Wordability

Dr Phillips (whom God preserve) of New Jersey came across this example of the gap between Us and Them:

By 1859 Kirchoff knew enough about the spectra of gases from laboratory studies to identify the chemical elements in the Sun responsible for the dark lines in the solar spectrum. Thus, on the basis of experiments done on Earth, he could discern that the Sun is not made of any heavenly substance like quintessence [as hypothesized by Aristotle] but of everyday earthly elements.

I often wonder why history doesn’t take more notice of Kirchoff’s accomplishment. The idea that we learned what the Sun and the stars are made of would have astonished the ancients: it still astonishes me. Some philosophers and historians are so alienated from science that the significance of the discovery is hardly mentioned.

This was made painfully clear to me one spring day in 1989, when, during a banquet at a physics conference in Rome, I found myself sitting next to a physicist’s spouse who happened to be a historian at the University of Rome. Although astronomy is a highly specialized profession, I am always amazed by the degree of specialization in other fields. She was an expert on European history of the year 1859 (presumably the university has one hundred nineteenth-century European historians). In a clumsy attempt at polite dinner conversation, I asked why she happened to concentrate on that year. With a “surely you must know” tone, she replied that it was a very significant year because of the development of a remarkable idea. I made the mistake of asking if she was referring to Kirchoff’s discovery of the chemical composition of the Sun. She stared at me so long, with such a curious expression on her face, that I thought surely I must have linguini stuck to my chin. But no, she was simply amazed by the naivete of my question. Finally, she informed me that the significant event of the year 1859 was the publication of A Critique of Political Economy, by Karl Marx.

I further compounded my errors by asking how a mere economic theory could be compared to the discovery of the composition of the stars. I suppose that a biologist might ask why she considered Marx’s book more important than another book published in 1859, On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. After another long stare, with a sigh of exasperation she turned to the person sitting on her other side, presumably searching for more enlightened conversation. I am embarrassed to admit that in the intervening years I still haven’t understood why the development of a (since discredited) economic theory is of more lasting importance than learning the stuff of which the stars are made. Perhaps one day I will.

The original source is Edward W. “Rocky” Kolb’s Blind Watchers of the Skies (1996)

I put aside (with some reluctance) explanations that include the words arrogance, educated imbecility, Italian bourgeois manners and ideology. Say instead that the lady evidently lacked intellectual imagination.

I mean the capacity to appreciate the significance of discoveries in another discipline, not to understand them technically, but to grasp what they mean for our general, shared picture of the world. Some other, more recent discoveries of a like kind within my lifetime: Chomsky’s proposal (with the neurological evidence) that the human mind is ‘wired for language’; the platelet movement of the earth’s crust and of course, the cracking of the DNA code by Crick and Watson. Not to know something of discoveries of this magnitude, not to want to understand their consequences for our general outlook is surely to be disqualified from seriousness.

I have reservations about the presiding spirit over at Edge, web organ of the ‘third culture’ but its distinguished contributors make it essential reading.