Temas literarios (notas de historia de la física)
BRAINSTORMED NOTES
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¿Que es estar, navegar, en los "confines de la racionalidad"?
-positivimo, progreso... El explorador que esta en el acto de descubrimiento, en el borde de lo inexplorado (y como decia Corcuera, a veces en el borde de dentro, a veces en el de fuera).
-paranormal... aquello que la ciencia no es capaz de atrapar, pero parece que fuera posible atraparlo. Aqui vease Brian Josephson, antiguo premio Nobel, o Freeman Dyson, por poner un par de ejemplos.
-politico... The use of all the science is to justify the reality, the convention, and the goal of the scientific action is to defy conventions. An amazing contradiction. Reality needs to tell us that it is complete, that there is nothing more there. While the "reason in march" keeps destroying this pretension.
VIGNETES (with some french emphasis)
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
"Cuanto a los ojos hundida en vileza la vida humana
yacia por tierra del peso de la Religion abrumada
la cual de alla de los cielos la gran cabeza asomaba,
colgando en horrenda vision sobre los mortales su carga,
fue un hombre griego el primero que se atrevio cara a cara
los ojos mortales a alzar y a hincar ante ellos la planta;
que a él ni rumores de dioses o rayos ni con amenazas
del cielo el rugido arredró, sino tanto con mas denodada
virtud le aguijó en en el ánimo, a que las prietas cerrajas
que puso a sus puertas natura el primero quebrar anhelara.
Asi que su vivido aliento vencio..."
-From "De Rerum Natura" ("De la reality"). A good title for a film. And suprising survival of the ancient science: as poetry. (Or not so surprising. there is a old sumerian poem about seven plants, seven goodnesses).
Bourbaki
A genuine frenchman, the myth of Nicolas Bourbaki is middle way between a secret society and a hereditary superhero, say, the Zorro or the classical african Phantom. It was born as a group, in theory it does not exist anymore except for a standard seminar in Paris. But from time to time, Bourbaki publishs a new book. A man who was Bourbaki, Andre Groethendiek, the son of a revolutionay, remains hidden somewhere in the Pyrenees, just waiting for his final rest. One of the founders, Weil, the brother of Simone, did his main research while jailed as desertor. Perhaps Alain Connes wears the mask of Bourbaki now.
Persistence
Most Nobel prizes in particle physics can be adscribed to an ininterrupted chain of master and disciple descending from Otto Mencke, the friend of Leibnitz, who founded the first german journal of scientific enquiry. The thesis work of Mencke, by the way, was about Epicurus and the Leviathan.
Materialism
The doctoral thesis of Marx was about Democritus and Epicurus.
Isaac Barrow
In 1659, a strange, undefined travel, to Constantinople and the East. Where the last Archimedian manuscripts were found in the XIXth century. Atacked by pirates in the mediterran; his ship burnt in Venice, he gets a paranoia of papist conjuration and returns by land to Cambridge, via Germany. A few years lated, differential calculus is "discovered" by Newton and Leibnitz, at Cambridge and at Leipzig, at the same time.
Incidentaly, the scientific ancestry of the fathers of Quantum Mechanics, including most Nobel Prizes, can be traced back to the school of Leibnitz, up to 1668. And all the first works at these age were already around the greek atomic theory, Epicurus and all that.
At Barrow death (opium overdosis), Newton expunges and catalogs his library. There was thre different editions of Lucretius.
Transustantiation
A Italian scholar maintains that Galileo prosecution was due to his defense of atomism: that the aristotelic physics was more adequate to justify how Crist was in the bread, while the external characteristic were still, well, just bread.
(NOTE: a-tom==in-dividua. Also, first infinitesimal calculus was called "theory of indivisibles". Lucretius says, "indiuisibles idem atque inuisibiles sunt")
Cecile Morette.
A girl studyng physics in the post war France. Lacking teachers, she is forced to travel from a country to another to get her classes. At the end, she will rent a small farm house in the Mont Blanc so all the teachers will come there from other countries. Freeman Dyson, a character on himself has, a enthusiast description of the first years.
Bretch Galileo
B Bretch wrote the Galileo while staying in Copenhagen with the quantum physicists; but it was never shown in stage until New York. The final page of the play is terribly pesimistic... and accurate.
Verne
On the contrary, he is the model of optimism. Yes, he is afraid of the risk of weaponery (er, when in german hands). But he also sings the excelence of the modern holed brick.
Places
Some scenarios are terrific. Cecile school at Les Houches, les Calanques at Marseille, the old ETH (but no the new) at Zurich, the Winter School at Karpatz, the Vietri school at Salerno Bay. A cementery in Gottinga. The legend of Zichichi at Erice, Sicily.
Dreams
Can measurements be done in a dream? (and calculations? well that is Kekule. What about computer calculations?)
Money notes
The retired 10 pound note had a representation of the Royal Institution Chritsmas Session for children, inagurated by Faraday but still being done every year.
Marie Meurdrac
Very in the same way that the last alchemist (except Fulcanelli, if you want) goes to work in England with Boyle. There in France the last witch, Marie Meurdrac, converts to the scientific language and in 1666 she translates her grimoire to modern chemical terms.
Archimedes at Lille
The lost work of Archimedes, the Method, was stolen again at the start of the XXth century. Bought and hidden by a family clan at Lille, in the secrecy of a few local erudites, not even told to other visiting experts on presocratic knowledge. But only one half of the Method is preserved in the palimpsest.
Alchemists
From the internet, I know and I have met some alchemists; usually old men looking for an entertaining puzzle for their last years. No afraid of mercuric poissonment or similar problems.
Alchemy is an art rejected between esoterists because it asks for experimental proof: if you are truly illuminated, uplifted soul, then you can transmute mercury into gold. No metaphorically.
Rudy Rucker:
"We're living in a draft version of the universe—and there is no final version. The revisions never stop"
Alain Connes.
At the cafe room in Les Houches, asking the students to bring their musical instruments and trying a sort of jam session... asking me to recitate, because of my funny voice, and still not being irritant but nice!
Laurent Nottale
One of the outcasts, perhaps the more popular in France. Akin in some sense to Julian Barbour (England?), very deep in physics, but not doing their homework in mathematics.
"Doing the homework" is the real label between the stableshiment. We cultivate scientist in our schools according homework, not according intuition. So the ones in the cusp are the better ones solving problems, not the better ones looking for questions.
NO THEMES
The Bohr Heisenberg meeting for WWII
It is a no theme. It has been exploited in the Strand, small 3-persons play. Not easy in the documental plane, and no benefit from the confrontation of characters.
Slizard, Teller, the nuclear fusion bombs,
It is also a no theme. Old fashioned, secrecy etc. Paul Newmam did the point, and it is not possible to go beyond.
IMAGINARY SCENES
A country (paisan) village, but with some scientific knowledge. For instance, someone distilles pechblende to get heat, in a nuclear reactor installed inside a wood heater.
In the same mood, the retired scientist myth, expoited in films as Calabuch (for physics) or Año Mariano (for chemistry).
Sangri-la: Time ago, a policeman was asking for the documentation to some friends. A girl, peacefully, answered: "¿Documentation? It is already a long time that I do not play this game". Then the police ignored her and went to ask the next person.
APPROACHES
The two traditionally exploited themes are around the concept of progress, either the heroic personality initially misunderstood but finally triunphant, or the malvada corporation which is destroying the planet to get benefits from some scientific advance.
The contradiction: doubt is the real motor of science, but reality uses the stablished Science as a carrier of certainness, and then of inmobility. This is inherent to every language: it is the fluid "reason in march", the action that destroys stablished tyranny, but at the same time it is the solid set of consensual meanings building the reality.
Vendetta: The classic theme of the mad scientist is not about conquering the world, but about showing the validity of his theory. The vendetta against the stablishment is because they have neglected him. But it is also because of the desire of truth. Some of this revenge is in the backpack of revolutionary scientists: at the end the revolution is not guided by goals, but pushed by rage.
Gandalf the craven, Jerry Cornelius, Benjamin Lazarus: a character secondary to the main action, but whose presence announces that something is going to happen. Kind of helper some times, of espectator in other occassions, always wandering from one place to another.
REAL SCENES.
Most of my classroom colleagues score for real scenes. But this is a pity, if we can not do anything more imaginative that real life.
Asking Berta in the Lab, about her next steps after getting her permanent position. While wearing the white gloves and preparing some poissonous glur for the cryostat, she insinuates that she is going to be forced to repeat one time and another the same experiment, because the boss controls the laboratory installment. She left the next month.
Also Carmela left some months ago for Madrid. The collagues did not perceive it, but last time I found it, she was not taking the effort of turning the head to see me while speaking. Unknown to many, she is blinded in one eye, and in this way it was clear she was tyred. As Dr Martinez last time I saw in, then he asked: "So you still are getting fun of it, are you?"... (Yep I am, and I am furious about how my colleagues are being driven to die slowly).
MAS VIÑETAS cuadros &c.
Mirando cualquier producto, ej una botella de whiski. "--Casa establecida en 1827, dice. Bendito siglo XIX. Ciencia y Mercado".
"--Mercado, mercado mercado... que los alambiques ya los intuia Maria la Hebrea..."
Una oficina, un laboratorio o un taller informatico, en un contenedor en un puerto de Amsterdam o Le Havre. Incluso dos contenedores conectados por escaleras. (ah, aquel despacho del sotano de la complutense, entrando con escalera de caracol -- se podria tapar con una caja, si existiera aun). A una mala, contenedor o vagon de mercancias de una estacion de tren (hmm la estacion de Navaleno. O la estacion podria ser la propia base de la "comuna". Incluso con trenes por la via abandonada).
-¿Como funciona?
-Es un mecanismo de Heron, o de uno de los suyos. Se calienta el deposito cerrado, y la presion del vapor empuja el agua hacia arriba, hacia el deposito superior. Muchos creen que el agua sube hirviendo, pero justo se trata de lo contrario, de que este a menos de 100 grados cuando pasa a traves del cafe?
-¿Heron tomaba cafe?
-Ah, no! En el diseño original, cuando el agua llegaba a cierto nivel, una boya abria la puerta del templo. El deposito inferior se ocultabe bajo el altar, y asi la puerta se abria magicamente al calor del holocausto.
-astuto
-se dice que el templo tenia tambien unas cabezas silbantes, asi como diciendo "shh, guarda el secreto". Podria ser el escape del vapor al final... (aqui suena la cafetera).
-¿el secreto del mecanismo?
-o el de la tumba de Alejandro... O cualquier rareza de Beta. TIpos curiosos, los academicos.
-¿sabes?, a veces me quedo mirando todas esas estatuas del Ateneo.
Hardware libre. El gremio de torneros, para empezar.
un paquete o algo recibido via un numero de una empresa por catalogo. O de venta por telefono, si los almacenes de catalogo no se entienden fuera de UK.
villancico: "pues siendo infinito, finito se hiciera" como musica de fondo en algun sitio
guarino guarini 1624-1683
Author: Barrow, Isaac, 1630-1677 Title: Lectio reverendi et doctissimi viri D. Isaaci Barrow beatæ memoriæ [microform]: in qua theoremata Archimedis De sphæra & cylindro, per methodum indivisibilium investigata, ac breviter demonstrata exhibentur
Londini: Typis J. Redmayne, prostant autem apud J. Williams ... D. Pauli, & J. Dunmore ..., 1678
[5], 22 leaves of plates Notes: Reproduction of original in Bodleian Library
Microfilm: Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1970. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm. (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 343:4)
References: Wing B936 Subjects: Archimedes. De sphaera et cylindro
Geometry--Early works to 1800 Series title: Early English books, 1641-1700; 343:4 Location: [Univ. Lib.] B125:2.9.Reel 343:4
Qui multum studierit in librus philosophorum pronosticat
vigiliam maniam vel melancoliem
que el que no seamos individuos no significa que seamos todos
un sol oente, que podriamos ser dos o tres o cuatro y ademas
peleados. Anda por ahi el origen del temor de un creyente
cuando se encuentra a un ateo.
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El vuelo interno en gran bretaña esta rodeado de gente de consultores de corporaciones. Lo que viene a ser a la empresa del siglo XIX, me temo, como la ciencia actual a la del XIX. Informes deprimentemente innecesarios, rellenados mediante la tecnica de cajas vacias que describe Ferlosio, a base de objetivos, oportunudades, hechos clave, personal clave, loquesea clave, opciones, blah blah blah blah. Alguno hay, parece, que se escapa a estos informes y usa lapicero y cuaderno folio con pauta suave.