UX 2020?

We are not only "users" of life. But it is still interesting to view life through the lens of user design (UX), and to think about the design of the spaces we create around us - even where this design leaves empty spaces. (Empty spaces in the Montessori method; empty spaces in the Japanese garden...)
Mostly where I like design is where it involves consideration of others: processing what one thinks one knows to share it. Understanding that sharing is not simply spitting out, but creating an environment for reception.
And to in turn seek out environments where others are sharing. Otherwise "others'" realms of thought and/or activity can seem impassable, opaque, forbidding. What has helped me relate more to the tech bubble that has been late to reach my latter-day place of abode has been to try to listen to what tech workers and designers are saying. Seeking out conscientious contributors.
And indeed, such people are surrounded by environments shaped by lines of inquiry that can overlap one's own (and to what an extent...)
Here is an example of two such figures, Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen, who wrote a post I know will interest you: "How Can We Develop Transformative Tools for Thought". The authors are great names in the tech industry. The paper overlaps so many thinkers I am drawing on in my own work - and I would be so curious to see if this will be true for any of  you, too, from different angles. I am guessing that, if you are stopping by this blog, you are also interested in thought ... and meaning.

Source, by Daniel Oliva Barbero

It would be reductionist to paste any single meaning over tech advancements of recent decades (which are so impressive: without even going into the details, consider the ability to process over 25 billion events in an hour). At the same time, some of the critique offered by Lewis Mumford, remains prescient: "He who does not see the choices in the development of the machine merely betrays his incapacity to observe the cumulative effects." I think that the authors of the article above would agree with this sentiment.
The tool can quickly become reductionist.
I might have lost appreciation of this had I not "gone Linux" this year (Windows is too expensive for my wages/salary). This move also caused me to lose Scrivener, with the coherent draft of my book and so in turn I have plunged into exploring "org mode". Both of these experiences made me feel (as corny as it sounds) like that film about the man who thought his life was a game show until he broke through to the other side. I doubt I fully watched it, but in my memory, a man suddenly walks around in a world of colors he could only have dreamed of before then...
What some people might find to be the decision fatigue of Linux, I suddenly find myself truly engaged with my computer and feel it to be my tool.
It's like how I have a deep need to keep this blog interface the way it is though I am not sure if it translated well to mobile presentations. If it did, what an incredible job the Google engineers and programmers are doing to allow for multiplicity.
My computer is now shaped just how I want it. And org mode! It reminds me of childhood adventures with Apple IIe; its epithet as being the Swiss Army knife of programs is well-deserved. I must admit that I may be breaking my computer as I learn (I have entered terminal - where one enters code - to do things I did not fully understand more than once), I have not had this much fun using a computer since the Apple computer I once battled to get time on. There were games for children to learn programming: I remember one about selling lemonade, or another to make text display and move in desired directions.
Which is a fancy way of saying that unless we are engaging with the processes around us, they are not fully engaging us and we run the strange and converse risk of being used by them.
But of course, many people have said that better, many times before now. The point here will be to conclude by wondering aloud what kind of experiences we are building around us with the tools that we have. I know that I have become a better and more focused person through my experience designing networked learning and developing the STS (science and technology studies) of my quondam dissertation. There are a lot of problems in 2020. But there are also tools. (The girl in the picture below does not know what she is missing by not being taught the code behind the interfaces she is now accustomed to...)

Source, techlicious

Neither Catechism Nor Multiplication Table

The title is from A. E. Housman's "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", in which Housman explains that textual criticism is more like an art than a science. Where scientists or doctors can test their theories with experiments or by noting visible effects, "the discovery merely of better and older MSS. than were previously known to us is not equally decisive". He proceeds to give specific examples of the dangerously arbitrary categorisations that are made about the quality of manuscripts, explaining that were such generalisations to be stated in concrete terms, the arbitrariness would be spotted immediately, no less by butchers and grocers, who are comparatively more thoughtful than arbitrary textual critics - as they "depend on their brains for bread". His jokes aside, Housman suggests that the way out of this mess is to "collect and compare" individual readings, and "not to ride easily off on ... false and ridiculous generalisation[s]". In other words, thoughtful textual criticism essentially works on a text-by-text basis (though this feeds back into the bigger picture, to create a more accurate general understanding) [1]. Readers of this blog, or blogs like it, may already be thinking of how much this approach resembles Auerbach's, in Mimesis.
Thus, even once philology ceases to be primarily interested in manuscripts, and becomes concerned with different sorts of comparison - let us call it "the historical experience", a "true philological" approach may be defined as an art: involving both an appreciation of rules as well as the readiness to descend into the complexities of myriad particularities, collecting and comparing. Housman writes that a nascent flair for this art is desirable - and we may note that Auerbach was praised for possessing just such a gift. Also important, however, is the habit of thought, which, while no substitute for an aptitude for textual criticism, can minimise error, Housman writes.

This approach is not a science. To illustrate, Housman considers rules vs. examples, methodically arguing that it is the weight of what appear to be exceptions to rules, and not their number, that must, on a case-by-case basis, be "ascertained by classification and scrutiny". It cannot be a science, because its subject matter is the product of the fallible (not hard-and-fast) human being:

It deals with a matter not rigid and constant, like lines and numbers, but fluid and variable; namely the frailties and aberrations of the human mind, and of its insubordinate servants, the human fingers. It therefore is not susceptible of hard-and-fast rules. It would be much easier if it were; and that is why people try to pretend that it is, or at least behave as if they thought so. Of course you can have hard-and-fast rules if you like, but then you will have false rules, and they will lead you wrong; because their simplicity will render them inapplicable to problems which are not simple, but complicated by the play of personality.

This is the lesson of what the humanities, as opposed to the sciences, can share. We are to remember human fallibility, and appreciate that science is not the best tool for more accurate understandings of things human. Of course, this is not just the idea of the philologist - although it is fascinating to me that it is possibility the influence of the philologist (Auerbach) that shaped Gadamer's philosophical magnum opus Truth and Method, for making this very point (we remember, too, that he briefly opined in the book that he had not written it sooner to argue against false objectivism in a timely fashion). This idea of the trickiness and case-by-case discernment of the human experience is part of Plato's Socratic elenctic questioning, dialectics.

To shorthand a conclusion to this post, I will refer yet again to how Jowett describes Plato's Phaedrus as a "picture, not a system". What is more, he notes that Plato "works freely" in his writing, meaning, "which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always be determined". Science is not appropriate here: knowledge is reached through "many preparations and oppositions, both of the characters of men and aspects of truth, especially of the popular and philosophical aspect; and after many interruptions and detentions ... we arrive at ... knowledge. This is an aspect of truth which was always lost almost as soon as it was found, and yet has to be recovered by everyone for himself who would pass the limits of proverbial and popular philosophy," Jowett writes.
Finally, as an educator in today's world, I would like to point out the ubiquity of the popular - with its watered-down platitudes, laid down like (psuedo-) scientific law, like: do what it takes to get where you want, which is hardly an ideal civic ethics. In contrast to this, is Auerbach's retort to accusations that he was not methodical enough in Mimesis, and bogged down in too many particularities to be appropriately scientifically philological: "If it had been possible, I would have avoided all general terms and instead suggested ideas to the reader by the mere presentation of a sequence of passages".
Neither catechism nor multiplication table, textual analysis requires engagement of the individual in a case-by-case evaluative dialectics if one cares even the slightest about the truth of the matter (and has a flair for it: cf. can discernment be taught?)

Book in background: Boucher's 20,000 Years of Fashion. Brush: Ewansim via Deviantart.

[1] cf., "The MSS. are the material upon which we base our rule, and then, when we have got our rule, we turn round upon the MSS. and say that the rule, based upon them, convicts them of error. We are thus working in a circle, that is a fact which there is no denying; but, as Lachmann says, the task of the critic is just this, to tread that circle deftly and warily; and that is precisely what elevates the critic's business above mere mechanical labour."
Post Script: at some point, I will need to change the labels of these posts. In preparation of that, and to that end, for my convenience, I am linking here to all posts I was able to find that mention Gadamer's Truth and Method: experience-experiment; interiority-nonsense; facts-of-fiction; hands-of-tongue; beyond-myth.

Brazen Giant with Conquering Limbs

The title is from Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus", which was excerpted in Knopf's poem-a-day series in a passage from Esther Schor's Emma Lazarus. The passage reminds us of the initial mockery that greeted the monumental Liberty Enlightening the World, which bears in its title and land of origin the French ties to the New World. I think these ties highlight the problem behind contemporary claims to "world citizenship", which are levelling in their shared, "enlightened" philosophy.
While it appears that civilization has reached a philosophical ideal, I would argue: not so fast. Auerbach, in "Philology and Weltliteratur" explains a point that extends beyond literature, and which I will paraphrase for this larger context: the point of being a "world" citizen ceases to be "at once realized and destroyed" once this "world" is a standardized world that speaks a single literary language.
I got the impetus to write this post, which has been a long time coming (and will likely spill into further posts), after reading a post on this topic by a blogger I really admire. The post is nominally called "The Man from Nowhere" - but this formulation is a riposte to the Theresa May comment that, "If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere." It is important to clarify the provocation behind the post, because I am sure many will therefore question why I am taking issue with it. But I do have a point of contention: namely, world citizenship, in my understanding and experience, is less something that can be claimed than it is aspirational - read: ideal. Once it is claimed, it is levelled, beneath a "brazen giant with conquering limbs".
Tension and disagreement must remain: this is a prerequisite for "fruitful discourse", which is to be differentiated from "imposed uniformity" (I use Auerbach's terms). Plutarch's Socrates says he is a citizen of the world, wherein world is defined as comprising universal truths; but knowing Socrates' view on the attainment of truth, we should be wary of the implications of this affiliation.

It is no accident that the post on the topic of world citizenry that I took issue with was posted by a scientist (specifically, a historian of science).
Christopher Prendergast, in "The World Republic of Letters" explains that the enlightened 17th and 18th century "literary republic" - which, I'll add, often stands as the ideal of world citizenry called on to this day - comprised scientists and philosophers, and not writers and poets, which, I need to emphasize, is critical to recognize. Jebb, for example, writes in "Humanism in Education" : "there is a danger lest analogies drawn from studies conversant with different material should be pushed too far, and what is called the scientific spirit should cease to be duly tempered by aesthetic and literary judgement". Prendergast also emphasizes that these scientists of the "literary republic" were engaging in scientific dialogue, in which national characteristics were irrelevant.
That said, I don't think that co-mmunication can be possible without the existence of universals, which are what sentient human beings aspire towards. But expecting that they are a birth right or something some of us can call on from our global family legacy is presumptuous. From a cultural perspective, even natives can feel alienated from fellow natives; even those who ostensibly share the same universal beliefs can feel alienated through the manifestation of those beliefs.
It is important to distinguish ideals from reality; it is important to distinguish the universal from the standardized lest we are to be conquered by giants of our own making.

Brush: Misprinted Type.

Shock Value

Heidegger's words are stinging in my ears: "Everything looks as if it were genuinely understood, genuinely taken hold of, genuinely spoken, though at bottom it is not; or else it does not look so, and yet at bottom it is." He writes in Being and Time (217) about an ambiguity that disempowers us, tempts us into a groundless floating. "Idle talk" and the "public" confuses and distracts us...so it is that we think we know what we do not, and vice versa.
As I think about this, though, I wonder at how much bombast has obscured some souls throughout the ages, warranting several passages even in Longinus' centuries'-old On the Sublime. Leaving aside the wonderful examples he criticises (which remind me of Aristotle's criticism of some verse: to my nescient eye, sometimes this verse has merit - though "vomiting to heaven" does sound "burlesque"), he writes, "Such expressions, and such images, produce an effect of confusion and obscurity, not of energy; and if each separately be examined under the light of criticism, what seemed terrible gradually sinks into absurdity."
Longinus attributes these faults in writing to "the pursuit of novelty in thought". The attempt to "apply this principle to literature" is the cause of success and also failure. Longinus differentiates between "the true and the false sublime". It seems to me that man keeps rewriting such manuals, updated to the latest sophistry, following the novelty factor. An earlier example could be Plato's Euthydemus, which juxtaposes eristics (the practice of refuting any argument) with elenctics (Socratic questions that promote what is today called autonomous learning). Socrates says of those who would criticise the two brothers who demonstrate eristics although these critics would be unable to hold their own in conversation with them that they have "colour rather than truth" (305e). Yet one might observe this same "colour" in the brothers in Euthydemus: they "care not a straw for what they say, but merely fasten on any phrase that turns up" (305a). We remember Heidegger: "Everything looks as if it were genuinely understood". It is not understood but it has colour: it is not the voice of the philosophical initiate who can converse with novelty, even at the expense of looking stupid sometimes (Longinus explains the inevitability of such), to ultimately expose any legerdemain.

Legerdemain means to be sleight of hand, quick to perform a trick. And maybe Plato plays one on us - for the man Socrates criticises at the end for having colour, not truth and for being half-versed in everything and so not well-versed in anything bears the same traits as the two brothers, who he describes in the beginning of this dialogue as "all-round sportsmen" who have acquired "such a faculty ... for wielding words as their weapons and confuting any argument as readily [272b] if it be true as if it be false". Still, Socrates finishes this passage by saying: "However, we ought to be indulgent towards their ambition and not feel annoyed, while still judging them to be what they actually are. For we should be glad of anyone, whoever he may be, who says anything that verges on good sense, and labours steadily [306d] and manfully in its pursuit." Emphasis added: there is to be some criteria, acknowledgment of the existence of the legerdemain.
Gadamer writes, "a sharp distinction needs to be drawn from mere trick and legerdemain. Even in them something is to be understood. It can be conceptualized; it can be imitated. It even tries to be adept and good. ... The dividing line between a work of art and piece of artifice may be quite fluid, and often contemporaries may not know whether the charm of a production is a mere trick or artistic richness."
An illustration of what may require such discernment could be Sokal's Hoax, which I admittedly have only read around, and which seems to be encapsulated in the title of a book Sokal co-wrote after writing a fake paper that was actually published in a journal although it was a satire seeking to expose Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science.

I read scientist Steven Weinberg's assessment and was struck by one passage: "I don't mean to say that this part of Sokal's satire was unjustified. His targets often take positions that seem to me (and I gather to Sokal) to make no sense if there is an objective reality. To put it simply, if scientists are talking about something real, then what they say is either true or false. If it is true, then how can it depend on the social context of the scientist? If it is false, how can it help to liberate us? The choice of scientific question and the method of approach may depend on all sorts of extrascientific influences, but the correct answer when we find it is what it is because that is the way the world is. Nevertheless, it does no good to satirize views that your opponent denies holding."
(How reminiscent this is of the "method" Socrates professes to learn in Euthydemus, where he is instructed to answer to the meaning he conceives in the words even though he cannot tell what he is being asked 295b-.)
The issue at stake, the social and the scientific, is important, particularly because a unity has been claimed, even though not so long ago, C. P. Snow reluctantly assessed there were "two cultures", literature and science, giving many arguments as to their mutual alienation. He concludes by arguing for social truth, which brings us back to Plato's Socrates. Or Heidegger's warning that we understand what we think we do not and vice versa. Where is the trick - we know there will be a school of such: it is illustrated in Plato and Longinus and cautioned against in Heidegger and Gadamer.
We know it will be manifest in the language, and will attempt to say something new and even attempt to astound. Just like any good metaphor, one might add, the trick aspires to be the mistake that sets things right. Or maybe the metaphor is just a mistake!

Longinus, pre-echoing Heidegger, as it were, writes of the importance of loftiness of the soul (viz. "venturesome souls") and cites an example from Plato: "They, therefore, who have no knowledge of wisdom and virtue, whose lives are passed in feasting and similar joys, are borne downwards, as is but natural, and in this region they wander all their lives; but they never lifted up their eyes nor were borne upwards to the true world above". A characteristic of writing that "takes a strong and lasting hold on the memory" is the poetical image which is "designed to astound". Longinus continues: "When we survey the whole circle of life, and see it abounding everywhere in what is elegant, grand, and beautiful, we learn at once what is the true end of man’s being ... he keeps his hommage for what is astounding".
That may be man's promise. But he also warns of the "gorgeous exterior" that is a "mere false and clumsy pageant, which if laid open will be found to conceal nothing but emptiness". Accordingly, this phrase should induce some sort of shock - like the violent encounter of enemy soldiers from which the word "shock" derives. There is value in that which is laboured "steadily and manfully" but the question is to whom the value goes. Maybe, in the strange economy of language, with its legitimate worldly exchange rate, it goes to everyone.

Science and Writing

"The place scientific writing might claim among the corpus of imaginative writing zoned off as literature by unstable rules for admission and rejection is a strong one, allowing for inevitable airs of condescension from the protectors of letters," writes Guy Davenport in Geography of the Imagination. I was thinking about this last week as I read through writing by Einstein, Russell—even Edison's diaries. There is a practical side to their works, like Russell writing that he would disagree with philosophers who think that words should not be connected with facts but remain in a pure, autonomous world. This pragmatism is often reflected in some acknowledgement of the golden mean, as in Russell writing: “I am convinced that intelligence, patience, and eloquence can, sooner or later, lead the human race out of its self imposed tortures provided it does not exterminate itself meanwhile.” 
Davenport's interest in concrete scientific writing is in its verbal precision, which he says goes disregarded due to a current "delinquency" among teachers and students who dismiss this literary quality as "scientific jargon". 
Verbal precision means having seen something to begin with, and to see is to avoid generalisations and approach the specific; to look at something until its qualities become apparent. We learn from Davenport that some people call this being "scientific." Which is perhaps fair, because this was implied in much Victorian literature, including George Eliot's Middlemarch, in which seeing with precision is associated with science:

Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match-making will show a play of minute causes...

This "microscopic" viewing has its precedent, say in Lucretius in The Nature of Things, who sees not through a microscope but through inference:  "Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in, / Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know, / That moisture is dispersed about in bits / Too small for eyes to see."
Interestingly, both Middlemarch and Nature point to mysterious things, too, the seeing penetrates through lives to death and returns in narrative.

But there is more to reading scientific prose: it also points to achievement. Both the achievement of seeing something through to a given result (the discovery of a new law or its application) and achievement on a more general level.
One excerpt I have returned to has made it to the wikipedia page of the scientist Jovan Cvijic, who many may know from his role in the Paris Peace Conference. He writes in The Forming of Science Workers:

You should get used to constant thinking about a problem, work, profession until you find a solution. There are bright moments, especially bright nights, which are rare; where you can find an answer to a question or come up with a research plan. That time of spiritual lucidity and creativity should be put to use, and not thinking about rest according to that ordinary human, oriental laziness. That does not hurt the body, and if does hurt, the body exists in order to be spent properly.

Writing teachers expend great effort trying to impart to students that seeing is a way of life if a writer is to have a store of original observation to draw from, but the excerpt above expresses this idea so tidily. Generally speaking, scientists value "simple language"—and there are many who write in this language.
One scientist very cleanly wrote about the similarities between science and poetry: both seeking the "essence" of things, the group of facts that despite disparities is shown to be similar to something else, and how this similarity informs the facts in that group, revealing a discovery. He writes that while poetry then proceeds to dress up this essence to make it more impressive, science pursues the truth. Yet poetry can also discover truth, he argues, citing Lucretius' work as a precursor to Einstein's discovery of the interdependency of time and space.
It may be that scientific writing and literature are more similar than dissimilar, and that by considering scientific writing even as a non scientist, one may learn a useful lesson in precision and how to see. But to end this post on a grain of salt form the sea, here's Edison applying his powers of observation: "Fish seem to be rather conservative around this bay, one seldom catches enough to form the fundamental basis for a lie.  ... Everybody lost patience at the stupidity of the fish in not coming forward promptly to be murdered." 

Brush: Pugly Pixel.

Calling It, Not!

Tacitus begins his Annals with the remark that, "fine intellects" were "scared away" by "growing sycophancy" (gliscente adulatione). The Latin word conjures the servile movements of the dog, in other words something that man is not. The English word stems from a harsher Greek meaning, "false accuser, slanderer." In other words, again something that is not. Posturing, lies. The fine intellect retreats where words lose currency, which is precisely the stimulus for other intellects prepared to trade semblances and passing desires, flourishing in chaos where there is no stability on which to meaning may be built. C.S. Lewis, in The Abolition of Man, calls this the difference between propaganda and propagation.
The book contains an appendix in which the "objective truths" shared by various cultures and religions are collected in categories entitled, "The Law of Justice," for example, with subcategories, Sexual Justice, Honesty, Justice in Court, &C., or "The Law of Mercy." These laws correspond to the objective truths or values he calls the Tao, by way of shorthand - which is reminiscent of Robert Neville's "parallel sensitivities." Neither claim the cultures they are considering are the same, but argue that there are very real correspondences in man's experience or understanding of life. Lewis writes that the Tao is wrongly being put on trial by Conditioners who seek to condition mankind to ostensibly conquer nature but in actuality to make man into a raw material not to be controlled by man himself but to be controlled by nature, i.e. the appetite that is characteristic of nature.
In contrast to this is the Tao according to which values are preferred to impulses. It is like a tree "branching out ... into ever new beauties ... of application" and is in this way the Tao is something "in which to participate ... to be truly human". It is passed down from generation to generation, a measure that man can seek to live up to. It is clear in this system what man means, but Lewis writes about the modern attempt to judge these values from without, though these values can never be understood if they are to be asked for their "credentials" - they are but premises. Criticism has its place, but from within, by those living the Tao: otherwise, what looks like criticism is actually just hostility, because without participation in the Tao, there is no way to know what it is. Lewis calls the difference in criticism organic (i.e., from within) vs. surgical (i.e., from without). His criticism of the 'outside' critics' attempts to build a new system remind me of Gadamer's thorough critique of the impossibility of the objective viewpoint when applied to humanity in Truth and Method. There is no such thing as a constructed conscience; man is a subject - Lewis writes of the Tao.

The Tao is implicit even in that which is used to attack it (idealism is a fragment of the Tao "swollen to madness"), just as truth-seeking was part of science before the leading spirit of the same became to "subdue reality to the wishes of man". Man may have gained power in the plane or wireless, but he also became a target of both bombs and propaganda. He became a target due to lack of consideration of value. "When we understand a thing analytically and then dominate and use it for our own convenience, we reduce it to the level of 'Nature' in the sense that we suspend our judgement of value about it, ignore its final cause (if any), and treat it in terms of quantity."
Indeed, it is easier to play the sycophant than to be that stick in the mud who continuously stops to ask questions and reevaluate the values inherent in a situation. Yet it is precisely where humans share similar abstract orientations that stability affords the construction of meaning. Man in this instance is not abstracted (he is the Tao tree, branching out in new beauties of application) but shares an abstract vision, such as general orientation for what it means to be "good".
If there is no agreement on that, then we cannot speak of "good" workers in the workplace; the concept became redundant and is replaced by an insidious shifting landscape suited to adolatio, but this means that those getting by may not be just - or qualified for their jobs, and shoddy work will eventually emerge. I read something similar in a National Review Online article that considers the Confucian 正名, the concept of the rectification of names: "If language is not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success." And, "the demand for justice is first and foremost a demand that words and reality come back into alignment". Here is the misalignment as described by Lewis: "Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker's van: peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers."
In other words, the abstract space for growth shrinks; and within this deformed network of tsantsas, "virtue has become integration and diligence dynamism". It is an interesting claim: there is nothing wrong with integration, per se; the problem arises because it has been substituted for something it is not. The sycophant is not, in the essence of being, a dog.

Book in background: Amy Butler's Midwest Modern. Brush: Lauren Harrison.

A Likely Fable

Can we know nature through a poem or a book?  We have been left with examples of this, like in Plato's Timaeus-Critias, but also in the more basic idea of there being a "book of nature" that initially stems from Pythagoreanism, according to which it was assumed that the book of nature was written in the language of mathematics.  We note that in the Timaeus-Critias, a knowledge of mathematics is inextricably linked to the knowledge that may help man to become a better person, i.e., one not diseased by an excessive drive towards pleasure (including gluttony and exaggerated carnal activities) but who studies in order to learn what is good and how to reach it.
Hadot, in The Veil of Isis (HUP, 2006) pp. 156, writes that the Timaeus is "presented as a poeisis, that is, as both discourse and a poem, or an artistic game that imitates the artistic game of the poet of the universe, the divinity". Timaeus is scientific, philosophical, and artistic but above all it is about a beautifully-ordered universe planned and constructed by a Craftsman whose Intellect mankind is encouraged to emulate.  Perhaps one does not agree that behind the universe is a Good Idea - but who can argue with this premise when presented as a likely fable? Timaeus says that should anyone refute his discussion, "we begrudge him not the prize" (54b).  Still, the man who does not see the singularity of vision behind the universe is to be allowed to "pass" (55d).  Such is "unversed" - a play on words implying also "unskilled".
In this way, if one prefers traditional orderly narrative, one is making a political statement: preferring order and symmetry to Other.  The Other in Timaeus represents the principle of plurality.  May it be noted that plurality has its place in this universe: such as at the connection of the joints, for its presence allows for movement (74a).
Everything has its place in this account, despite man only being able to arrive at what is reasonable or likely (29c): man can at best try to unveil the meaning of the universe by composing a poem of the poem of the universe by acting with it, through mimesis.
This poetic endeavour is addressed by Aristotle in Poetics, where he writes that it is the poet's object not to tell what actually happened but what could and would happen (1451a).  Hadot cites those who consider the Timaeus ahead of its times for having a "starting point in axioms that are indemonstrable in themselves but are capable of helping to construct a reasonable and likely representation of the universe; that is, ultimately, to 'invent' it" (159).  It may not represent the world as it is but as it would appear if it were made rationally (158).  If that is true, fair enough, but we are still left with the idea that the rational is good and requires discipline (of the pleasures, etc.) and education to reach.  The former is particularly relevant for Timaeus notes that "what is good merits description more than what is evil" (87c) but who among us consistently cultivates their attention to focus on the good?  Do we dislike a good fable?

Book: Amy Butler's Midwest Modern; Brush from Lauren Harrison.

Middlemarch and Science

A while back, I mentioned I would do a post on the science in George Eliot's Middlemarch. Sadly, I read the book online, as many of us have to do for whatever reasons, and I now find the pagination of my notes no longer corresponds to the versions of the book I have bookmarked - which is to say, some of the notes are missing. This incomplete post will be but a casual assembly of passages about observation, related scientific claims on knowledge and the shortcomings therein due to the fallibility of the human medium; some examples of science used as metaphor; what science is contrasted with and two little notes about morals and narrative.
The conflation of science with the less empirically clear human subject is most obviously illustrated in the figures of doctors, of whom there are quite a few in the novel: ranging from those with little knowledge but with the tact of what to say to their patients to the ambitious and educated newcomer, Lydgate. Science, particularly through him, is shown to be up against a society that checks scientific zeal by promoting the unqualified or stymieing the advance of an impartial practice with local personal histories (106). Society in this novel is often symbolised by furniture - such as the kind Lydgate feels compelled to purchase to show his birth and to satisfy his spoiled wife, but also in offhand comments, such as, owning the 'right' furniture allows one to cultivate extreme opinions (256).
At the same time, science penetrates the language of the novel, forming part of many a metaphor. Love has symptoms (85) and is the also name of "many wonderful mixtures in the world" (221); the "hidden soul" is to be "interpreted" (117); mistakes can work at a man "like a recognised chronic disease" (437).
The theme of "watching keenly" (68) is applied throughout the novel, a paean to observation. In this way, invention which is the "eye of research" is described most scientifically as the "minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish" (120). Men are observed as if they were animals in the wild or natural phenomena, and it is noted, for example, that to see a man for the first time in his home is to recognise his "changed aspect" (123), just as the way one sees a person is not the same during courtship as it is through close companionship (143). Like the biologist reaches understanding through his observation through a microscope lens, the struggle to gain resolve through vision gains communicating power (274). It is close observation that reveals to the narrator that "controlled self-consciousness of manner ... is the  expensive substitute for simplicity" (319).

At the same time, attentive watching is not always possible for the fallible human. I will cite in full my favourite passage illustrating this point (which I cited here before):

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all  ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the  squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the  other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well  wadded with stupidity.  However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to  state the cause she could only have done so in some such general  words as I have already used: to have been driven to be more particular would have been like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows; angered by syllables from lips of near observer (143).

Other problems with humans include their quickness to imagine more than fact (147); ability to go to lengths in things without anything coming of it (203); seeking justification instead of knowledge (242); prejudices. "Prejudices,  like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle —  solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as  the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness" (321). Equally as harmful is the ego:

It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your  candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent (194)

Sight is also blurred where characters do not account for the multiple dimensions of the human character and human life (it is not only about scientific experiment in laboratories). Human weakness and failure (such as checked ambition) is derogatorily relegated to Troubadour poetry (105). The complexities of science are given more serious attention than those of love, which Lydgate foolishly thinks he had already learned about through literature and male conversation (119).
 

By contrast, Eliot depicts knowledge as "filling the vast spaces planked out of ... sight by ... worldly ignorance" (104). Just like metaphors, this knowledge is to be far-reaching, pervasive, "like gas light; learning whole and parts" (107). Dorothea's consciousness is depicted as "reaching forward ... towards the fullest truth, the least partial good" (149 - vs. anger and despondency). Miscellaneousness is presented as making the mind "flexible with constant comparison" at least in one character, who was saved from, "seeing the world's ages as a set of box-like partitions without vital connection" (156).
Thus it is still possible in this novel that is so much about science to nonetheless breach classical topics such as goodness, described as being "of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy" (237). On a side note: surely this is why Socrates was so interested in discoursing with youth: to attempt to help them protect this goodness that is harder to call upon later in life if allowed to lie dormant. Similarly, Eliot writes in defense of exploring "low" topics - which we also see in Dickens' novels given primacy (e.g. in the fuming, oily, noisy trains). Eliot's apology is one to do with narrative: a narrative which we have seen is further encompassing than the restraints of science, restrained by the narrowness of man:

PARABLES whatever has  been or is to be narrated by me about low people, may be ennobled  by being considered a parable ; so that if any bad habits and ugly  consequences are brought into view, the reader may have the relief of  regarding them as not more than figuratively ungenteel, and may feel  himself virtually in company with persons of some style (251).

Regarding what we said about the furniture of society at the beginning, and knowing that the scientific 'project' runs throughout the book if also revealing its shortcomings, the offhand remark that ugly furniture may be dignified by being lifted into the serene light of science (194) is worth meditating on in terms of the 'project' of some modern art and what it loses without the parable and by not addressing the high/low duality.

Magazine in background: Marie Claire Maison. 
Brush: Lace by webgoddess at DeviantART.

Book of Experience

One of the gems from the second-to-last edition of On the Shoulders of Giants (which will now migrate to a weekly post here) was the discovery of a blog called Conciatore written by Paul Engle about 17th century glass maker Antonio Neri, who was, as per the blog title, a "specialist in alchemy who formulated glass from raw materials".
The most recent post, a very interesting guest post by Maria Grazzi, is about how Neri was plagiarised by a Jesuit scientist - but the part I want to respond to are her describing the "'scientific' mindset" as the study of the "book of Nature" and knowledge being acquired "with the practice of many experiences" (emphasis added).
Pierre Hadot in The Veil of Isis reads the book of Nature as follows: "Bernard Silvester reserves the word integumentum to designate myths intended, as in Plato's Timaeus, to explain a natural phenomenon (they reveal a true meaning hidden beneath a fabulous story), as opposed to allegoria, which is proper to the explication of biblical texts (it reveals a new meaning in a veridical historical narration). We find this distinction again in Dante. It corresponds to an opposition between the two books written by God, the Bible and Nature, both of which can be deciphered only if one uses an allegorical exegesis, which, in the case of the Bible, refers to sacred texts and, in the case of Nature, to myths. This Nature, we must recall, was conceived in the Middle Ages as a power subordinate to God but enjoying a certain autonomy."
Hadot later notes the resurgence of viewing Nature as a language or code, signature, hieroglyph and book in the seventeenth and also eighteenth centuries (the latter in Kant, Hamann, Goethe).
There are precedents of viewing nature as a book, like in the Pythagorean view of nature as being written in the language of mathematics. One might also observe that Homer's description of Achilles' shield fabricates the world as a reduced symbolic model.
While I understand combining the study of the book of nature with knowledge of such gained through experience to describe 'science', I wonder how many scientists actually fit this simplified model.
On Engle's blog itself, we read in From Beads to Belief Reprise that not only did Neri read Psalms by way of keeping time for his extraction of colours and dying but that he made glass beads that were not only material but of spiritual value: "they served as sequential placeholders in prayer, as objects made by man in the fashion of natural stones or gems, which were physically held and invested with hopes and dreams".
Similarly, and to choose an example of a later scientist whose narrative also addresses allegoria and integumentum,  J. C. Maxwell wrote, "We may use our knowledge of such truths for purposes of deduction, but we have no data for speculating as to their origin." This complies with Engle's observation of Neri in Beads: "At first blush, it might seem that religion would be at odds with alchemy and glassmaking. In reality, practical elements of Neri's religious life integrate seamlessly with his work at the furnace and in the laboratory."

In another context, Maxwell wrote: "I would be very sorry if an interpretation founded as a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis, even if by doing so it got rid of the old statement of the commentators which has long ceased to be intelligible. The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretation, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten."
That the distinction between the 'two books' may be seamless can be seen by Maxwell explaining, "and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society."
To this very day, there are bishops ready to cite science for change or scientisimists who are ready to say that scientists cannot possibly have faith if they are to be successful.
What Maxwell writes might also be considered as advice against the trend of scientistic social interpration. I was thinking about that when I read Engle's post on Turquoise where Neri stresses the importance of experience when making the "sky blue" of turquoise: this privileging of science applies only to this very particular work in the laboratory. It does not apply to a life figured out through experience only.  Ἰωάννης τῆς Κλίμακος writes about such an approach to spiritual progress, saying this is a long (possibly uncertain) path, as opposed to learning via υπακοή - which I would describe as the leap of love, where one is devoted to the person, place, instruction not so much for what it is, but as a form of anchor to a type of flightiness that might otherwise get the better of one. (Maybe this is not an accurate description.)
Viewed as a book or books, the natural life of man contains so many rich stories. To return to Engle's blog, we learn of the 'evil spirits' of cobalt (kobald - this is particularly amusing if you are learning German here), which were the toxic fumes released in its making; the insects used in crimson dyes and for medicinal purposes from the Mediterranean and later from Mexico; the "as it is" in perspective painting and in science; trade agreements blocking access to raw materials - know-how unto itself may not always be enough, though the blog, being about alchemy, frequently stresses the rarity or non-existence of published know-how. But today, Conciatore, the blog about a book in part about the book of Nature, is to become a book. We say well done, and wonderful guest contribution by Grazzi.

Book: Midwest Modern. Brush: Ewansim tape at deviantART.

Liberating Paradox

A Tang Dynasty mirror depicts Boya playing his zither on one side and a dancing phoenix on the other, the sympathetic symmetry recalling how his friend, 知音, Ziqi, could picture what he was playing (melodies of lofty mountains and flowing water) without words being exchanged. It suggests the possibility of speaking in essences instead of words - an escape from the Lévi-Straussian binary of bricoleur vs. engineer.
According to Lévi-Strauss in Savage Mind, "the scientist [i.e. engineer] never carries on a dialogue with nature pure and simple but rather with a particular relationship between nature and culture definable in terms of his particular period and civilization and the material means at his disposal. He is no more able than the 'bricoleur' to do whatever he wishes when he is presented with a given task." Interestingly, it is the "terms of his particular period" that allow philologists to surmise the dates of works in 'science' and that delimit even the big dreams of Big Data to "the capacity of the critic to ask interesting questions."
Outside of this circuit, I place the silence that interprets. I picture J.C. Maxwell with his colour triangle and wheel - it occurring to him as a child to spin the colours round. The understanding of that triangle enables us to see images on pixelled screens, albeit with the help of regulating algorithms. Maxwell was not stuck in time, he opened one of his books with an epigraph from Plato's Republic: λαμπάδια ἔχοντες διαδώσουσιν ἀλλήλοις ἁμιλλώμενοι τοῖς ἵπποις 328a - "they carry torches and pass them along to one another as they race with the horses"; translator Shorey directs us also to Laws where life is also described as being passed on like a torch, and also to Lucretius' De rerum, where runners pass the lamp of life to one another. Accepting limitations (e.g. of the single life) while doing work may be taken as an example of a liberating paradox.
So may the paradox of the educated, elevated Boya finding in a peasant from the hinterlands one who could understand his music without prior explanation - and explain Boya's art back to him without any prepping. So many of the poems about Boya and Ziqi observe that scholars make for terrible friends most of the time - usually with further incrimination against the intellectual vulgarian (well, those are my choice of words; haughty would perhaps be more accurate). It may be paradoxical for a man of such high station as Boya's to develop such a strong attachment to the woodcutter Ziqi. But theirs is the invisible tie, what Rumi calls the longing string. A resonance of essences.

This state of 'wordlessness' is illustrated by Chuang Tzu in 外物 (13): "Fishing-stakes are employed to catch fish; but when the fish are got, the men forget the stakes. Snares are employed to catch hares, but when the hares are got, men forget the snares. Words are employed to convey ideas; but when the ideas are apprehended, men forget the words. Fain would I talk with a man who has forgot the words!"
The passage has been compared to Tao Yuanming's poem "Drinking Wine" in which he sits in his house on a busy street unperturbed by any noise when his mind is elsewhere - he could even be in the countryside plucking chrysanthemums, "In all this there is true meaning, I'd like to explain but have lost the words". He does not need words when he has already attained the state of being where his heart wished to take him - he has already illustrated this, experienced it. It is a liberating paradox to be a writer whose words are suddenly gone by the end of a poem, superfluous.
It is a funny concept: I imagine the successfully lived life as a kind of ikebana: the last stalk placed in the pot erasing any extraneous blah-blah-blahs. But work is needed for this liberation.
Recently, I received such a beautifully-printed letter from Bailey from Antiquaria, who incidentally teaches people how to write calligraphy. The repeated practice of each single letter eventually leads to script that buoys the eyes, does not drown them in scribbles. This reminds me of advice I got from a very gnarly boss from my early work days: work is a ballast. There is nothing like treating the existential despair every human is bound to experience at least once in life with the floating stability of the repetitive or absorbing task. This is a liberating paradox.

Another paradox is that of being freed by giving voice to one's feelings of suppression: a freedom of articulation if not in fact. One of my favourite examples of this is from The Book of Songs, 蕩之什, 桑柔 10, 11, 16: "Here is a wise man; - His views and words reach to a hundred li, There is a stupid man; - He on the contrary rejoices in his madness. It is not that I could not speak [all this]; - How is it I was withheld by my fear? ; Here is a good man, But he is not sought out nor employed. There is a hard-hearted man, And he is thought of and promoted once and again. The people [in consequence] desire disorder, And find enjoyment in bitter, poisonous ways. ; Although you say, ' We did not do this, ' I have made this song about you." Emphasis added. The question of how the poet was restrained by fear brings to mind Demosthenes' Philippic 3, about how aliens (like Philip) and even slaves are granted freedom to say what they wish, but Athenians themselves "have banished it utterly" not out of fear but out of the corruption of the hard-hearted, thus a war was being waged without javelin or bolt being launched (3.17). We might consider another verse from The Book of Odes 園有桃: "Of the peach trees in the garden, The fruit may be used as food. My heart is grieved, And I play and sing. Those who do not know me, Say I am a scholar venting his pride. 'Those men are right; What do you mean by your words?' My heart is grieved; Who knows [the cause of] it? Who knows [the cause of] it? [They know it not], because they will not think." Emphasis added. As recent political critique pointed out, sometimes business is valued over knowledge and experience - which is much harder to come by but is a weight that lightens the perils of transport.
Finally, an LARB article I gave much thought to recently, Deconstructing de Man in the Digital Age, shows the liberation of bringing the timeless aspects of a person's work to light. Freedman focused on how de Man had also brought to America not just deconstruction but explication de texte rooted in its comparative literature aspects in philology: a "tradition" that united Heidegger, Auerbach, Nietzsche. It may have been a paradox to find that tradition, or a fragment of it, in de Man, but a liberating one.
If where our freedoms differ there is work to be done —

Book in background. Brush.

Giants' Shoulders no. 69

It is with great pleasure that I host this edition of the Giants' Shoulders STEM carnival. For this month's theme, I have chosen  the tunnel - given that China is set to build the largest underwater tunnel in the world. There will be more on tunnels at the end of this post, once we have emerged from the only approximately arranged passageways of STEM links both accumulated and contributed to Giants' Shoulders No. 69.

* Science vs. Myths about Science, and a Deeper Look at History
Why Newton's Apple is Not a Good Story by Thony C, who also penned an article taking on more gems of historical ignorance in Oh FFS!, which explains the inaccuracy of the term Dark Ages and explains the very active role of the monastery in science of the Early Middle Ages.
On the awareness of the methodological problems of the professional historian including the point that the bad drives the good out
History: "A School of Morality to Mankind" by Juan Gomez who revisits the 18th century education of Turnbull who compared facts and instruction on virtue to experiments and conclusions in natural philosophy. 
Rehabilitating Simon Marius by Thony C with the valuable observation that not rushing off to print one's research observations may lead another, like, say, Galileo, to accuse one of plagiarism
Did 'Cosmos' Pick the Wrong Hero? by Corey S. Powell on the much blogged about TV series: this is my favourite because it is concise but gives a solid starting point for further reading, like part ii in which Powell takes to debate with AMNH's Stevn Soter - does it matter where scientific ideas come from? And Thony C takes the argument home with A Strange Defence which warns us of presentism and ends with a really useful explanation and illustration of Wirkungsgeschichte
For purposes of revision let us add here, An Alphabet of Ages of Scientific Terms, and on that note, this brief article about scientists born in February at the Science Museum Blog
Also wasn't sure where to put this: the recently published Scientific Discovery at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reviewed by Brandon Myers as including a "discussion of Whewell [which] is quite good"
And on rethinking the ways in which the scientific paper has been and should perhaps be presented today, Why Publish Original Scholarship On-line? by Michael Hendry, thought provoking if not perhaps convincing for the yet professionally unpublished scholar
* Technology and Money: War and/or Politics
Old Trains and Mesopotamia: The Outbreak of the First World War by Carl Cymrus - this article may also belong above, filed under myth-busters
A (Con)Fusion of Money and Politics by Patrick McCray, on the tortured history of fusion
Rivers as Weapons in Ancient War by Adrienne Mayor - on how enemies were flushed out, and more
60th Anniversary of Castle Bravo Nuclear Test, the Worst Nuclear Test in U.S. History by William Burr with links to related documents, "equivalent to 1,000 Hiroshimas"

* Science and Health (and Death)
Earthing Grounding Sleep Research by Matt Sutherland on curing insomnia through getting 'grounded'
Midwife or Surgeon? The obstetric choices of Quaker Women in 18th-century Leeds by The History Fox on the wide variety of those present at the birth of this close-knit circle
How to Care for a Newborn 1254 ed. Elizabeth Archibald - children wrapped in crushed roses and salt!
I thought it would spice things up to post Horse Love Pills in this section, by Laurence Totelin - those troublesome but prestigious mares of 7BCE
The First Cut is the Deepest by Paul Middleton on two engravings from the 15th century Defining Gender: "These woodcuts and engravings were also crammed full of metaphor and symbolism, which highlighted the cultural and religious frameworks in which the practice of dissection took place."
Of Quacks and Caustics: When Evidence Didn't Matter? by Samantha Sandassie - today it might matter to the RSPCA first!
The Recipes of Cleopatra by Jennifer Park on a kind of recipe not associated with women in early modern times
"Tony Megaphones": Invisible Antiseptic Eardrums by Jaipreet Virdi - what really stood out to me about this text was how it included digital images of the first hand sources, which added charm to the piece - ads from early 20th century New York newspapers! Also see her Powell's Electro-Vibratory Cure for Deafness
An Eighteenth-Century Case of Cotard Delusion? by Lisa Smith on a delusion also known as Walking Corpse Syndrome
The Syphilitic Whores of Georgian London by The Chirurgeon's Apprentice including a link to "a pocket guide to London’s prostitutes published annually starting in 1771". The post inspired a response from Jaipreet Virdi: Syphillitic Invasions of the Ear
Ramey’s Medicator: an inventor’s survival by Caro on the fascinating story of the man behind the invention of a rather curious inhaler - includes facsimiles of original advertisements
If being alive counts as health, How to Tell if Someone Is or Is Not Dead, c. 1380  as Elizabeth Archibald writes, the method sure beats checking for a pulse!
And speaking of the wish to stay alive: Longevity by Kees-Jan Schilt on Newton's later years - including balsams and strange correspondence...
Reaching death, we have The Artist of Death by Luuc Kooijmans on the Dutchman Frederik Ruysch whose anatomical preservation and dioramas of human parts figured into novels and, stranger than fiction, were meant at times to be humourous
* Stars, Space, and Time
Aristotle on Absolute Space and Time by Brandon Myers, was Newton anti-Aristotelian on some points and would Aristotle have agreed with Newton?
But to just speak of time, Thony C keeps the tradition of heated pamphleteering alive in Where does the AD/BC dating convention come from?, a post which points out the potential misdating inherent in the calendar too easily taken for granted
Calendar and Conversion by Michal Coptiany looks at the individual reasons behind arguing for a new calendar as opposed to the old and shows a 16C argument that "time is not an article of faith"
Also by Thony C, and filled with mathematical twists in plot and Renaissance calendric warping, A Double Heliocentrism Anniversary?
Darin Hayton in 17C Tory and Quaker Astrologers writes of John Gadbury with illustrations of star charts that shows how while he advocated the Baconian experimental approach to astrology he was still embroiled in party politics that predicted well for the monarchy he supported - good stuff.
John Quincy Adams' Role in American Astronomy by John E. Ventre on the unsung hero behind some of America's observatories
Einstein's Lost Theory Uncovered by Davide Castelvecchi, in which he considered something quite opposite to the Big Band Theory: the universe as expanding steadily and eternally
Albert Bierstadt and a British Physicist by Patricia Moss, who asks what the painter of nature and the proponent of science could have possibly shared in common. My answer: alpinism? Tyndall wrote books on the subject.
Romantic Science: Measuring the Blueness of the Sky by Rocio Carvajal on the cyanometer, a beautiful device (post includes a picture) that would be held up to the heavens...
Accommodating Science: Astronomy by John Wilkins ends with a great sentence the pious J. C. Maxwell would agree with and seeks to answer the question: " If science and religion do conflict, what are the points of conflict that have occurred?"
Understanding Special Relativity through History and Triangles (pt. 1) by Scott B. Weingart who, in the post linked two, explains how other physicists (mis)understood Einstein's theory at the time
Black Hole Sound Waves at NASA Science: "Sound waves 57 octaves lower than middle-C are rumbling away from a supermassive black hole in the Perseus cluster."
* Telescopes and Observatories
The Henrietta Telescope by Pillownaut: while "the spirit of exploration has no gender" this most excellent post reveals that there was a "girls' area" in what was called the "Pickering Harem" - read on for more
The Observatory and the B-29s by Will Thomas on how observatory workers were borrowed to help with air force tactics. Also connecting war to the stars, Under the Dome by Daniel Engber, on the Nazi's persecuting the inventor of the planetarium. In an opposite tale, theoretical physicist Max Planck's Letter to Hitler was Discovered, in which he pleads Hitler to spare his son's life, though his son had made an attempt on Hitler's
Who Made the Planetarium? Daniel Engber (please note NYT paywall if you are near the end of your free monthly viewing!) and similarly, 100 Years Ago: Planetarium Concept Born by Glenn A. Walsh on the success of the Carl Zeiss scientists in imitating through technology the movement of the planets
The Fight to Keep an Iconic UC Observatory Open by Glen Martin on how the fate of a perfectly good summit observatory may be eclipsed: bigger and better is not always best

* Maps, Visualizations - and Exhibitions, too
How the North Ended up on Top of the Map by Nick Danforth who shows through examining maps across time in different cultures that it is not necessarily natural that it is 
The Woman Who Mapped London's Streets into the A-Z by Zeljka Marosevic - would you believe that no one wanted to publish it at the time? also see her 16C warfare manual reveals readers were just as interested in cats as we are…but as weapons (with illustrations, nothing squeamish, fear not)
New British Library Exhibition Pays Tribute to Most Amazing Scientific Diagrams in History by Nick Clark about "how important a role picturing data plays in the scientific process" and its role in communicating science to the public and pushing through reforms, also reviewed by Rebekah Higgitt who critiques the exhibit and suggests how it might be viewed, in Information, Images, and the Imagination: Beautiful Science Exhibition Explores Data Visualization
Evolving Images of Darwinism by Lalita Kaplish on the 1860 German publication, Evolution of Household Items now available online, exploring both the amusing illustrations of Darwin's ideas in that publication and, more broadly, how 19th century mass media cartoons were used to shape popular thought on evolution.
Revealing the Georgians by Katy Barrett on the British Library Exhibition on maps of roads, drinks for the lower class, libraries, and prints - but something was missing from this depiction of 18C Britain...
* Geology, Cats and Birds, Nature, Alchemy
The Metaphysician and the Hole in the Ground: did you know that Leibniz was also into mining? By Charlie Huenemann
1895: Cats meddle in geophysics by Skulls in the Stars - nothing trivial about contemplating cats in motion! 
The Fickle Flight of Darwin's Galapagos Finches by Henry Nicholls on the collection of birds that were evidence, auctioned, a source of dispute; also related, Aussie Birds Prove Darwin Wrong by Keiren McLeonard who "investigates the curious conspiracy that has kept some of Australia's best voices out of the evolutionary spotlight" (includes podcast)
A Century in the Solomon Islands includes some beautiful pictures assembled by the American Museum of Natural History
Stormy Weather by Kate Morant who quotes Halley's 17C accounts of how storms hit ships: "the seas groe far more outragious" and the men "dishartened", decks being cleared of water - you can almost hear those waves
John Evelyn meets Raymond Chandler by Anita Guerrini who writes a beautiful post on the significance and propagation of timber, including an innovative look on the planting of foreign species; "The “paradise” of the forest was divinely inspired but made by humans." Also on John Evelyn's manuscript Sylva In Retrospect: Sylva by Gabriel Hemery
Traces of the Alchemist who Discovered the Philosopher's Stone in Paris by Sarah Blake, "It is called a stone not because it is like a stone, but only because by virtue of its fixed nature and that it resists the actions of fire as successfully as any stone."
And though this next article is about DNA, it concludes that "science erases what was formerly true" which seems transformative enough to follow the previous listing: It's No Secret The Double Helix is 61 by Nathaniel Comfort - a very readable account of some of the history of DNA, beginning with Francis Crick bursting into a pub exclaiming, "We have found the secret of life!"
* Paeans to Natural Philosophers, Their Spin Offs, et. al.
Sliding to Mathematical Fame by Thony C on William Oughtred, including the tension and excitement of " an invention waiting to happen" and "splendid pamphlet priority wars"
Ludwig Boltzmann and Statistical Mechanics by Tabea Tietz at Yovisto, which appears to be a German-based site for research that includes videos of the researchers explaining their work, on the great man and lecturer behind the k_B
Herman Hollerith and the Mechanical Tabulator at Yovisto on the physicist whose late 19C work on the Kinetic Theory of Gases was disputed, as was Boltzmann's at first, as some disbelieved in atoms and molecules 
Henri Becquerel and Radioactivity at Yovisto on accidental discoveries in radioactivity prequelling the Curies' results
In Search of Feynman's Van (book extract) by John and Mary Gribbin, "it's nice to know that something which demonstrates so clearly Feynman's sese of fun and irreverence, as well as referring to his Nobel-prizewinning work, still exists"
John Pickstone, 1944 - 2014, by Venessa Heggie, who opens: "No one becomes a great academic just by writing good books; what makes a difference is the way they teach and inspire future generations"
Sympathy for Strangelove: Kubrick's Film at 50 by Will Thomas goes into the (scientific) underlying message of the film
Leo Szilard, war criminal? by Alex Wellerstein on an unusual nuclear scientist who seems to have been better at raising the moral questions behind the discoveries
And now for something completely different: Don't Try This At Home: Scientific injuries in the Royal Society archives by Noah Moxham ... including von Humboldt braving painful voltage, it is the little things one admires in one's favourite minds

* Things: Vessels, Revolvers, Porcelain and Tin, Cigarettes, etc.
The Tablet that Altered the Story of Noah's Ark including interesting speculation by a museum expert on the shape of the vessel and when it took place, by Sandy Rashty
Tell Tull to till Until Told - the story of Jethro Tull by Mike Rendell - you will learn what a seed drill and a rock band have in common
Tin: What the World Owes this Grey Metal by Justin Rowlatt who explores its use for over 5,000 years, its affordability, rust-proof advantage, use in electronics and on ships - and answers the question: what does tin have to do with glass?
All the Parts Combined by Dan Piepenbring on Colt's poetic 1836 patent for his revolver
The (20th century) Travels of Mr. Harrison's Watch  by Rebekah Higgitt on the Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition that will feature John Harisson's prize-winning longitudinal watch, explaining the significance of the arrival of this exhibit
Who Invented the Light Bulb? by Elizabeth Palermo who remembers the "Many notable figures ...  remembered for their work with electric batteries, lamps and the creation of the first incandescent bulbs" (emphasis added)
Podcast The Man who Brought Porcelain to Europe  "At the time porcelain was as valuable as gold, so no surprise that it took an alchemist to do it"
More Doctors Smoke Camels by Johanna Goldberg who presents facsimiles of some rather surprising ads from the 1930's to 1950's - definitely worth a look even if you are not interested in smoking for its revelation of how much mores change
The thing here being things that cut in an article binding surgeons and barbers, called The twenty-eighth of February, 2014: the most unkindest cut of all by Richard Smyth
Lots of interesting posts on the technology of books and other STEM themes if not exclusively at another history carnival, Carnivalesque 101, hosted by Adam Hooks at anchora
How the Refrigerator Got Its Hum by Alice Bell on the social history of technology and the choices behind this domestic appliance
Speaking of sounds: Are Stonehenge Boulders Actually Big Bells by Robinson Meyer - apparently this story came out first a few months ago, but is gaining new coverage even with video and covered also by the Smithsonian's magazine
Medieval Candelabra Hints at Forgotten Sea Routes by Stephanie Pappas on how a bronze object atypical for Ibiza suggests shipping route
* Miscelaneous
Given the popularity of Stefan Zweig given Wes Anderson's new film apparently based on his only novel, I revisited Zweig's Conqueror of the Seas: The Story of Magellan, with such gems as: "We learn from Martin Behaim’s famous Nuremberg globe … that Indian spices had to pass through at least twelve hands before they reached the consumer" and, "Wonderful things happen in history when the genius when the genius of an individual coincides with the genius of the times". Possibly worth a peek - to be filed under how to write about the history of technology?
* Cities, Development vs. Quieter Times
Ancient Settlements and Modern Cities Follow the Same Patterns of Development phys.org, "contemporary cities as lying on a continuum of all human settlements in time and place."
Dirt or Development by Anna P. H. Geurts, on the changing mores of dirt, citing a wonderful bit by anthropologist Mary Douglas that dirt is "matter out of place".
The Past is an Unlit Country by Joanne Bailey, on unlit evenings, a perfect read to dream oneself away from the humming, LED of technology that never seems to turn off
How celestial events influenced orientation of the great constructions of the Nabataeans at phys.org - the maths in building to capture the events of the sun, moon, and stars
* More on Tunnels
Seneca's Tunnel? Or Virgil's? by Carolin Lawrence
Hadrien's Tunnel at Tivoli by David Meadows (be sure to check out his newsletter)
The tunnel below the walls of Dura Europos by Judith Weingarten
Tunnels covered by Geoff Manaugh at gizmodo.com
And finally, what of the effect of tunnels on the consciousness? An extract from The Bridge by Hart Crane:  And so   /   of cities you bespeak   /   subways, rivered under streets   /   and rivers. . . . In the car the overtone of motion   /   underground, the monotone   /   of motion is the sound   /   of other faces, also underground—

Giants’ Shoulders #70 will be celebrating the 354th birthday of Sir Hans Sloane at The Sloane Letters Blog on 16th April 2014 with Lisa Smith (@historybeagle) as host.

http://www.sloaneletters.com
https://twitter.com/historybeagle

Brush.