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Jon Carroll - April 8, 2004, San Francisco Chronicle
Archimedes, as every schoolchild no longer knows, was famous for leaping from his bathtub and running naked through the streets of Syracuse, shouting the name of a Northern California town.
"Arcata! Arcata!" he shouted, which is Greek for "Buy organic! Buy organic!"
Archimedes was excited about the displacement of water. He had been asked to determine whether a ceremonial crown was pure gold or not, and he realized that he could determine its volume by throwing it in water and see how much fluid it displaced.
Turned out the crown was not pure gold. Oh, there was hell to pay in Syracuse. This is the Syracuse in Sicily, not the Syracuse in New York, which means that the hell to pay probably involved a lot of people who looked like Tony Soprano. Archimedes himself looked like Uncle Junior. See how I make history come alive!
But the really cool thing that Archimedes did was this: He discovered pi. I mean, what have you done lately? What have any of us done lately, compared with discovering pi? In discovering pi, he also discovered C=pi r²; he could hardly avoid it.
He discovered pi, which means that you can't. Indeed, you can't discover any of the basic cool things anymore because someone beat you to it. Earth goes around the sun: Check. North American continent: There it is. South Pole: Been there, done that.
What can you do? You could discover a comet and get your name on it, but you'd have to stare at the night sky all the time and lose what semblance of a life you still have, and you'd still have to share credit with some guy in Wyoming. The Barton-You comet, much too far away to be seen by the naked eye.
Maybe you could discover a fossil in your backyard, although the Bay Area does not seem to be a particularly fertile place for fossils. Dinosaurs apparently did not once roam the hills of Oakland. But even if you discovered it, you'd have to call in experts to verify it and tell you what it is, and all you'd get is a silly newspaper photo of yourself pointing to a hole in the ground.
Archimedes, by contrast, got lucrative contracts to design catapults.
Of course, there are many things left to discover. The nature of the universe: still not pinned down. Apparently this whole string theory/11 dimensions thing is gaining ground, but there's no way that you are going to be shedding light on the debate.
"I was in the bathtub, and I found the seventh dimension floating on the water. I mistook it for soap scum, until I looked closer and saw an infinite number of parallel universes."
As I understand it -- and remember, I saw this on public television, so it must be right -- people believe that the 11-dimensions thing must be right because "the math is so elegant." Is there a chance in hell that you are going to produce some elegant math before you join the choir invisible? Nope.
You know this whole creationism thing? I think it's happening because people are frustrated about there being nothing more to discover. What better workaround than to discover something that has already been discovered? I could discover the South Pole again, and announce that it's actually in a different place altogether. It's in France. Come drink the wine of the South Pole!
You could, of course, discover the secrets of the human soul, but haven't they already been pretty much discovered? Our frail and jittery longing for transcendence -- hasn't that been pretty well documented? Our sullen courage in the face of existential dread -- that was featured on Oprah just last week. And the mysteries of love -- are they not all covered in the lyrics of popular songs?
Would that we lived in the Victorian age, where people could stare at butterflies and catalog rocks and generally feel useful. But we don't. In the 21st century, we stare at butterflies and feel useless. It's not a good thing.
We weep because there are no more worlds to conquer, and no fresh bathtubs to sit in and see the world in wet new light.
Archimedes, as every schoolchild no longer knows, was famous for leaping from his bathtub and running naked through the streets of Syracuse, shouting the name of a Northern California town.
"Arcata! Arcata!" he shouted, which is Greek for "Buy organic! Buy organic!"
Archimedes was excited about the displacement of water. He had been asked to determine whether a ceremonial crown was pure gold or not, and he realized that he could determine its volume by throwing it in water and see how much fluid it displaced.
Turned out the crown was not pure gold. Oh, there was hell to pay in Syracuse. This is the Syracuse in Sicily, not the Syracuse in New York, which means that the hell to pay probably involved a lot of people who looked like Tony Soprano. Archimedes himself looked like Uncle Junior. See how I make history come alive!
But the really cool thing that Archimedes did was this: He discovered pi. I mean, what have you done lately? What have any of us done lately, compared with discovering pi? In discovering pi, he also discovered C=pi r²; he could hardly avoid it.
He discovered pi, which means that you can't. Indeed, you can't discover any of the basic cool things anymore because someone beat you to it. Earth goes around the sun: Check. North American continent: There it is. South Pole: Been there, done that.
What can you do? You could discover a comet and get your name on it, but you'd have to stare at the night sky all the time and lose what semblance of a life you still have, and you'd still have to share credit with some guy in Wyoming. The Barton-You comet, much too far away to be seen by the naked eye.
Maybe you could discover a fossil in your backyard, although the Bay Area does not seem to be a particularly fertile place for fossils. Dinosaurs apparently did not once roam the hills of Oakland. But even if you discovered it, you'd have to call in experts to verify it and tell you what it is, and all you'd get is a silly newspaper photo of yourself pointing to a hole in the ground.
Archimedes, by contrast, got lucrative contracts to design catapults.
Of course, there are many things left to discover. The nature of the universe: still not pinned down. Apparently this whole string theory/11 dimensions thing is gaining ground, but there's no way that you are going to be shedding light on the debate.
"I was in the bathtub, and I found the seventh dimension floating on the water. I mistook it for soap scum, until I looked closer and saw an infinite number of parallel universes."
As I understand it -- and remember, I saw this on public television, so it must be right -- people believe that the 11-dimensions thing must be right because "the math is so elegant." Is there a chance in hell that you are going to produce some elegant math before you join the choir invisible? Nope.
You know this whole creationism thing? I think it's happening because people are frustrated about there being nothing more to discover. What better workaround than to discover something that has already been discovered? I could discover the South Pole again, and announce that it's actually in a different place altogether. It's in France. Come drink the wine of the South Pole!
You could, of course, discover the secrets of the human soul, but haven't they already been pretty much discovered? Our frail and jittery longing for transcendence -- hasn't that been pretty well documented? Our sullen courage in the face of existential dread -- that was featured on Oprah just last week. And the mysteries of love -- are they not all covered in the lyrics of popular songs?
Would that we lived in the Victorian age, where people could stare at butterflies and catalog rocks and generally feel useful. But we don't. In the 21st century, we stare at butterflies and feel useless. It's not a good thing.
We weep because there are no more worlds to conquer, and no fresh bathtubs to sit in and see the world in wet new light.
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