[lit-ideas] Re: What Wittgenstein Could See
- From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 12:38:46 -0700 (PDT)
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Chase <goya@xxxxxxx>
Sent: Aug 11, 2004 12:20 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: What Wittgenstein Could See
Le 11 ao=FBt 04, =E0 07:15, Andy Amago a =E9crit :
> <snip>
>
>
> A.A. I heard a discussion with Michio Kaku, the physicist. Lewis=20
> Carroll, as everyone knows, was a mathematician. What I didn't know=20=
> is that he wrote Alice in Wonderland as a demonstration of black holes=20=
> as passages between universes.
M.C. I'm afraid I find this pretty hard to swallow. Carroll published=20
Alice in 1872, and died in 1898. But nobody could have thought of the=20
idea of the existence of black holes before Einstein's theories were=20
annouced (special relativity, 1905, general 1915). The first person=20
actually to have thought of black holes was the German artillery=20
officer Karl Schwarzschild, whose results Einstein presented to the=20
Russian Academy in 1916.
Chronologically, therefore, Kaku's suggestion is a=20
non-starter....unless you want to adopt the theory of Leonard Shlain=20
(Arts and Physics. Parallel visions in space, time, and light, New York=20=
1991) according to whom artists often intuitively anticipate new=20
scientific theories, especially revolutionary ones. But then, as one=20
learns in the last chapter's of his work, Shlain's contentions are=20
based on his belief in a World Soul =E0 la Ouspensky and spiritual=20
evolution =E0 la Teilhard de Chardin. In other words, Shlain is a good=20=
example of the work that drives P. Stone up the wall; but the=20
difference is that unlike Brian Greene, Shlain doesn't have the=20
credentials (he's a surgeon rather than a physicist), and he clearly=20
gets all his information second-hand (often from people like Marshall=20
McLuhan and Will Durant). In other words, Shlain is a phoney, from whom=20=
one can nevertheless learn a thing or two. Greene is the real McCoy=A0: =
a=20
practicing physicist who can actually write well and explain complex=20
matters clearly.
A.A. We'd have to ask Michio Kaku, but in his defense I will say that that
Carroll was a mathematician, not an artist, not even a writer. I will see if I
can do some research into whether a tie was intended by Carroll. I do know
that Alice originally was not a children's book. It is, I believe, filled with
mathematical problems and jokes. It may be evident to mathematicians today who
have the information his peers lacked to see what he was intending, if in fact
he intended it. Since art and religion explain the unexplainable until
something better comes along, coexistence of ideas is certainly not peculiar.
Really gotta go,
Andy Amago
>
Michael Chase
(goya@xxxxxxxxxxx)
CNRS UPR 76
7, rue Guy Moquet
Villejuif 94801
France
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