Unravelling the Texture of Light

Reading Todhunter on Whewell (1876), I came across the interesting phrase, "Newton unravelled the texture of solar light," which strikes the ear nicely. Todhunter doesn't explicitly tell us who is the source, but simply says it is "a favourite expression of one of the most eminent of living scientific lectures" (p. 330). I find that the expression is found in John Tyndall's lectures on radiation (1865); a similar expression is also found in his lectures on light (delivered 1872-1873). Todhunter himself borrows the expression in the section on light in his book on natural philosophy (1877). The same phrase applied to Newton's work with light is used in a review of books on the life of Newton that ultimately comes from the Edinburgh Review (1844); this review, as far as I am aware, is anonymous.

Spe Salvi

Benedict XVI put out his newest encyclical on November 30, and it's well worth reading.

Brief summary of the encyclical:

Paul says, "In hope we are saved" (Rm. 8:24). What can justify that?

The Christian faith is not merely informative but performative; it doesn't merely make things known, it makes things happen, because Christian faith involves hope, and the one with hope lives differently, with a new life.

The hope that is redemption is life with God; a good example is St. Josephine Bakhita of Darfur, and this experience is discovered as well in the early Church.

Human beings live lives in a sort of paradox; we want life to continue, for us and for our loved ones, but we don't want merely to live indefinitely. We know and yet do not know what we want, and reach out for something out of our reach. We use the term 'eternal life' to describe this 'unknown' that we want, something that would not merely be interminable but life in its fullest and most proper sense.

Christian hope is not individualistic but social; the known unknown that we seek is to be numbered among a people. But there is an idea that hope is selfish rather than social. We find the reason for this in the foundations of the modern age, in which the disturbing step is taken of trying to find salvation in a union of science and technological practice. Faith became faith in progress, and hope, which is intimately tied to faith, became perverse.

Technological progress must be matched by ethical progress; calculating reason must look beyond itself and direct the will along the right path; fully human freedom requires the convergence, based on something else, of various kinds of freedom. The point put simply: man needs hope, so man needs God.

Institutions, however important, cannot guarantee the moral well-being of the world; even the best ones can only function when people are motivated as a community to assent freely to the social order. Thus we cannot definitively establish the world of good will; free assent must be constantly won over to the cause of good, so every generation in a sense begins anew. Yet it is also the case that ever generation must make its own contribution to those institutions for good and for freedom that can serve as a guideline to the next generation.

We are redeemed by love; in Jesus Christ we can say, "I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20). This love is life, and it is communal life, for it is union with the one who gave Himself for all. Loving God, we participate in His justice and love for others. We see an example of this in the life of St. Augustine.

How, then, may we learn and practice hope? First, through prayer, prayer that is both personal and guided and illuminated by the great prayers of the Church and the saints in the liturgy. Second, in contexts of action and suffering, we can open ourselves to truth, to love, to good, and courageously place ourselves on the side of good even when it is difficult to do so. St. Paul Le-Bao-Tinh provides a useful example of this; and perhaps it would be judicious to revive, moderately and reasonably, the practice of 'offering up' the hardships we experience. Third, by faith in the Last Judgment, which is a faith in the ultimate justice of the order of the world; God's judgment is hope because it is both justice and grace. And fourth, by taking Mary as our sea-star (stella maris) of hope in our journey of faith.

A Research Project Is a Learning Project

Miriam Burstein has some wise words about research at "The Little Professor":

The author brings up academic integrity--"Yet if the undergraduates doing this research attempted the same outsourcing of written work in their term papers, they’d face disciplinary proceedings, and several student researchers told me they felt uneasy about this cognitive dissonance between expectations for their own work and that of their professor"--but one of the reasons we crack down on plagiarism is that it short-circuits the learning process. Faculty do not cease to be "students" just because they have alphabet soup after their name.

Disjunction Introductions

This is what we usually call the disjunction introduction rule (vI):

A
Therefore, A or B.

But this would also be a perfectly legitimate disjunction introduction rule that we could use instead:

A
B
Therefore, A or B.

The latter has the advantage of not pulling things out of thin air. It also makes the disjunction introduction rule much more like the conjunction and implication introduction rules, both of which depend wholly on what has already been given as part of the argument.

Some Scattered Notes

The last four months have been one of those periods where, every time you think you are going to have a good amount of time to catch up on blogging you want to do, something comes up immediately to reduce it. So I've got something of a backlog of things I want to post, and who knows when I'll manage it. But things will still trickle out.

* Evelyn Brister has a report of the continual failure of philosophy departments to turn out more women with Ph.D.'s in philosophy. In fact, the percentage has hovered around 27% for fifteen years now. She has another good post on possible reasons for this, using an analogy with computer science. (ht)

* As you probably know, Kevin Rudd is the new prime minister of Australia. A little more than a year ago, Rudd wrote a very controversial column for The Monthly called Faith in Politics. Rudd is a formerly Catholic Anglican who is still heavily influenced by Catholic social teaching.

* A simple but fun little simulation of the Battle of Gettysburg, from the Confederate perspective. I fought it to a standstill which, of course, leaves the balance in Union favor. If I had chosen the other way on the choice I was most uncertain about, I would have won. But, then again, I'm good at multiple choice tests; and Lee was certainly not faced with a multiple choice test. (ht)

* John Haldane on the recent Flew controversy.

* There has been a remarkable amount of fuss on various science blogs over this list, and the fact that it contains no science books in its nonfiction section. I find it a bit odd, because the list is explicitly a list of especially notable books that have been reviewed in the Sunday Book Review of the New York Times. The sort of books that are reviewed in the Book Review are heavily narrative in nature, so the best you would find among that selection are (1) biographies about scientists; (2) autobiographies by scientists; (3) historical accounts of scientific events. Thus, for instance, in the past month the Book Review has had reviews on James Watson's latest memoir, on a biography of Wernher von Braun, Venter's autobiography, Lehrer's book on science and art, and a collection about music and the brain. It's that kind of book that will show up on that kind of list; thus, for instance, there is a 'mathematics' book on the list, but it's not a book about mathematics, but a biography of Hardy and Ramanujan. To put it in other words: the closest you will tend to find on the list are science-themed biographies (or, when we are talking about events or ideas rather than people, histories that are biography-like). Thus, you have to medical-themed books on the list, a mathematics-themed book, etc. Here and there you might find an exception, but the thing notable about the books you find in the Review is that they are all very similar (biographies, memoirs, popular histories that have lots of biographical and narrative details, pundit's bloviations), selected for what is probably the most common taste in leisure reading among people who consider themselves to have high-brow tastes. I notice, too, that there are no philosophy books on the list; but you don't see us whining. (I hope.) Being noted by the Sunday Book Review is a lot like being tagged, "To Our Taste for the Moment." It's not a profound honor or a particularly revealing label.

* A Sola Gratia argument for the Immaculate Conception, an Anglican argument for Mary as model, and an argument for blessing Mary at "First Things" (more to come).

* Two interesting new logic-related blogs: Blogicum and (Blog&~Blog). The latter is about dialetheism; I have recently been discussing there whether dialetheists are better advised to reject disjunctive syllogism or disjunction introduction in response to explosion arguments. (Most dialetheists do the former; I think this is probably a mistake -- at least, an additional mistake beyond thinking that contradictions can be true.) The work being done by Tom at "Blogicum" is very interesting, and I hope to comment on it, if I can find the time at any point in the near future.

GoodShop for the Holidays

The Acton Institute Blog has a good idea: if you do any online shopping for this holiday season, check to see if your vendor is a GoodShop participant. Vendors participating in GoodShop donate a part of their profits to the charity of your choice (how much varies from vendor to vendor).

A Poem Draft

Burger's "Lenore" spawned many imitations and translations in the nineteenth century, the most famous of which is probably Dante Gabriel Rossetti's. This is mine, which owes something to Rossetti's version.

Lenore

Lenore in her bed is deeply disturbed
by nightmare-madness that shakes and unnerves,
by the terror of dream that ennervates souls,
the last horror, hopelessness, that Pandora stole,
while the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
widly dash as they seek to be free.

"Ah, Wilhelm," she says, in a sigh like a moan,
"have you no faith, or no strength, to come home?
Have you no means, or no will, to return,
when Iliam falls and Jerusalem burns?"
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

And the armies come home, the men and the boys;
the throngs of the soldiers return to their joys.
But never is Wilhelm found laughing with bliss,
arriving at home to catch Lenore's kiss.
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

Swiftly and often the maiden's bright eye
searches among the men who go by,
gladsome and glorious, and uncaring at all
for Lenore's worried searching, or the name that she calls.
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

Her mother seeks to ease her, as mothers will do:
"God is in heaven, His grace ever new;
seek mercy from him, and comfort you'll see."
"Mother, it seems God has no mercy for me."
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Her words are but the words of a child distraught;
she knows not the sense of this wickedest thought!
Heaven, forgive her, and daughter, know this:
God's wisdom is endless, and mercy is his."
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Mother, my mother, your God does not care,
and he who has mercy relieves all despair;
but pitiless God, he brings only night,
takes away Wilhelm, and shuts away light!"
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Heaven forgive you! The wine and the bread
show a God with the mercy to save us from death.
The cup and the paten are mercy indeed:
reflect on their power; my daughter, take heed!"
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Mother, the lies of the wine and the bread
have no power to vanquish or raise from the dead;
no pity I find there, only the loss
of a man all forsaken and dead on the cross."
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"And what if it's Wilhelm, not God, who's untrue?
What if your young man another pursues
on some rugged mountain, on some distant plain?
Watch who you blame in your anguish and pain!"
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Mother, my mother, it all matters not,
if his heart be still or by someone else caught,
nothing at all can raise this sad head,
my life is for nothing, my place with the dead."
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Cease, my dear girl, all this moan and complaint!
Set your sweet heart on the goal of the saint:
seek you the vision of the God who makes whole,
He who alone is bridegroom to the soul."
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"What is bliss, my sweet mother? And what is hell?
With Wilhelm is bliss, and without him I fell
down to the darkness, down to the tomb.
He is my light, all else is but gloom."
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"All other things, You may take away,"
the lovely Lenore in her anguish did pray,
"but Wilhelm alone is my heaven and light.
She requires no other who is by his side."
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

The clack and the clatter of the hoof of the steed,
the clank of the steel and the voice Lenore needs,
waft through the door to meet Lenore's ear,
to bring her rejoicing and turn her to cheer.
For the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Are you waking or sleeping, Lenore, O my bride?
Come with me, come with me, away let us ride!
Off must we go, ere dawn slays the night,
a fast journey and far, to wedded delights!"
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"Wilhelm, my Wilhelm, eleven's the bell
that tolls in the churchyard and says all is ell;
rest you within until night's retreat;
come inside, dearest, and whisper me sweet."
But the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"No, my Lenore, before break of day
I have many a mile to mark on my way.
Swift, at dead gallop, through storm and through night,
through rain and through gusting, before morning's light."
For the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

Without pause, unwary, she raced through the door
with kiss and caress no man could ignore;
but Wilhelm straightway did lift her beside,
and settled her down, and away they did ride.
For the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

The world like a pouring of water sped by
as bridge blurred to bridge for the slow human eye,
and trees of the forest became like a wall
that flickered and rose, then behind them did fall.
For the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

Shimmers and shadows alone in the dark
rose to the eye like the fire and spark,
the shapes of the warriors who died far away;
they rush to find solace before break of day.
For the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

"What ails you, my darling, my dearest, my bride?
Why do you shudder and your head turn aside?
Are they not lovely, the shades of the dead?"
Lenore answered not as she covered her head.
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dashed as they sought to be free.

Soon to a gate born of iron and fire
they came; and there Wilhelm as if in ire
threw back his hand, and the iron bolts bent,
and gently inside the two lovers went.
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dashed as they sought to be free.

But see how the moonlight plays tricks on the eye!
See Wilhelm, how thin, like bones long laid by!
See now his head, like a skull reft of skin,
and how like he looks to the bones of dead men!
And the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.

Now lies before them the tombs of the dead,
but Wilhelm sings of the sweet nuptial bed,
and Lenore, who now struggles, was drawn ere she wist
into the grave by cold hand on her wrist.
For the ghosts of the dead across land and sea
wildly dash as they seek to be free.