Perspectives on the Vertical

Cabinet Magazine has an interesting cultural perspective on human's attempts to zoom in and out of nature in the vertical. Particularly they focus on one of my favorite science films ever, Power of Ten.

Powers of Ten was originally inspired by a 1957 book by the Dutch educator Kees Boeke titled Cosmic View. By 1963, the Eameses were experimenting with tracking shots that gave the effect of a camera pulling away with accelerating motion from an object, and in 1968 used these in a film called A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe. Shot in black and white, it was followed by an extended color version—the one known as Powers of Ten—made in 1977. The basic set-up of the latter film is well-known. It opens with a picnic scene in a park in Chicago. From a ground level view, the camera then switches to a vertical, aerial position from which it looks down, the frame centered—as we later find out—on an atom in the man’s hand. At this point the narrator tells us that we are one meter away and looking at a square one meter by one meter. Now the camera pulls away vertically and begins to accelerate so that every ten seconds our distance from the initial scene is ten times greater. The camera continues its upward trajectory until just after 10²⁴ meters (100 million light years) when it gradually slows and begins its descent, collapsing beyond its original position and now decelerating through the ever-smaller dimensions of cells, molecules, atoms, and beyond.

Read on.

ASTRONOMICAL - The Movie

A scale model of our solar system in twelve 500 page volumes printed-on-demand. On page 1 the Sun, on page 6,000 Pluto. The width of each page equals one million kilometres.

This film takes us through the first volume where we encounter the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the Asteroid Belt.

Yes, this is just a film of someone flipping through a book that is the solar system to scale. Highlights include the Earth at minute 4:00, Mars at 5:25, and the asteroid belt at 6:40 (actually this is interesting because while even the sun fits on just two pages the asteroid belt spans for several minutes). The entire 12 volume set is available for the discerning and precise sky aficionado. Strange. Cool. Want.

Our Terraqueous globe

Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot is a resonating vision of human's future in space. Sagan combined elements of  science, philosophy, and sincere humanity in his public works that has made him a cosmic ambassador. His words seem timeless and in combination with music and visuals his message is even more powerful. Most humans who have ever looked up will enjoy these two videos created by NASA fan Reid Gower, and Sagan fan Michael Marantz.

I was struck by the strange wording that Sagan chooses at the beginning here.

We were hunters and foragers.

The frontier was everywhere.

We were bounded only by the Earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls.

Our little terraquious globe as the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds.

Little terraquious globe sounds a little bit like an archaic way of saying pale blue dot. Indeed, I think it is. And the phrase  'the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds' seems rather forced compared to Sagan's usual poetic ease. I did some searching and found a usage of this term in François-Marie Arouet's (better known by his pen name Voltaire) short story Memnon, the Philosopher of Human Wisdom. The story tells of Memnon who decides to become a philosopher one day and upon that same day he loses his eye, his health, his fortune, and his reason. He passes into sleep in despair at the end of the day and is visited by a celestial spirit in a dream. The spirit says that things could be worse, in fact the spirit states that there are a hundred thousand million worlds and in each world there are degrees of philosophy and enjoyment, but each world has less than the next; there is a world of perfect philosophy and enjoyment somewhere the spirit implies. Memnon is afraid that the Earth must be on the low end of the list and replies, “that our little terraqueous globe here is the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds”. It is clear to me that Sagan had read this; Sagan's entire attitude to humanity's existence is identical to the thesis of Memnon, the Philosopher of Human Wisdom. Sagan (as does Voltaire in this story) holds that

For All Our Failings, Despite Our Limitations And Fallibilities, We Humans Are Capable Of Greatness.

Thus the great 18th century philosopher Voltaire has profoundly influenced one of the most popular 20th century scientists. Finally, Sagan's work may influence the direction that humanity takes in exploring outer space in the 21st century. I will end this strange tale with the tale itself, Voltaire's short story Memnon, the Philosopher of Human Wisdom.

Memnon one day took it into his head to become a great philosopher. There are few men who have not, at some time or other, conceived the same wild project. Says Memnon to himself, To be a perfect philosopher, and of course to be perfectly happy, I have nothing to do but to divest myself entirely of passions; and nothing is more easy, as everybody knows. In the first place, I will never be in love; for, when I see a beautiful woman, I will say to myself, These cheeks will one day grow wrinkled, these eyes be encircled with vermilion, that bosom become flabby and pendant, that head bald and palsied. Now I have only to consider her at present in imagination, as she will afterwards appear; and certainly a fair face will never turn my head. 

In the second place, I will be always temperate. It will be in vain to tempt me with good cheer, with delicious wines, or the charms of society. I will have only to figure to myself the consequences of excess, an aching head, a loathing stomach, the loss of reason, of health, and of time. I will then only eat to supply the waste of nature; my health will be always equal, my ideas pure and luminous. All this is so easy that there is no merit in accomplishing it. 

But, says Memnon, I must think a little of how I am to regulate my fortune; why, my desires are moderate, my wealth is securely placed with the Receiver General of the finances of Nineveh: I have where-withal to live independent; and that is the greatest of blessings. I shall never be under the cruel necessity of dancing attendance at court: I will never envy anyone, and nobody will envy me; still, all this is easy. I have friends, continued he, and I will preserve them, for we shall never have any difference; I will never take amiss anything they may say or do; and they will behave in the same way to me. There is no difficulty in all this. 

Having thus laid his little plan of philosophy in his closet, Memnon put his head out of the window. He saw two women walking under the plane trees near his house. The one was old, and appeared quite at her ease. The other was young, handsome, and seemingly much agitated: she sighed, she wept, and seemed on that account still more beautiful. Our philosopher was touched, not, to be sure, with the beauty of the lady (he was too much determined not to feel any uneasiness of that kind) but with the distress which he saw her in. He came downstairs and accosted the young Ninevite in the design of consoling her with philosophy. That lovely person related to him, with an air of great simplicity, and in the most affecting manner, the injuries she sustained from an imaginary uncle; with what art he had deprived her of some imaginary property, and of the violence which she pretended to dread from him. “You appear to me,” said she, “a man of such wisdom that if you will condescend to come to my house and examine into my affairs, I am persuaded you will be able to draw me from the cruel embarrassment I am at present involved in.” Memnon did not hesitate to follow her, to examine her affairs philosophically and to give her sound counsel. 

The afflicted lady led him into a perfumed chamber, and politely made him sit down with her on a large sofa, where they both placed themselves opposite to each other in the attitude of conversation, their legs crossed; the one eager in telling her story, the other listening with devout attention. The lady spoke with downcast eyes, whence there sometimes fell a tear, and which, as she now and then ventured to raise them, always met those of the sage Memnon. Their discourse was full of tenderness, which redoubled as often as their eyes met. Memnon took her affairs exceedingly to heart, and felt himself every instant more and more inclined to oblige a person so virtuous and so unhappy. By degrees, in the warmth of conversation, they ceased to sit opposite; they drew nearer; their legs were no longer crossed. Memnon counseled her so closely and gave her such tender advices that neither of them could talk any longer of business nor well knew what they were about. 

At this interesting moment, as may easily be imagined, who should come in but the uncle; he was armed from head to foot, and the first thing he said was, that he would immediately sacrifice, as was just, the sage Memnon and his niece; the latter, who made her escape, knew that he was well enough disposed to pardon, provided a good round sum were offered to him. Memnon was obliged to purchase his safety with all he had about him. In those days people were happy in getting so easily quit. America was not then discovered, and distressed ladies were not nearly as dangerous as they are now. 

Memnon, covered with shame and confusion, got home to his own house; there he found a card inviting him to dinner with some of his intimate friends. If I remain at home alone, said he, I shall have my mind so occupied with this vexatious adventure that I shall not be able to eat a bit, and I shall bring upon myself some disease. It will therefore be prudent in me to go to my intimate friends, and partake with them of a frugal repast. I shall forget in the sweets of their society that folly I have this morning been guilty of. Accordingly, he attends the meeting; he is discovered to be uneasy at something, and he is urged to drink and banish care. A little wine, drunk in moderation, comforts the heart of god and man: so reasons Memnon the philosopher, and he becomes intoxicated. After the repast, play is proposed. A little play with one’s intimate friends is a harmless pastime. He plays and loses all that is in his purse, and four times as much on his word. A dispute arises on some circumstances in the game, and the disputants grow warm: one of his intimate friends throws a dice box at his head, and strikes out one of his eyes. The philosopher Memnon is carried home to his house, drunk and penniless, with the loss of an eye. 

He sleeps out his debauch, and when his head has got a little clear, he sends his servant to the Receiver General of the finances of Nineveh to draw a little money to pay his debts of honor to his intimate friends. The servant returns and informs him that the Receiver General had that morning been declared a fraudulent bankrupt and that by this means an hundred families are reduced to poverty and despair. Memnon, almost beside himself, puts a plaster on his eye and a petition in his pocket, and goes to court to solicit justice from the king against the bankrupt. In the saloon he meets a number of ladies all in the highest spirits, and sailing along with hoops four-and-twenty feet in circumference. One of them, who knew him a little, eyed him askance, and cried aloud, “Ah! What a horrid monster!” Another, who was better acquainted with him, thus accosts him, “Good-morrow, Mr. Memnon. I hope you are very well, Mr. Memnon. La, Mr. Memnon, how did you lose your eye?” And, turning upon her heel, she tripped away without waiting an answer. Memnon hid himself in a corner and waited for the moment when he could throw himself at the feet of the monarch. That moment at last arrived. Three times he kissed the earth, and presented his petition. His gracious majesty received him very favorably, and referred the paper to one of his satraps, that he might give him an account of it. The satrap takes Memnon aside and says to him with a haughty air and satirical grin, “Hark ye, you fellow with the one eye, you must be a comical dog indeed, to address yourself to the king rather than to me; and still more so, to dare to demand justice against an honest bankrupt, whom I honor with my protection, and who is nephew to the waiting-maid of my mistress. Proceed no further in this business, my good friend, if you wish to preserve the eye you have left.” 

Memnon, having thus in his closet resolved to renounce women, the excesses of the table, play and quarreling, but especially having determined never to go to court, had been in the short space of four- and-twenty hours, duped and robbed by a gentle dame, had got drunk, had gamed, had been engaged in a quarrel, had got his eye knocked out, and had been at court where he was sneered at and insulted. 

Petrified with astonishment, and his heart broken with grief, Memnon returns homeward in despair. As he was about to enter his house, he is repulsed by a number of officers who are carrying off his furniture for the benefit of his creditors: he falls down almost lifeless under a plane tree. There he finds the fair dame, of the morning, who was walking with her dear uncle; and both set up a loud laugh on seeing Memnon with his plaster. The night approached, and Memnon made his bed on some straw near the walls of his house. Here the ague seized him, and he fell asleep in one of the fits, when a celestial spirit appeared to him in a dream. 

It was all resplendent with light: it had six beautiful wings, but neither feet nor head nor tail, and could be likened to nothing.
“What art thou?” said Memnon.
“Thy good genius,” replied the spirit.
“Restore to me then my eye, my health, my fortune, my reason,” said Memnon; and he related how he had lost them all in one day. “These are adventures which never happen to us in the world we inhabit,” said the spirit.
“And what world do you inhabit?” said the man of affliction.
“My native country,” replied the other, “is five hundred millions of leagues distant from the sun, in a little star near Sirius, which you see from hence.”
“Charming country!” said Memnon. “And are there indeed no jades to dupe a poor devil, no intimate friends that win his money, and knock out an eye for him, no fraudulent bankrupts, no satraps that make a jest of you while they refuse you justice?”
“No,” said the inhabitant of the star, “we have nothing of what you talk of; we are never duped by women, because we have none among us; we never commit excesses at table, because we neither eat nor drink; we have no bankrupts, because with us there is neither silver nor gold; our eyes cannot be knocked out because we have not bodies in the form of yours; and satraps never do us injustice because in our world we are all equal.”
“Pray, my lord,” then said Memnon, “without women and without eating how do you spend your time?”
“In watching,” said the genius, “over the other worlds that are entrusted to us; and I am now come to give you consolation.”
“Alas!” replied Memnon, “why did you not come yesterday to hinder me from committing so many indiscreations?”
“I was with your elder brother Hassan,” said the celestial being. “He is still more to be pitied than you are. His Most Gracious Majesty the Sultan of the Indies, in whose court he has the honor to serve, has caused both his eyes to be put out for some small indiscretion; and he is now in a dungeon, his hands and feet loaded with chains.”
“’Tis a happy thing truly,” said Memnon, “to have a good genius in one’s family, when out of two brothers one is blind of an eye, the other blind of both: one stretched upon straw, the other in a dungeon.”
“Your fate will soon change,” said the animal of the star. “It is true, you will never recover your eye, but, except that, you may be sufficiently happy if you never again take it into your head to be a perfect philosopher.”
“It is then impossible?” said Memnon.
“As impossible as to be perfectly wise, perfectly strong, perfectly powerful, perfectly happy. We ourselves are very far from it. There is a world indeed where all this is possible; but, in the hundred thousand millions of worlds dispersed over the regions of space, everything goes on by degrees. There is less philosophy, and less enjoyment on the second than in the first, less in the third than in the second, and so forth till the last in the scale, where all are completely fools.”
“I am afraid,” said Memnon, “that our little terraqueous globe here is the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds of which Your Lordship does me the honor to speak.”
“Not quite,” said the spirit, “but very nearly; everything must be in its proper place.”
“But are those poets and philosophers wrong, then, who tell us that everything is for the best?”
“No, they are right, when we consider things in relation to the gradation to the whole universe.”
“Oh! I shall never believe it till I recover my eye again,” said poor Memnon.

The Last Question

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

Continue reading The Last Question by Isaac Asimov or hear it spoken below.

It is interesting to note that different versions of this story I have encountered state the the sun will burn for ten billion years or 20 billion years. The written story above says twenty while the spoken story says ten. I don't know what the original version said (does anyone out there?). Perhaps this reflects our changing understanding of our sun which suggests that ten billion years is more appropriate.

Can Religion Explain Prosociality and Can Science Explain Religion?

Today, a philosophical diversion on the evolution of religion. Specifically I was thinking about the metaphorical evolution of religion and the Darwinian evolution of the human mind with a predisposition to the mystical. I was reminded about this topic and a Science article from some time ago when I saw a review for The Evolution of God a new book by Robert Right. My thesis on the topic is that as long as religion infers a survival advantage upon a group then evolution will select individuals whose minds are wired to be religious; or as society changes rapidly religion itself will evolve in a cultural respect. In this recent NYRB article Can Science Explain Religion? Allen Orr reviews Right's book with positive and critical remarks, an excerpt:

 In The Evolution of God, he [Right] both surveys the history of religion and, more important, offers a new theory to explain why this history unfolded as it did.

According to Wright's theory, although religion may seem otherworldly—a realm of revelation and spirituality—its history has, like that of much else, been driven by mundane "facts on the ground." Religion, that is, changes through time primarily because it responds to changing circumstances in the real world: economics, politics, and war. Wright thus offers what he emphasizes is a materialist account of religion. As he further emphasizes, the ways in which religion responds to the world make sense. Like organisms, religions respond adaptively to the world.

More formally, Wright argues that religious responses to reality are generally explained by game theory and evolutionary psychology, the subjects of his previous books. Subtle aspects of the human mind, he claims, were shaped by Darwinian natural selection to allow us to recognize and take advantage of certain social situations. The most important of these—and the centerpiece of Wright's theory—are what game theorists call non-zero-sum interactions. Unlike zero-sum games, wherein one player's gain is another player's loss, in some games both players can win; hence "non-zero-sum." The classic example is economic trade. In a free market, trade occurs when both parties benefit from exchange (otherwise they wouldn't engage in it).

Again, this theory doesn't seem new at all. It is, to my perspective, obvious that religion co-evolved with early humans precisely because religious tendencies in a society inferred an evolutionary advantage upon the group. Wright's basic theory is that due to historical circumstance the optimal strategy suggested by game theory has moved religion towards tolerance and conciliation. Religion changed its fundamental tenants throughout history in order that it would continue to instill advantages on its society. So, then this leads to the question, does religion and the church as an institution encourage prosociality or is it a self-serving system?

The Good Samaritan [painting by Jacopo Bassano, d. 1592, copyright 2006, The National Gallery, London]

Modern society has developed into a complex system in which people must work together. A cynical perspective is that people work together only in exchange for money or services with the ultimate goal of only helping themselves. There is nothing altruistic about the interactions. Yet, altruism is rampant. Another person helping another person with no aim other than to help can be described as a prosocial act. Prosociallity is defined as the quality of being beneficial to all parties and consistent with community laws and norms. Psychologists and evolutionary psychologists are seeking the answers as to why people engage in prosocial behavior, even at a cost to themselves in certain cases. Norenzayan and Shariff explain the issue in The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality (Science 2008, a link to the article on the Science website is here. The Science link to the article will not be available to those who do not have a Science subscription. You would expect that an article about prosociality would be available to all in line with its prosocial topic, but that's situational irony for you. The direct link to the PDF posted above was from the author's web page and it may not be stable). The article abstract:

We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. We synthesize converging evidence from various fields for religious prosociality, address its specific boundary conditions, and point to unresolved questions and novel predictions.

The authors run various experiments to determine in what situations people exhibit prosocial behavior. For example they ask when the average person would stop to help someone fallen on the sidewalk. Would a religious individual be more inclined to help that same fallen person, just as in the bible parable the good Samaritan? In the authors own words:

In several behavioral studies, researchers failed to find any reliable association between religiosity and prosocial tendencies. In the classic “Good Samaritan” experiment (22), for example, researchers staged an anonymous situation modeled after the Biblical parable—a man was lying on a sidewalk appearing to be sick and in need of assistance (Fig. 1, image above). Participants varying in religiousness were led to pass by this victim (actually a research confederate) on their way to complete their participation in a study. Unobtrusively recorded offers of help showed no relation with religiosity in this anonymous context (22). Only a situational variable whether participants were told to rush or take their time—produced differences in helping rates. Other behavioral studies, however, have found reliable associations between religiosity and prosociality, but under limited conditions. In one study (23), researchers compared levels of cooperation and coordination between secular and religious kibbutzim in Israel. In this economic game, two members of the same kibbutz who remained anonymous to each other were given access to an envelope with a certain amount of money. Each participant simultaneously decided how much money to withdraw from the envelope and keep. Players only kept the money they requested if the sum of the requests did not exceed the total amount in the envelope. If it did, the players received nothing. The results showed that, controlling for relevant predictors, systematically less money was withdrawn in the religious kibbutzim than in the secular ones (23).

In the conclusion the authors of this study on prosicoalty find evidence that prosociality is a bounded phenomenon. It more likely to be exhibited in situations where it helps in maintaining a favorable social reputation within the ingroup. It seems that evolution has enforced this self-serving ingroup behavior in some cases and evolution has also enforced purely altruistic behavior in other cases. The human mind certainly doesn't evolve on human time scales so it is up to religious groups to evolve their beliefs. Hopefully religious groups can continue to move towards tolerance, but in the meanwhile atheists will wonder why we need religion to move forward at all.


References:

Norenzayan A, & Shariff AF (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322 (5898), 58-62 PMID: 18832637

Punctuation, Grammar, Style

I place content over punctuation, grammar, or style. I say who cares if their not using they're grammar correctly if your not using you're grammar correctly? Well, today I am grading students midterms and I find it amazing how some insist on using MLA style to hide answers. Why can't they just write the number down? Perhaps, because the MLA has strict rules for these cases:

• If your topic makes little use of numbers, "you may spell out numbers written one or two words" (Gibaldi 98). Otherwise, use arabic numerals. 

• If your writing contains the recurrent use of numeric statistical or scientific data, use numerals for those numbers but write out other numbers in the text if you can do so in one or two words. 

• Do not mix numbers that are spelled out with symbols, write out the term for the symbols as well. For example, write: 45%, or forty-five percent; $20 or twenty dollars.

There are times and places where formal punctuation, grammar, or style are not called for and I think those times include numerical responses and singing.

Goethe and Hemingway: Quantified

Photo by Martin C. Eisenloeffel 

Welcome to the digital Weimar. The theme: linking art and science. How does art influence science? How does science influence art? Beauty, elegance, simplicity? Lets ask Goethe, Goethe, the last great polymath!

The Perimeter Institute's Quarks to the Cosmos festival presents Quantifying Goethe. Now experience simultaneously the Penderecki string quartet's quantum computer inspired music and an excerpt from Milan Kundera's Immortality chapter 17:

Strolling down a road in the other world, Hemingway saw a young man approaching him from a distance; he was elegantly dressed and held himself remarkably erect. As this dandy came closer, Hemingway could discern a slight, raffish smile on his face. When they were separated by just a few steps, the young man slowed his walk, as if he wanted to give Hemingway a last opportunity to recognize him.
    "Johann!" Hemingway exclaimed in surprise.
    Goethe smiled with satisfaction; he was proud that he head succeeded in producing such an excellent dramatic effect. Let's not forget that he had long been active as a theatrical director and had a sense of showmanship. He then took his friend by the arm (interestingly, even though he was now younger than Hemingway, he still behaved with the indulgence of the elderly) and took him on a leisurely walk.
    "Johann," said Hemingway, "today you look like a god." His friend's good looks caused him sincere joy, and he laughed happily: "Where did you leave you slippers? And that green eye shade? "And after he stopped laughing, he said, "That's how you should come to eternal trial. To crush the judges not with arguments but with you beauty!"
    "You know, I didn't say one single word at the eternal trial. Out of contempt.  But I couldn't keep myself from going there and listening to the proceedings. Now I regret it."
    "What do you want? You were condemned to immortality for the sin of writing books.  You explained it to me yourself."
    Goethe shrugged and said with some pride, "Perhaps our books are immortal, in a certain sense. Perhaps." He paused and then added softly, with great emphasis, "But we aren't."
    "Quite the contrary,"  Hemingway protested bitterly.  "Our books will probably soon stop being read. All that will remain of your Faust will be that idiotic opera by Gounod.  And maybe also that line about the eternal feminine pulling us somewhere or other..."
    "Das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan," recited Goethe.
    "Right. But people will never stop prying into your life, down to the smallest details."
    "Haven't you realized yet, Ernest, that figures they talk about have nothing to do with  us?"
    "Don't tell me, Johann, that you bear no relation to the Goethe about whom everybody writes and talks. I admit that the image that remained behind you is not entirely identical to you. I admit that it distorts you quite a bit. Still, you are present in it."
    "No, I'm not," Goethe said very firmly. "And I'll tell you something else. I am not even present in my books. He who doesn't exist cannot be present."
    "That's too philosophical for me."
    "Forget for a moment that you're an American and exercise your brain: he who doesn't exist cannot be resent. Is that so complicated? The instant I died I vanished from everywhere, totally. I even vanished from my books. Those books exist in the world without me. Nobody will ever find me in them. Because you cannot find someone who not exist."
    "I'd like to agree with you," said Hemingway, "but explain this to me: if the image you've left behind has nothing to do with you, why did you lavish so much care on it while you were still alive? Why did you invite Eckermann to join you? Why did you start writing Poetry and Truth?"
    "Ernest, resign yourself to the idea that I was as foolish as you. That obsession with one's own image, that's man's fatal immaturity. It is so difficult to be indifferent to one's image. Such indifference is beyond human strength. One becomes capable of it only after death. And even then it doesn't happen at once, but only a long time after death. You still haven't reached that point. You're still not mature. And yet you've been death... how long, actually?"
    "Twenty-seven years," said Hemingway.
    "That's nothing. You'll have to wait at least another twenty or thirty years before you become fully aware that man is mortal and be able to draw all the consequences from that realization. It won't happen any sooner. Just shortly before I died I declared that I felt such creative power within me, it was impossible for it to disappear without a trace. And of course I believed that I would live in the image I left behind me. Yes, I was just like you. Even after death it was hard to me to accept the idea that I no longer existed. You know, it's really very peculiar. To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead."
    "And do you know how to be dead, Johann?: asked Hemingway, in order to lighten the gravity of the moment. "Do you really believe that the best way to be dead is to waste time chatting with me?"
    "Don't make a fool of yourself, Ernest," said Goethe. "You know perfectly well that at this moment we are but the frivolous fantasy of a novelist who lets us say things we would probably never say on our own. But to conclude. Have you noticed my appearance today?"
    "Didn't I tell you the moment I set eyes on you? You look like a god!"
    "This is how I looked when all Germany considered me a pitiless seducer," Goethe said with an almost grandiose air. Then, moved, he added, "I wanted you to take me with you into your future years in precisely this way."
    "Hemingway looked at Goethe with sudden, gentle indulgence: "And you, Johann, how long have you lived since your death?"
    "One hundred and fifty-six," Goethe answered with some embarrassment.
    "And you still haven't learned how to be dead?"
    "Goethe smiled. "I know, Ernest. I've been behaving differently from what I've been telling you just a moment ago. But I permitted myself this childish vanity, because today we are seeing each other for the last time," And then, slowly, as one who would speak no more, he said these words: "You see, I have come to the definite conclusion that the eternal trial is bullshit. I have decided to make use of my death at least and, if I can express it with such an imprecise term, to go to sleep. To enjoy the delights of total nonexistence, which my great enemy Novalis used to say has a bluish color."

The entire Perimeter institute performance of Quantifying Goethe is shown below. The video above is an excerpt from the 29th minute.

Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works

Image courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

The Harry Ransom Center is a bastion of books. It is a research library located at the University of Texas at Austin; I used to work there and I must say it is a bibliophiles obsession. I remember that in the labyrinth of rare book stacks the fire alarms had signs posted saying something to the effect of, 'Warning: In case of fire the oxygen in this room will be removed' and below one of these warnings a page from the days of yore had scrawled, 'No one hears you scream in the stacks'. And they were right. There are so many books, so many rooms, and so many floors that I don't think anyone would hear you scream. But the authors in those books are a silent shout at an enduring literary, scientific, and artistic history.

The center is becoming something of a paragon in its field. And it is odd to ponder why do the archives of so many great writers end up in Texas? D. T. Max discusses the question in this article from the New Yorker. They also have a picture slide show on the tools of the trade.

Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works is a current exhibition showing at the center. They don't have an extensive web exhibition up for this collection (although they do have several other delightful online exhibits), but they do have a video discussing the collection and a nifty online preview which you may spin to visualize the Coronelli Celestial Globe. Their official blurb is below.

The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, will present the exhibition "Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works," showcasing items from the center's science collection that survey some of the most important astronomical discoveries of the last 500 years.

Coinciding with the International Year of Astronomy, "Other Worlds" displays how the historical role of astronomy has come to influence the way the modern world is perceived.

With more than 40 rare editions of works by astronomers such as Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, "Other Worlds" includes works by the individuals whose ideas revolutionized astronomical thought. From Nicolaus Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus," the first text to promote a heliocentric view of the solar system, to atlases of stars and constellations, the exhibition illustrates how early hypotheses laid the foundation for modern theories of the universe and its origins.

The exhibition also features items from the Ransom Center's papers of the Herschel family, a 19th-century English family of influential astronomers, including William Herschel, discoverer of the planet Uranus, and his sister Caroline Herschel, one of the first female astronomers. Highlights from the Herschel collection include the family's catalog of thousands of stars in the universe, William Herschel's 1836 account of Halley's Comet and a handmade astronomical device for locating heavenly bodies.

"Other Worlds" also examines the range of astronomy's influence on the broader culture, reflected in depictions of the moon and other worlds in literature, photography and popular works. From Jules Verne's novel "From the Earth to the Moon" to the 1923 moon illustration guide "Hutchinson's Splendour of the Heavens," the exhibition spans genres in revealing the breadth of astronomy's impact.

Read on...

Coronelli celestial globe, ca. 1688. Photo by Pete Smith. Image courtesy of
the Harry Ransom Center.

A Dream

In a deserted place in Iran there is a not very tall stone tower that has neither door nor window. In the only room (with a dirt floor and shaped like a circle) there is a wooden table and a bench. In that circular cell, a man who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot understand a long poem about a man who in another circular cell is writing a poem about a man who in another circular cell . . . The process never ends and no one will be able to read what the prisoners write.

A Dream by Jorge Luis Borges (Translated, from the Spanish, by Suzanne Jill Levine.)

En un desierto lugar del Irán hay una no muy alta torre de piedra, sin puerta ni ventana. En la única habitación (cuyo piso es de tierra y que tiene la forma del círculo) hay una mesa de madera y un banco. En esa celda circular, un hombre que se parece a mí escribe en caracteres que no comprendo un largo poema sobre un hombre que en otra celda circular escribe un poema sobre un hombre que en otra celda circular . . . El proceso no tiene fin y nadie podrá leer lo que los prisioneros escriben.
Un Sueño por Jorge Luis Borges

McSweeney's Lists

WAYS IN WHICH SHE COULD HAVE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE.

BY JULES LIPOFF

She exposed me to excessive ultraviolet radiation, which gave me terrible cataracts.

She removed all traces of vitamin A from my diet.

She launched well-targeted projectiles at my eyes, causing severe trauma.

She poisoned me repeatedly with steroids, which over time caused the formation of a pituitary tumor that pressed against my optic chiasm severing my optic-nerve pathways.

She replaced my contact-lens solution with corrosive acid.

She unleashed upon me lab rats trained to preferentially eat eyes.

She, my ophthalmologist, botched my Lasik surgery.

She exacerbated my diabetes by replacing my insulin with Frappuccino, which led to retinal problems.

She put me under general anesthesia and surgically removed my eyes.

She altered my parents' germ-cell chromosomes before my conception so that I lack the proper genetic code to distinguish the colors red and green.

She calibrated a refraction experiment with her laser pointer that scorched my retinas.

Other great lists from McSweeney's to enjoy:

CREATIONIST
ASTRONOMERS POLLED
REGARDING PLUTO'S
STATUS.

ACTUAL EMAIL USERNAMES
GIVEN BY STUDENTS IN
INTRODUCTORY ASTRONOMY
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA.

THE DEPLOYMENT
OF CONCEPTS FROM
THEORETICAL PHYSICS.