressional Record shows that Congressman Charles G. Oakman supported the laws because: "Our belief in God highlights one of the fundamental differences between us and the Communists."

The well-known Reverend George Docherty preached a sermon in favor of God in the Pledge, and Eisenhower listened. Congressman Louis C. Rabaut, sponsor of the law on the Pledge (House Joint Resolution 243), cited him later, saying: "You may argue from dawn to dusk about differing political, economic, and social systems, but the fundamental issue which is the unbridgeable gap between America and Communist Russia is a belief in Almighty God." Rabaut added, "Unless we are willing to affirm our belief in the existence of God and His creator-creature relationship to man, we drop man himself to the significance of a grain of sand and open the floodgates to tyranny and oppression. An atheistic American, as Dr. Dochert7y points out, is a contradiction in terms." Rabaut clearly did not know his history of doubt: "This country," he claimed, "was founded on theistic beliefs, on the belief in the worthwhileness of the individual human being, which in turn depends solely and completely on the identity of man as the creature and son of God." [p. 467]

As you can tell from the page number, a lot has already happened in the book to make Congressman Rabaut sound more than a little ridiculous. The more things change….

Easy Entropy

Thermodynamics is the theory that deals with heat and heat flow without reference to the atomic theory; it was developed at the same time as the steam engine and the family resemblances are striking. All concepts about temperature and pressure in terms of our perceptions of atomic or molecular motion came later and properly belong in the discipline known as Statistical Mechanics.

Awhile back I read this bit in the referenced book and thought it shed a lot of light on the idea of entropy, about which more after the excerpt.

Clausius saw that something was being conserved in Carnot's [concept of a] perfectly reversible engine; it was just something other than heat. Clausius identified that quantity, and he gave it the name entropy. He found that if he defined entropy as the heat flow from a body divided by its absolute temperature, then the entropy changes in a perfectly reversible engine would indeed balance out. As heat flowed from the boiler to the steam, the boiler's entropy was reduced. As heat flowed into the condenser coolant, the coolant's entropy increased by the same amount.

No heat flowed as steam expanded in the cylinder or, as condensed water, it was compressed back to the boiler pressure. Therefore the entropy changed only when heat flowed to and from the condenser and the boiler and the net entropy was zero.

If the engine was perfectly reversible, it and the surroundings with which it interacted remained unchanged after each cycle of the engine. Under his definition of entropy Clausius was able to show that every thing Carnot had claimed was true, except that heat was conserved in his engine.

Once Carnot's work had been relieved of that single limitation, Clausius could reach another important result: the efficiency of a perfectly reversible heat engine depends upon nothing other than the temperature of the boiler and the temperature of the condenser.

[John H. Lienhard, How Invention Begins (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006) p. 90]

Amazing conclusion #1: virtually everything about heat flowing from a warm place to a cool place depends only on the difference in temperature between the warm place and the cool place.

Amazing conclusion #2: there is an idea, call it entropy, that encapsulates #1. If we let stand for entropy, and stand for the change in entropy, then we can write

This is Clausius' definition in symbols.

Now, there's a lot of philosophical, interpretative baggage that travels with the idea of entropy, but if you can keep this simple approach in mind you can save a lot of heartburn pondering the deeper meaning of entropy and time's arrow and the heat-death of the universe.

Entropy is an accounting tool. When heat flows between the hot place and the cold place, at best, if you allow it very carefully, you may be able to reverse the process but you will never do better, which means that you will never find the cold place getting colder than originally, nor the hot place getting hotter than originally, no matter what you do, unless you put still more heat into the system.

That's one version of the notorious "Second Law of Thermodynamics". There are a number of other forms.

For instance, another way of saying was I just said: entropy never decreases. There, thermodynamic accounting made easy.

Another one that's useful: if you construct a device that uses heat flowing from a hot place to a cold place to do mechanical work — say, in a steam engine — some of the heat is always wasted, i.e., it goes into increasing entropy. Put another way: heat engines are never 100% efficient, not because we can't build them but because it is physically impossible.

Think for a moment and you'll see that the implication of this latter form of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a statement that perpetual motion machines are impossible. They just are, not because a bunch of physicists though it might be a good idea to say it's impossible, but because they are. That's the way the universe is made.

Entropy needn't be scary.
———-
^* is a general purpose symbol often used to indicate a change in the quantity represented by the letter following it.

On Reading Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee

Recently I finished reading Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee : The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, 407 pages). I quite enjoyed it. It's the third of his books I've read. I previously enjoyed Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel, but I didn't mind that this was a significantly shorter book. Here's my book note.

In some ways this book rehearses arguments that will appear in the later, larger tomes in much more fleshed-out form, but it's still its own book. This one's theme is, more or less, an evolutionary look at what makes humans human. As usual, I found a few excerpts I wanted to share that didn't quite fit into the note.

In a discussion of sexual selection, the subject of the human penis arises (if you'll pardon the expression), and the glib answer would say something about the size of the penis' being selected as a display, implying that the display is directed towards females. But, perhaps not….

While we can agree that the human penis is an organ of display, the display is intended not for women but for fellow men.

Other facts confirm the role of a large penis as a threat or status display toward other men. Recall all the phallic art created by men for men, and the widespread obsession of men with their penis size. Evolution of the human penis was effectively limited by the length of the female vagina: a man's penis would damage a woman if it were significantly larger. Howerver, I can guess what the penis would look like if this practical constraint were removed and if men could design themselves. It would resemble the penis sheaths (phallocarps) used as male attire in some areas of New Guinea where I do fieldwork. Phallocarps vary in length (up to two feet), diameter (up to 4 inches), shape (curved or straight), angle made with the wearer's body, color (yellow or red), and decoration (e.g., a tuft of fur at the end). Each man has a wardrobe of several sizes and shapes from which to choose each day, depending on his mood that morning. Embarrassed male anthropologists interpret the phallocarp as something used for modesty or concealment, to which my wife had a succinct answer on seeing a phallocarp: "The most immodest display of modesty I've ever seen!" [p. 76]

The discussion moves on to the curious case of concealed ovulation in humans, at least compared to our animal relatives.

So well concealed is human ovulation that we did not have accurate scientific information on its timing until around 1930. Before that, many physicians thought that women could conceive at any point in their cycle, or even that conception was most likely at the time of menstruation. In contrast to the male monkey, who has only to scan his surroundings for brightly swollen lady monkeys, the unfortunate human male has not the faintest idea which ladies around him are ovulating and capable of being fertilized. A woman herself may learn to recognize sensations associated with ovulation, but it is often tricky, even with the help of thermometers and ratings of vaginal mucus quality. Furthermore, today's would-be mother, who tries in such ways to sense ovulation in order to achieve (or avoid) fertilization, is responding by cold-blooded calculation to hard-won, modern book knowledge. She has no other choice; she lacks the innate, hot-blooded sense of sexual receptivity that drives other female mammals.

Our concealed ovulation, constant receptivity, and brief fertile period in each menstrual cycle ensure that most copulations by humans are at the wrong time for conception. To make things worse, menstrual-cycle length varies more between women, or from cycle to cycle in a given woman, than for other female mammals. As a result, even young newlyweds who omit contraception and make love at maximum frequency have only a 28 percent probability of conception per menstrual cycle. Animal breeders would be in despair if a prize cow had such low fertility, but in fact they can schedule a single artificial insemination so that the cow has a 75 percent chance of being fertilized! [pp. 77–78]

Diamond has spent much of his research career among the people of New Guinea. He talks at length of "first contact", the strange moment when two tribes of people discover each other, previously knowing nothing of their existence. Remarkable, before 1938, it was thought that the interior of New Guinea was unpopulated. The Archbold Expedition of 1938 unexpectedly found that the Grand Valley was populated by some 50,000 people. (There's another excerpt about the Archbold Expedition in the book note.) What a shocker! But contact has its price. I found this story particularly poignant.

Take artistic diversity as one obvious example. Styles of sculpture, music, and dance used to vary greatly from village to village within New Guinea. Some villagers along the Sepik River and in the Asmat swamps produced carvings that are now world-famous because of their quality. But New Guinea villagers have been increasingly coerced or reduced into abandoning their artistic traditions. When I visited an isolated tribelet of 578 people at Bomai in 1965, the missionary controlling the only store had just manipulated the people into burning all their art. Centuries of unique cultural development ("heathen artifacts," as the missionary put it) had thus been destroyed in one morning. [p. 231]

Odds & Odders

What to do with goofy stuff that would just get lost in the already over-extended bookmarks? Blog them, of course!

Any of you who are organists, or any of you who are married to organists, plus a whole bunch of other people, have already heard the relatively insipid Toccata from Charles-Marie Widor's "Organ Symphony #5".

But wait! Friend Chris points me toward this unique interpretation of the piece, performed by the Trondheim Akkordion Ensemble. It's a beautifully appropriate transcription of the Widor Toccata for eight accordions. They play it very nicely, by the way, breathing a bit of new life into the old war-horse. Chris asked whether this might be a sign of the end times. I wouldn't be at all surprised, but I think it indicates a pressing need for someone to invent a double-bass accordion.

Typing of YouTube, I should mention the very funny comedy-music routine by Igudesman & Joo called "Rachmaninoff Had Big Hands". Even non-musicians will find it funny. It's odd because everyone around here has been mentioning it lately–and by that I mean to me in person, not even email!

Okay, one more: The Nuns Hallelujah Chorus.

Now a couple of things by way of Miss Cellania, I think.

First up, an investigative story of personal history at The Sneeze, called "The Mystery of the Face on the Cake". For years, it seems, Steven has been getting cakes decorated by his Father with arbitrary little drawings, but always including what appeared to be a distorted cartoon face. He investigates, interviewing his Father, and tracks down the ultimate source with the help of the internet, to an old brochure from the 40s. It's an amazing story of the type that I quite enjoy.

Finally, the very nicely curated Museum of Bad Art. I am so envious.

On Reading Napoleon's Buttons

Also a few months back, I read the delightful Napoleon's Buttons : How 17 Molecules Changed History, by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson (New York : Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2003, 375 pages). I haven't run across so many popular chemistry books so far, but this clearly is one of the good ones. I enjoyed the blend of historic anecdote, chemical analysis, introduction of technical vocabulary, and copious molecular diagrams. Yes! A popular-science book with molecular diagrams! At whatever level one reads the diagrams–even if one sees them only as decoration–they enhanced the text in my opinion.

My book note is here. Below is an extra extract on a subject that I find fascinating and unlikely: the discovery of saponification, that magical transformation of fat and ashes that creates some that cleans things! So, here we have some social history of bathing, chemical history of saponification and relsted topics, and some fun facts thrown in to blend the flavors.

(As an aside, this excerpt ends just at the idea of long molecules called "lipids" is introduced. It's the physical chemistry of lipids that allows soap to wash away grease in water. How that all works and some of the collective properties of lipids doing their job was a hot topic among my fellow condensed-matter physicists in my early research days, although I never worked on it myself.)

In Europe the practice of bathing declined along with the roman Empire, although public baths still existed and were used in many towns until late in the Middle Ages. During the plague years, starting in the fourteenth century, city authorities began closing public baths, fearing that they contributed to the spread of the Black Death. By the sixteenth century bathing had become not only unfashionable but was even considered dangerous or sinful. Those who could afford it covered body odors with liberal applications of scents and perfumes. Few homes had baths. A once-a-year bath was the norm; the stench of unwashed bodies must have been dreadful. Soap, however, was still in demand during these centuries. The rich had their clothes and linens laundered. Soap was used to clean pots and pans, dishes and cutlery, floors and counters. Hands and possibly faces were washed with soap. It was washing the whole body that was frowned upon, particularly naked bathing.

Commercial soap making began in England in the fourteenth century. As in most northern European countries, soap was made mainly from cattle fat or tallow, whose fatty acid content is approximately 48 percent oleic acid. Human fat has about 46 percent oleic acid; these two fats contain some of the highest percentages of oleic acid in the animal world. by comparison, the fatty acids in butter are about 27 percent oleic acid and in whale blubber about 35 percent. In 1628, when Charles I ascended to the throne of England, soap making was an important industry. Desperate for a source of revenue–Parliament refused to approve his proposals for increased taxation–Charles sold monopoly rights to the production of soap. Other soap makers, incensed at the loss of their livelihood, threw their support behind Parliament. Thus it has been said that soap was one of the causes of the the English Civil War of 1642-1652, the execution of Charles I, and the establishment of the only republic in English history. This claim seems somewhat far-fetched, as the support of soap makers can hardly have been a crucial factor; disagreements on policies of taxation, religion, and foreign policy, the major issues between the king and Parliament, are more likely causes. In any event, the overthrow of the king was of little advantage to soap makers, since the Puritan regime that followed considered toiletries frivolous, and the Puritan leader, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, imposed heavy taxes on soap.

Soap can, however, be considered responsible for the reduction in infant mortality in England that became evident in the later part of the nineteenth century. From the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, people flocked to towns seeking work in factories. Slum housing conditions followed this rapid growth of the urban population. In rural communities, soap making was mainly a domestic craft; scraps of tallow and other fats saved from the butchering of farm animals cooked up with last night's ashes would produce a coarse but affordable soap. City dwellers had no comparable source of fat. Beef tallow had to be purchased and was too valuable a food to be used to make soap. Wood ashes were also less obtainable. Coal was the fuel of the urban poor, and the small amounts of coal ash available were not a good source of the alkali needed to saponify fat. Even if the ingredients were on hand, the living quarters of many factory workers had, at best, only rudimentary kitchen facilities and little space or equipment for soap making. Thus soap was no longer made at home. It had to be purchased and was generally beyond the means of factory workers. Standards of hygiene, not hight to state with, fell even lower, and filthy living conditions contributed to a high infant death rate.

At the end of the eighteenth century, though, a French chemist, Nicolas Leblanc, discovered an efficient method of making soda ash from common salt. The reduced cost of this alkali, an increased availability of fat, and finally in 1853 the removal of all taxes on soap lowered the price so that widespread use was possible. The decline in infant mortality dating from about this time has been attributed to the simple but effective cleansing power of soap and water.

Soap molecules clean because one end of the molecule has a charge and dissolves in water, whereas the other end is not soluble in water but does dissolve in substances such as grease, oil, and fat. [pp. 286–288]

A note on Aspirin

Here's another book that I read some months ago, but only get around to mentioning now: Diarmuid Jeffreys, Aspirin : The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug (New York : Bloomsbury, 2004, 335 pages). Here's my book note about it.

This was a book by a journalist rather than a scientist. Occasionally the writing was a little more breezy than I find to my taste, but it was never irritating and the author kept his narrative goals admirably in sight. Overall, then, there might be fewer deep, analytical insights on offer, but that may make it more digestible for many people. It was a congenial book to spend some time with.

The story Jeffreys tells is good fun and aspirin is pretty amazing stuff that we take rather for granted these days–indeed, have taken for granted pretty much since the turn of the twentieth century. And then there was that whole episode during WWII with IG Farben and the Nazis and … well, you probably should read the book.

Beard of the Week XXXI: Beauty in Science

This week's beard belongs to geneticist Sean Carroll, professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of the book Endless Forms Most Beautiful, which is what this post is really about. The book, that is to say, although it does demonstrate that I'm not above finding a scientist attractive for his mind and his beard.

Once again I'm catching up on reporting about my reading. It's been a few months since I actually finished reading Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful : The New Science of Evo Devo (New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 2005, 350 pages). Here is my book note, with more comments and more quotations. ("Evo Devo" = evolutionary developmental biology.)

It's a book I can recommend very heartily. I was fascinated and delighted by all the things I learned. It seemed that here at last is the answer to how a fertilized egg could turn into a recognizable animal shape, which I've long wondered about. But it also shed so much light on how DNA controls development, and how evolution works through developmental means, that I'm still absorbing the implications. It's a very powerful approach to understanding otherwise difficult to comprehend effects.

I thought it was a brilliant book. If I hadn't also read a couple of other wildly brilliant books last year, I would proclaim it the most intellectually influential and stimulating book I read all year.

Here's one left-over quotation that I found appealing, about the idea of beauty in science, a perennially slippery question for most scientists: we all believe in it, but find it hard to say just what it looks like.

But beauty, in science, is much more than skin-deep. The best science is an integrated product of our emotional and intellectual sides, a synthesis between what is often referred to as our "left" brain (reasoning) and "right" brain (emotional/artistic) hemispheres. The greatest "eurekas" in science combine both sensual aesthetics and conceptual insight. The physicist Victor Weisskopf (also a pianist) noted, "What is beautiful in science is the same thing that is beautiful in Beethoven. There's a fog of events, and suddenly you see a connection. It expresses a complex of human concerns that goes deeply to you, that connects things that were always in your that were never put together before."

In short, the best science offers the same kind of experience as the best books or films do. A mystery or drama engages us, and we follow a story toward some revelation that, in the very best examples, makes us see and understand the world more clearly. The scientist's main constraint is the truth. Can the nonfiction world of science inspire and delight us as much as the imagines world of fiction?

One hundred years ago, Rudyard Kipling published his classic Just So Stories,, a collection of children's tales inspired by his experiences in India. Kipling's enchanting stories ranged from "How the Leopard Got His Spots" and "How the Camel Got His Hump" to "The Butterfly That Stamped," and wove fanciful tales of how some of our favorite and most unusual creatures acquired prominent features. As delightful as the Just So explanations are of how spots, stripes, humps, and horns came to be, biology can now tell stories about butterflies, zebras, and leopards that I contend are every bit as enchanting as Kipling's fairy tales. What's more, they offer some simple, elegant truths that deepen our understanding of all animal forms, including ourselves. [p. 14]

On Reading Raymo's Walking Zero

I've recently finished reading Walking Zero : Discovering Cosmic Space and Time Along the Prime Meridian. (New York : Walker & Company, 2006; 194 pages) by Chet Raymo. It was an absolute delight.

It's sort of a poetic rumination on how, since antiquity, what we know about how old the Earth is, how old the universe is, what orbits what, and how big the universe is has changed until, today, we find ourselves on our tiny planet in an empty sea of unimaginable vastness and age. He tells the story well and covers some of my favorite topics, like the invention of time zones.

I think I wrote most of what I wanted to say about the book in my book note, but I did want to mention it. That also give me the chance to point out that it was my first book in the Science-Book Challenge 2008! (Or: the other Science-Book Challenge page.)

The Pendulum Swings

Sometimes I'm just reading, minding my own business, when the oddest things smack me squarely in the forehead. For instance:

As believers in faith and ritual over science, perhaps it's not surprising that they [Evangelical Christians, as it turns out] failed to heed the basic laws of physics.

Most people understand that when a pendulum is pushed too far in one direction, it will eventually, inexorably swing back just as far to the opposite side. This is the natural order of things, and it tends to apply across the board — even to that bulwark of chaos theory, politics.

[Chez Pazienza, "Losing Their Religion", Huffington Post, 30 January 2008]

Whatever is this person talking about and where did s/he get the crazy notions about "the basic laws of physics" on display in these few sentences? (It seems about as nonsensical to me as people who use "literally" to mean "really, really metaphorically".)

Based on the laws of physics, I believe that a pendulum is a physical object that swings back and forth, often used to keep time. I also believe that if it's pushed far enough in one direction is will eventually break or, at the very least, enter a non-linear mode of oscillations. In my book, it is in the nature of pendula, even when swung a little in one direction, to swing in the other direction, and then back again in the original direction.

It is this oscillatory nature of the pendulum that is referred to in the metaphorical pendulum of politics and public opinion. Perhaps our author is thinking of a spring that, when squeezed, or stretched, in one direction will spring back just as far in the opposite direction?

As for politics being the bulwark of chaos theory — WTF? Someday, perhaps when we have more time, we'll talk about some interesting history and results in chaos studies, but I don't think politics will get mentioned, alas.

A pendulum is a fascinating thing, of course. Its use in clocks as a timing governor^* is traced to Galileo's observation that the period of oscillation depends only on the length of the pendulum and not on the amplitude of its swing. The period ("T") depends only on the length ("L") of the pendulum and the acceleration due to gravity ("g"–a constant number):

Now, this is really an approximation with some assumptions like a) the pendulum has all its weight at the swinging end; and b) the amplitude of the swing isn't too big. But it's really a very good approximation, good enough for very precise horological instruments.

This equation tells us a couple of interesting things. One is that, because of the square-root sign over the length, if you want to double (multiply by 2) the period of a pendulum you must increase its length by 4; likewise, for half the period make the length one-fourth the original.

This also tells us that tall-case clocks tend to be much the same size. Generally speaking, they are constructed to house a pendulum with a two-second period, i.e., a pendulum that takes precisely one second to swing either way, or one second per tick, one second per tock. The length of such a pendulum is very nearly 1 meter.

At our house we also have a mantel clock that is, not surprisingly, a little under 12 inches tall because it has a pendulum with a period of 1 second, i.e., one second for a complete back-and-forth swing; such a pendulum has a length of about 0.25 meters, or one-quarter the tall-case clock's pendulum.

Many tall-case clocks that I've seen have a pendulum whose rod is actually made from a flat array of a number of small rods, usually in alternating colors. This is a merely decorative vestige of the "gridiron pendulum" invented by master horologist John Harrison in 1720. The pendulum is constructed of two types of metal arranged so that the thermal expansion of one type of metal is compensated for by the thermal expansion of the other. (It's easiest to look at an illustration, which is discussed here.)
———-
^* The pendulum, coupled with an escapement mechanism, is what allows a pendulum clock to tick off uniform intervals in time.

Tag-Cloudy Januaries

I am amused, sometimes delighted, occasionally perplexed, by tag clouds. Regardless, I had wanted to make my own. So today I found out about TagCrowd, and now I can make my own. About what?

Well, the obvious answer is: about me. I'm still thinking of processing all the text from Bearcastle Blog, but that will take some work. In the meantime, I took an easy route to a quick experiment, just to see whether the results might be intesting.

Here, then, are tag clouds (below) for Bearcastle Blog for all the January posts of this year and the previous three years (i.e., for January 2008, January 2007, January 2006, and January 2005).

I'm not sure yet what conclusions to draw, but they do give me things to ponder. Naturally, I made some off-the-cuff observations:

• "gay" has been a perennial topic, which doesn't surprise me. It seems a little less prominent in 2008, which may be a fluctuation or it may be that I use the word somewhat less often. For instance, I purposely refer to "marriage equality" rather than "gay marriage"
• To me I looked more angry in 2006, but that may just be because "Bush" is so evident in the cloud.
• "Science" has become more prominent, I suspect because I've been doing more work on Ars Hermeneutica and, consequently, talking more about it.
• "Alan" is a fluke: in a post about a story of mine that featured a character named Alan, I used Word's autosummarize feature on the story and the name "Alan" appeared an unusual number of times.
• I'm happy to see that "book" and "reading" have consistent places in the clouds, and have gotten bigger lately.
• I don't at all mind that I seem to be talking less about political issues.

I think the statistics are rather small on these month-long snapshots to be really deep, but that doesn't mean the clouds misrepresent the content, merely that one must perhaps be a bit careful in interpreting the results. It does make me want to make some bigger trials. ^*

January 2008

January 2007

January 2006

January 2005

———-
^* Of course, it could also be fun to analyze the comments, say, of RSF & SW, to see whether their preoccupations accord with our impressions of their preoccupations!

abstemious & facetious

For years I have occasionally mentioned at appropriate points in conversation that there are two words in English that have one of each of the vowels in alphabetical order. One of them is "facetious", but I never could remember the second one, which rather spoiled the fun.

Fortunately Miss Cellania came to the rescue today ("English Grammar") with some "Odd English Words", which I quote here complete with the parenthetical observations that I don't really find all that amusing, but there you go:

• "Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right. (Bet you tried this out mentally, didn't you?)
• Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable. (I'll bet you're going to check this out.)
• No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
• Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt". (Are you doubting this?)
• The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet. (Now, you KNOW you're going to try this out for accuracy, right?)
• The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes). (Yep, I knew you were going to "do" this one.)
• There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous (You're not doubting this, are you?)
• There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious." (Yes, admit it, you are going to say …… a e i o u)
• TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. (All you typists are going to test this out)

For those who object and insist that 'y' is sometimes a vowel, may one suggest considering the adverbial forms?

Bush, like Ozymandias

The [2008 President's State of the Union] speech had an inescapable problem. It couldn't possibly address the question at hand – the actual state of the union. Costly and unending occupations. Economic recession. Unprecedented foreign indebtedness. Unsustainable trade deficits. A declining middle class. Millions about to lose their homes. Leading banks on the auction block. Gilded age inequality. A foolish starvation of vital public investments in everything from bridges to broadband. Basic challenges – global warming, a broken health care system – simply ignored. America weaker, more isolated, and less secure. Like Ozymandias, Mr. Bush shattered visage surveys his world. "Look on my works, ye mighty and despair." And "nothing besides remains."

[Robert L. Borosage "The Show's Over; Shelve the Sequel", Huffington Post, 29 January 2008.]

Posted on January 29, 2008 at 15.40 by jns · Permalink · 5 Comments
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events

Beginning Ideas

Last night was, as is traditional at our house, library night. In need of new ideas for books to read, I prepared myself by noting down some recommendations various people have provided more or less recently.^* Some time back Bill reported hearing an author on the radio and thought I might find that author's book appealing. The author was Peter Watson; his book: Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud. (New York : HarperCollins, 2005).

As suggested by the title, the book is about the history of ideas, an ill-defined intellectual discipline that attracts my attention.^# It's a weighty volume, comprehensive and thorough looking, which is all to the good but does present the problem of an over abundance of intellectual stimulation. I only started the book late last night and already there are more ideas than I can process in all my usual ways.

Consider just this one of several that have popped up so far. Stone tools have been known since antiquity, but were long thought to be the products of natural phenomena. For instance, one popular theory held that they were frozen thunderclaps. It was only in the 15th and 16th centuries, when explorers made contact with stone-age tribes of people that the thought occurred to Europeans that a stone ax may have been fabricated by the hand of early humans, an idea first proposed by Georgius Agricola (1490-1555).

And so we find, in 1655, one Isaac La Peyrère writing a book called A Theological Systeme upon that presupposition that Men were before Adam. Based on the identification of stone tools as things fabricated by humans, he presented the idea of "pre-Adamites", humans who existed before the time of Adam and Eve as recounted in the Bible and understood to be of much more recent times than the apparent age of the stone tools.

How to reconcile this notion with the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden? Well, here's a clever idea. Adam and Eve were the parents of only the Jewish race; the pre-Adamites were all gentiles! La Peyrère was, of course, denounced, seized by the Inquisition, and imprisoned. His book was burned on the streets of Paris. But what a clever idea.

Now, here's my problem: this interesting business is all from one paragraph on page 13 of the prologue of the book! How will I ever survive the remaining 740 pages?

Too many ideas, too little time.
———-
^* I also took a recommendation of Mel's and checked out Lydia Millet's novel Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which looks like great fun.

^# It's possible that the history of ideas is the area of research that I'm moving into. I've done some writing lately on ideas, I keep reading books that I enjoy and analyze from the perspective of the history of ideas, and the subject seems to be a preoccupation of Ars Hermeneutica, which should come as no real surprise if it's a preoccupation of mine.

So, if you find yourself tying to figure out what theme unifies the various actual and proposed activities of Ars, I suggest that you look at them as using the history of ideas as a context or framework for provoking rational and analytical responses in the public. This is one way of looking at my operational theory of informal science education.

Posted on January 29, 2008 at 14.50 by jns · Permalink · One Comment
In: All, Books, The Art of Conversation

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