Preparada y lista para la revolución de los colores.
Hay que estar preparado para todo, dicen. Y el 18 de julio de 1969 el gobierno de Estados Unidos tenía que estar preparado por si fallaba algo cuando, dos días después, Neil Armstrong y Buzz Aldrin usaran el módulo lunar del Apollo 11 para ser los primeros humanos en caminar por la luna.
Si quedaban atrapados en ella para nunca poder volver, el presidente de entonces, Richard Nixon, debería leer el siguiente discurso, recibido en la forma de un memo y escrito por William Safire.
El siguiente texto fue escrito por Michael Young, político inglés creador del término Meritocracia. La traducción no se quién la hizo, el texto lo extraje de El grano de arena.
Estoy tristemente decepcionado por el libro que escribí en 1958, “La ascensión de la meritocracia”. Este neologismo que yo mismo creé es ahora comúnmente utilizado, especialmente en los Estados Unidos, y más recientemente se encuentra en lugar destacado en los discursos de Tony Blair.
El libro era una sátira que pretendía alertar (cosa que obviamente no ha conseguido) contra lo que ocurriría en Gran Bretaña entre 1958 y la imaginaria revuelta contra el poder meritocrático en el 2033.
Gran parte de lo que predije en ese libro se ha hecho realidad. Es del todo improbable que el Primer Ministro se haya leído el libro, pero ha popularizado el término sin ser consciente de los peligros que entraña su puesta en práctica.
Mi argumentación se basaba en un análisis histórico indiscutible de lo que había estado sucediendo a la sociedad durante más de un siglo antes de 1958, y más marcadamente desde la década de los 1870, cuando la escolarización se hizo obligatoria y el acceso a la administración pública se convirtió en algo competitivo por norma.
Hasta entonces, el status estaba adscrito al nacimiento. Pero independientemente del nacimiento, el status se ha ido convirtiendo en algo más accesible.
Tiene todo el sentido nombrar a personas concretas para realizar trabajos en función de sus méritos. No podemos decir lo mismo cuando quienes son juzgados por sus méritos del tipo que sea ascienden a una Nueva Clase social sin dejar sitio para otros.
Las habilidades de tipo convencional, que solían estar distribuidas entre clases de forma más o menos aleatoria, se han venido concentrado en una sola clase gracias a la maquinaria educativa.
Una revolución social silenciosa se ha realizado en las escuelas y universidades que se han orientado a la labor de cribar a los jóvenes de acuerdo con los estrechos límites de los valores educacionales.
Con una increíble batería de certificados y titulaciones a su disposición, el sistema educativo ha dictado aprobación para una minoría, y un suspenso para una mayoría que no consigue brillar desde el momento en que son relegados al fondo del sistema de graduación a la edad de siete años o antes.
Esta Nueva Clase tiene todo los medios a su alcance, y en gran parte bajo su control, por la que se reproduce a si misma.
Mis predicciones más controvertidas y la subsiguiente advertencia se fundaba en un análisis histórico. Pensé que las clases más pobres y los más desaventajados serían doblemente marginalizados, lo que de hecho ha ocurrido. Al ser marcados desde la escuela son más vulnerables para más tarde formar parte del “ejército de reserva” que es el desempleo.
Son fácilmente desmoralizados al ser mirados con desprecio de forma tan hiriente por personas que se han ganado su status por si mismas.
Es muy duro en una sociedad que valora tanto los méritos ser juzgado por no tener ninguno. Jamás antes las clases bajas habían quedado tan moralmente desarmadas como ahora.
Mediante la selección que opera el sistema educativo las clases bajas han perdido a muchos de los que debieran haber sido sus líderes naturales, sus portavoces de la clase trabajadora que se continuaran identificando con la clase de la que procedían.
Estos líderes realizaron una feroz oposición a las clases más ricas y poderosas en interminables disputas tanto en el parlamento como a pie de fábrica, entre los pudientes y los no-pudientes.
Con la ascensión de la meritocracia, las masas “descabezadas” de líderes han sido desarticuladas; según pasa el tiempo, vemos como se vuelven más y más pasivas, y desmoralizadas hasta el punto de no preocuparse ni por ir a votar. Ya no tienen a nadie de los suyos que los represente.
Para ver la diferencia, solo tenemos que comparar los gabinetes de gobierno de Atlee y Blair. Los dos más influyentes miembros del gabinete laborista de 1945 fueron Ernest Bevin, para la cartera de Exteriores, y Herbert Morrison, elegido líder de la Cámara de los Comunes y Vice Primer Ministro.
Bevin dejó la escuela a los 11 años para subsistir como ayudante de granjero, pasando después a pinche cocina, chico de los recados, conductor de furgonetas, de tranvías, hasta que a la edad de 29, se hizo activista del sindicato local de Bristol, en la General Labourers’ Union de Dock Wharf, donde alcanzó gran popularidad al obtener, en un célebre enfrentamiento con uno de los más destacados abogados del momento, casi todas las reivindicaciones del sindicato.
Herbert Morrison fue en muchos aspectos una figura aun más significantiva, que se hizo notable no tanto a través del sindicalismo sino a través de su experiencia en el gobierno local.
Su primer trabajo fue también como chico de los recados y dependiente en una tienda de verduras, de donde se trasladó para hacerse dependiente de un supermercado y uno de lo primeros operarios de centralitas telefónicas. Llegó hasta Ministro de Transportes gracias al éxito previo obtenido en su labor en el Ayuntamiento de Londres.
Tuvo éxito en la forma que Livingstone y Kiley se esperaría que lo hicieran ahora, unificando el servicio metropolitano de metro de Londres, autobuses y tranvías en un solo mando y propiedad dentro de una compañía única y pública de transportes metropolitanos.
Hizo del transporte público londinense el mejor del mundo durante los siguiente 30-40 años, siendo modelo para todas las industrias nacionalizadas después de 1945.
Otros cuantos miembros del gabinete laborista de ministros de Attlee, como Bevan y Griffiths (ambos mineros), tenían similares orígenes de la clase obrera más baja y fueron una razón de orgullo para mucha gente corriente que se identificaba con ellos.
Es un fuerte contraste el que se da hoy en dia en el gabinete de Blair, compuesto mayoritariamente por miembros de la meritocracia.
En este nuevo ambiente social, a los más ricos y poderosos les está yendo bastante bien para si mismos. Ya se han librado de las incómodas críticas por parte de este tipo de gente a la que se tenía que escuchar. Esto ayudó en su dia a mantenerlos controlados, lo contrario de lo que está sucediendo bajo el gobierno Blair.
La meritocracia de los negocios está de moda. Tal y como los meritócratas creen, e incluso como se les hace creer, que su ascensión viene de sus propios méritos, se sienten merecedores de todo aquello que se propongan.
Llegan a ser insoportablemente presumidos, mucho más incluso que aquellos que se sabía habían alcanzado el poder no por sus propios méritos, sino por ser “hijo o hija de”, es decir, unos beneficiarios del nepotismo. Las nuevas élites pueden llegar a creer que están moralmente legitimadas.
Tan segura se siente esta nueva élite que no dejan un resquicio en la captación de nuevos beneficios para si mismos. Las viejas restricciones que el mundo de los negocios se había impuesto, todas han sido eliminadas y, tal y como se predijo en mi libro, todas las formas de “dar el pelotazo” han sido ya ideadas y explotadas.
Sus salarios y primas se han disparado. Stock options en condiciones más que ventajosas, bonos de oro, paracaídas de oro
se han multiplicado también para esta minoría.
El resultado ha sido que la desigualdad se ha extendido como norma y se hace cada vez más escandalosa cada año que transcurre, y sin que rechisten los líderes del partido que una vez fuera el portavoz tan vociferante y carismático por una mayor igualdad.
¿Qué se puede hacer en esta cada vez más polarizada sociedad meritocrática? Algo avanzaríamos si el señor Blair retirara esta palabra de su discurso habitual, o al menos admitiera los inconvenientes de su puesta en práctica. Todavía avanzaríamos más si él y el señor Brown marcaran distancias con la nueva meritocracia incrementando los impuestos sobre las rentas de los más ricos, y también fortaleciendo el poder local como una forma de que el pueblo se involucre y tenga su oportunidad en la política nacional.
Hice otra predicción en mi libro relativa a que la sistemática seleccion educativa en la escuela se vería reforzada, yendo más allá de lo que ya teníamos. Mi autor imaginario, un ardiente apóstol de la meritocracia, dijo poco antes de la revolución, que “ya no sería por más tiempo necesario seguir rebajando los niveles para intentar extender nuestra elevada civilización a los niños de las clases más bajas”.
Al menos todavía estamos a tiempo de que esto no tenga que ocurrir. ¿O no?.
Siempre que hago algo, lo hago para que me
digas que te gusto, que no vay a olvidar-
me porque yo tengo eso que te hace re-
cordar que no tení que pelearle al viento.
Siempre cuando quiero alcanzarte no pue-
do porque no queri que se mueva el suelo
Tú ayer me dijiste que sintonizamos
en la misma señal nos complementamos
Y al final erí tú lo que me estremece
no puedo evitarlo tiemblo al sólo verte…
Deja de mentirme, aaaaaahhhhhhhh
Deja de mentirme, aaaaaahhhhhhhh
Lo que va quedando en las largas noches
queda con su canto calma mis dolores
— Camila Moreno.
Encuentro de anarquistas en New York, en 1915.
De la George Grantham Bain Collection de la Library of Congress.
Se trata de tomar conciencia, de abrir los ojos y enfrentar al mundo.
Se trata de esconder el rostro bajo las aras de la revolución, ¡de llevar la acción como estandarte! de eso se trata, de llenarla de significado y de encender las pasiones bajo algo que va más allá del sentir de las personas, se trata de eliminar aquel sentimiento de opresión y enfrentarse al sistema, de encarar un modo de vida asfixiante.
Es encender la ira, agitarla y lanzarla; sí, lanzarla contra la represión, es un himno en favor de la libertad, es una posición. La posición más admirable que el hombre puede adoptar.
— Panda.
(Via Such a perfect day)
You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.
— Joseph Campbell.
(Via Binary Bonsai)
Violaciones sin tanto sexo pero con cámara. Ataques sexuales y robos de ropa grabados en video y expuestos al mundo a través de internet. Sharking, le dicen. ¿Verdaderos? ¿Es ésto lo que hemos hecho de la internet?
Hand in glove
The sun shines out of our behinds
No, it’s not like any other love
This one is different – because it’s us
Hand in glove
We can go wherever we please
And everything depends upon
How near you stand to me
And if the people stare
Then the people stare
Oh, I really don’t know and I really don’t care
There’s no shame, oh no…
Oh no…
Hand in glove
The Good People laugh
Yes, we may be hidden by rags
But we’ve something they’ll never have
Hand in glove
The sun shines out of our behinds
Yes, we may be hidden by rags
But we’ve something they’ll never have
And if the people stare
Then the people stare
Oh, I really don’t know and I really don’t care
There’s no shame, oh no…
Oh no…
So, hand in glove I stake my claim
I’ll fight to the last breath
If they dare touch a hair on your head
I’ll fight to the last breath
For the Good Life is out there somewhere
So stay on my arm, you little charmer
But I know my luck too well
Yes, I know my luck too well
And I’ll probably never see you again
I’ll probably never see you again
I’ll probably never see you again
Oh…
— The Smiths
Me pasa con las fotos casi lo mismo que con las palabras. Siempre digo que voy a salir con cámara, y cuando finalmente lo hago termino paseandola un par de días y devolviéndola al mueble, la cámara que sea. Mañana si que lo hago, la saco y la uso. Y voy a mandar a revelar los rollos que tengo. Mañana si que si.
Siempre tengo la idea de que debería escribir más, y por lo menos una vez al mes digo que lo voy a hacer, pero cuando me enfrento al WordPress nunca tengo nada que decir. Puede que sea un buen momento para vover al papel, o saltar al audio, algo que hace años quiero hacer. O tal vez simplemente sea cosa de matar al WordPress… U obligarme a enfrentarlo.
The relativity of wrong es un ensayo de Isaac Asimov sobre el conocimiento, la evolución del mismo y las concepciones generales de lo correcto o incorrecto, publicado en 1988. Una maravilla del pensamiento. La digitalización fue hecha por Håvard Skjæveland.
I received a letter from a reader the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out just in case it might prove to be important.
In the first sentence, he told me he was majoring in English Literature, but felt he needed to teach me science. (I sighed a bit, for I knew very few English Lit majors who are equipped to teach me science, but I am very aware of the vast state of my ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, however low on the social scale, so I read on.)
It seemed that in one of my innumerable essays, here and elsewhere, I had expressed a certain gladness at living in a century in which we finally got the basis of the Universe straight.
I didn’t go into detail in the matter, but what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the Universe, together with the gravitational interrelationships of its gross components, as shown in the theory of relativity worked out between 1905 and 1916. We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships, since these are very neatly described by the quantum theory worked out between 1900 and 1930. What’s more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical Universe, as discovered between 1920 and 1930.
These are all twentieth-century discoveries, you see.
The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proven to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about out modern “knowledge” is that it is wrong.
The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. “If I am the wisest man,” said Socrates, “it is because I alone know that I know nothing.” The implication was that I was very foolish because I knew a great deal.
Alas, none of this was new to me. (There is very little that is new to me; I wish my corresponders would realize this.) This particular thesis was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who specialized in irritating me. He also told me that all theories are proven wrong in time.
My answer to him was, “John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that “right” and “wrong” are absolute; that everything that isn’t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.
However, I don’t think that’s so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts, and I will devote this essay to an explanation of why I think so.
First, let me dispose of Socrates because I am sick and tired of this pretense that knowing you know nothing is a mark of wisdom.
No one knows nothing. In a matter of days, babies learn to recognize their mothers.
Socrates would agree, of course, and explain that knowledge of trivia is not what he means. He means that in the great abstractions over which human beings debate, one should start without preconceived, unexamined notions, and that he alone knew this. (What an enormously arrogant claim!)
In his discussions of such matters as “What is justice?” or “What is virtue?” he took the attitude that he knew nothing and had to be instructed by others. (This is called “Socratic irony,” for Socrates knew very well that he knew a great deal more than the poor souls he was picking on.) By pretending ignorance, Socrates lured others into propounding their views on such abstractions. Socrates then, by a series of ignorant-sounding questions, forced the others into such a mélange of self-contradictions that they would finally break down and admit they didn’t know what they were talking about.
It is the mark of the marvelous toleration of the Athenians that they let this continue for decades and that it wasn’t till Socrates turned seventy that they broke down and forced him to drink poison.
Now where do we get the notion that “right” and “wrong” are absolutes? It seems to me that this arises in the early grades, when children who know very little are taught by teachers who know very little more.
Young children learn spelling and arithmetic, for instance, and here we tumble into apparent absolutes.
How do you spell “sugar?” Answer: s-u-g-a-r. That is right. Anything else is wrong.
How much is 2 + 2? The answer is 4. That is right. Anything else is wrong.
Having exact answers, and having absolute rights and wrongs, minimizes the necessity of thinking, and that pleases both students and teachers. For that reason, students and teachers alike prefer short-answer tests to essay tests; multiple-choice over blank short-answer tests; and true-false tests over multiple-choice.
But short-answer tests are, to my way of thinking, useless as a measure of the student’s understanding of a subject. They are merely a test of the efficiency of his ability to memorize.
You can see what I mean as soon as you admit that right and wrong are relative.
How do you spell “sugar?” Suppose Alice spells it p-q-z-z-f and Genevieve spells it s-h-u-g-e-r. Both are wrong, but is there any doubt that Alice is wronger than Genevieve? For that matter, I think it is possible to argue that Genevieve’s spelling is superior to the “right” one.
Or suppose you spell “sugar”: s-u-c-r-o-s-e, or C12H22O11. Strictly speaking, you are wrong each time, but you’re displaying a certain knowledge of the subject beyond conventional spelling.
Suppose then the test question was: how many different ways can you spell “sugar?” Justify each.
Naturally, the student would have to do a lot of thinking and, in the end, exhibit how much or how little he knows. The teacher would also have to do a lot of thinking in the attempt to evaluate how much or how little the student knows. Both, I imagine, would be outraged.
Again, how much is 2 + 2? Suppose Joseph says: 2 + 2 = purple, while Maxwell says: 2 + 2 = 17. Both are wrong but isn’t it fair to say that Joseph is wronger than Maxwell?
Suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an integer. You’d be right, wouldn’t you? Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = an even integer. You’d be righter. Or suppose you said: 2 + 2 = 3.999. Wouldn’t you be nearly right?
If the teacher wants 4 for an answer and won’t distinguish between the various wrongs, doesn’t that set an unnecessary limit to understanding?
Suppose the question is, how much is 9 + 5?, and you answer 2. Will you not be excoriated and held up to ridicule, and will you not be told that 9 + 5 = 14?
If you were then told that 9 hours had pass since midnight and it was therefore 9 o’clock, and were asked what time it would be in 5 more hours, and you answered 14 o’clock on the grounds that 9 + 5 = 14, would you not be excoriated again, and told that it would be 2 o’clock? Apparently, in that case, 9 + 5 = 2 after all.
Or again suppose, Richard says: 2 + 2 = 11, and before the teacher can send him home with a note to his mother, he adds, “To the base 3, of course.” He’d be right.
Here’s another example. The teacher asks: “Who is the fortieth President of the United States?” and Barbara says, “There isn’t any, teacher.”
“Wrong!” says the teacher, “Ronald Reagan is the fortieth President of the United States.”
“Not at all,” says Barbara, “I have here a list of all the men who have served as President of the United States under the Constitution, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan, and there are only thirty-nine of them, so there is no fortieth President.”
“Ah,” says the teacher, “but Grover Cleveland served two nonconsecutive terms, one from 1885 to 1889, and the second from 1893 to 1897. He counts as both the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President. That is why Ronald Reagan is the thirty-ninth person to serve as President of the United States, and is, at the same time, the fortieth President of the United States.”
Isn’t that ridiculous? Why should a person be counted twice if his terms are nonconsecutive, and only once if he served two consecutive terms? Pure convention! Yet Barbara is marked wrong—just as wrong as if she had said that the fortieth President of the United States is Fidel Castro.
Therefore, when my friend the English Literature expert tells me that in every century scientists think they have worked out the Universe and are always wrong, what I want to know is how wrong are they? Are they always wrong to the same degree? Let’s take an example.
In the early days of civilization, the general feeling was that the Earth was flat.
This was not because people were stupid, or because they were intent on believing silly things. They felt it was flat on the basis of sound evidence. It was not just a matter of “That’s how it looks,” because the Earth does not look flat. It looks chaotically bumpy, with hills, valleys, ravines, cliffs, and so on.
Of course, there are plains where, over limited areas, the Earth’s surface does look fairly flat. One of those plains is in the Tigris-Euphrates area where the first historical civilization (one with writing) developed, that of the Sumerians.
Perhaps it was the appearance of the plain that may have persuaded the clever Sumerians to accept the generalization that the Earth was flat; that if you somehow evened out all the elevations and depressions, you would be left with flatness. Contributing to the notion may have been the fact that stretches of water (ponds and lakes) looked pretty flat on quiet days.
Another way of looking at it is to ask what is the “curvature” of Earth’s surface. Over a considerable length, how much does the surface deviate (on the average) from perfect flatness. The flat-Earth theory would make it seem that the surface doesn’t deviate from flatness at all, that its curvature is 0 to the mile.
Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-Earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn’t. The curvature of the Earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-Earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That’s why the theory lasted so long.
There were reasons, to be sure, to find the flat-Earth theory unsatisfactory and, about 350 B.C., the Greek philosopher Aristotle summarized them. First, certain stars disappeared beyond the Southern Hemisphere as one traveled north, and beyond the Northern Hemisphere as one traveled south. Second, the Earth’s shadow on the Moon during a lunar eclipse was always the arc of a circle. Third, here on Earth itself, ships disappeared beyond the horizon hull-first in whatever direction they were traveling.
All three observations could not be reasonably explained if the Earth’s surface were flat, but could be explained by assuming the Earth to be a sphere.
What’s more, Aristotle believed that all solid matter tended to move toward a common center, and if solid matter did this, it would end up as a sphere. A given volume of matter is, on the average, closer to a common center if it is a sphere than if it is any other shape whatever.
About a century after Aristotle, the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes noted that the Sun cast a shadow of different lengths at different latitudes (all the shadows would be the same length if the Earth’s surface were flat). From the difference in shadow length, he calculated the size of the earthly sphere and it turned out to be 25,000 miles in circumference.
The curvature of such a sphere is about 0.000126 per mile, a quantity very close to 0 per mile as you can see, and one not easily measured by the techniques at the disposal of the ancients. The tiny difference between 0 and 0.000126 accounts for the fact that it took so long to pass from the flat Earth to the spherical Earth.
Mind you, even a tiny difference, such at that between 0 and 0.000126, can be extremely important. That difference mounts up. The Earth cannot be mapped over large areas with any accuracy at all if the difference isn’t taken into account and if the Earth isn’t considered a sphere rather than a flat surface. Long ocean voyages can’t be undertaken with any reasonable way of locating one’s own position in the ocean unless the Earth is considered spherical rather than flat.
Furthermore, the flat Earth presupposes the possibility of an infinite Earth, or of the existence of an “end” to the surface. The spherical Earth, however, postulates an Earth that is both endless and yet finite, and it is the latter postulate that is consistent with all later findings.
So although the flat-Earth theory is only slightly wrong and is a credit to its inventors, all things considered, it is wrong enough to be discarded in favor of the spherical-Earth theory.
And yet is the Earth a sphere?
No, it is not a sphere; not in the strict mathematical sense. A sphere has certain mathematical properties—for instance, all diameters (that is, all straight lines that pass from one point on its surface, through the center, to another point on its surface) have the same length.
That, however, is not true of the Earth. Various diameters of the Earth differ in length.
What gave people the notion the Earth wasn’t a true sphere? To begin with, the Sun and the Moon have outlines that are perfect circles within the limits of measurement in the early days of the telescope. This is consistent with the supposition that the Sun and Moon are perfectly spherical in shape.
However, when Jupiter and Saturn were observed by the first telescopic observers, it became quickly apparent that the outlines of those planets were not circles, but distinct ellipses. That meant that Jupiter and Saturn were not true spheres.
Isaac Newton, toward the end of the seventeenth century, showed that a massive body would form a sphere under the pull of gravitational forces (exactly as Aristotle had argued), but only if it were not rotating. If it were rotating, a centrifugal effect would be set up which would lift the body’s substance against gravity, and the effect would be greater the closer to the equator you progressed. The effect would also be greater the more rapidly a spherical object rotated and Jupiter and Saturn rotated very rapidly indeed.
The Earth rotated much more slowly than Jupiter or Saturn so the effect should be smaller, but it should still be there. Actual measurements of the curvature of the Earth were carried out in the eighteenth century and Newton was proved correct.
The Earth has an equatorial bulge, in other words. It is flattened at the poles. It is an “oblate spheroid” rather than a sphere. This means that the various diameters of the earth differ in length. The longest diameters are any of those that stretch from one point on the equator to an opposite point on the equator. The “equatorial diameter” is 12,755 kilometers (7,927 miles). The shortest diameter is from the North Pole to the South Pole and this “polar diameter” is 12,711 kilometers (7,900 miles).
The difference between the longest and shortest diameters is 44 kilometers (27 miles), and that means that the “oblateness” of the Earth (its departure from true sphericity) is 44/12,755, or 0.0034. This amounts to 1/3 of 1 percent.
To put it another way, on a flat surface, curvature is 0 per mile everywhere. On Earth’s spherical surface, curvature is 0.000126 per mile everywhere (or 8 inches per mile). On Earth’s oblate spheroidical surface, the curvature varies from 7.973 inches to the mile to 8.027 inches to the mile.
The correction in going from spherical to oblate spheroidal is much smaller than going from flat to spherical. Therefore, although the notion of the Earth as sphere is wrong, strictly speaking, it is not as wrong as the notion of the Earth as flat.
Even the oblate-spheroidal notion of the Earth is wrong, strictly speaking. In 1958, when the satellite Vanguard 1 was put into orbit about the Earth, it was able to measure the local gravitational pull of the Earth—and therefore its shape—with unprecedented precision. It turned out that the equatorial bulge south of the equator was slightly bulgier than the bulge north of the equator, and that the South Pole sea level was slightly nearer the center of the Earth than the North Pole sea level was.
There seemed no other way of describing this than by saying the Earth was pearshaped and at once many people decided that the Earth was nothing like a sphere but was shaped like a Bartlett pear dangling in space. Actually, the pearlike deviation from oblate-spheroid perfect was a matter of yards rather than miles and the adjustment of curvature was in the millionths of an inch per mile.
In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the Earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after.
What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend if with a greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.
This can be pointed out in many other cases than just the shape of the Earth. Even when a new theory seems to represent a revolution, it usually arises out of small refinements. If something more than a small refinement were needed, then the old theory would never have endured.
Copernicus switched from an Earth-centered planetary system to a Sun-centered one. In doing so, he switched from something that was obvious to something that was apparently ridiculous. However, it was a matter of finding better ways of calculating the motion of the planets in the sky and, eventually, the geocentric theory was just left behind. It was precisely because the old theory gave results that were fairly good by the measurement standards of the time that kept it in being so long.
Again, it is because the geological formations of the Earth change so slowly and the living things upon it evolve so slowly that it seemed reasonable at first to suppose that there was no change and that Earth and life always existed as they do today. If that were so, it would make no difference whether Earth and life were billions of years old or thousands. Thousands were easier to grasp.
But when careful observation showed that Earth and life were changing at a rate that was very tiny but not zero, then it became clear that Earth and life had to be very old. Modern geology came into being, and so did the notion of biological evolution.
If the rate of change were more rapid, geology and evolution would have reached their modern state in ancient times. It is only because the difference between the rate of change in a static Universe and the rate of change in an evolutionary one is that between zero and very nearly zero that the creationists can continue propagating their folly.
Again, how about the two great theories of the twentieth century; relativity and quantum mechanics?
Newton’s theories of motion and gravitation were very close to right, and they would have been absolutely right if only the speed of light were infinite. However, the speed of light is finite, and that had to be taken into account in Einstein’s relativistic equations, which were an extension and refinement of Newton’s equations.
You might say that the difference between infinite and finite is itself infinite, so why didn’t Newton’s equations fall to the ground at once? Let’s put it another way, and ask how long it takes light to travel over a distance of a meter.
If light traveled at infinite speed, it would take light 0 seconds to travel a meter. At the speed at which light actually travels, however, it takes it 0.0000000033 seconds. It is that difference between 0 and 0.0000000033 that Einstein corrected for.
Conceptually, the correction was as important as the correction of Earth’s curvature from 0 to 8 inches per mile was. Speeding subatomic articles wouldn’t behave the way they do without the correction, nor would particle accelerators work the way they do, nor nuclear bombs explode, nor the stars shine. Nevertheless, it was a tiny correction and it is no wonder that Newton, in his time, could not allow for it, since he was limited in his observations to speeds and distances over which the correction was insignificant.
Again, where the prequantum view of physics fell short was that it didn’t allow for the “graininess” of the Universe. All forms of energy had been thought to be continuous and to be capable of division into indefinitely smaller and smaller quantities.
This turned out to be not so. Energy comes in quanta, the size of which is dependent upon something called Planck’s constant. If Planck’s constant were equal to 0 erg-seconds, then energy would be continuous, and there would be no grain to the Universe. Planck’s constant, however, is equal to 0.000000000000000000000000066 erg-seconds. That is indeed a tiny deviation from zero, so tiny that ordinary questions of energy in everyday life need not concern themselves with it. When, however, you deal with subatomic particles, the graininess is sufficiently large, in comparison, to make it impossible to deal with them without taking quantum considerations into account.
Since the refinements in theory grow smaller and smaller, even quite ancient theories must have been sufficiently right to allow advances to be made; advances that were not wiped out by subsequent refinements.
The Greeks introduced the notion of latitude and longitude, for instance, and made reasonable maps of the Mediterranean basin even without taking sphericity into account, and we still use latitude and longitude today.
The Sumerians were probably the first to establish the principle that planetary movements in the sky exhibit regularity and can be predicted, and they proceeded to work out ways of doing so even though they assumed the Earth to be the center of the Universe. Their measurements have been enormously refined but the principle remains.
Newton’s theory of gravitation, while incomplete over vast distances and enormous speeds, is perfectly suitable for the Solar System. Halley’s Comet appears punctually as Newton’s theory of gravitation and laws of motion predict. All of rocketry is based on Newton, and Voyager II reached Uranus within a second of the predicted time. None of these things were outlawed by relativity.
In the nineteenth century, before quantum theory was dreamed of, the laws of thermodynamics were established, including the conservation of energy as first law, and the inevitable increase of entropy as the second law. Certain other conservation laws such as those of momentum, angular momentum, and electric charge were also established. So were Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism. All remained firmly entrenched even after quantum theory came in.
Naturally, the theories we now have might be considered wrong in the simplistic sense of my English Lit correspondent, but in a much truer and subtler sense, they need only be considered incomplete.
For instance, quantum theory has produced something called “quantum weirdness” which brings into serious question the very nature of reality and which produces philosophical conundrums that physicists simply can’t seem to agree upon. It may be that we have reached a point where the human brain can no longer grasp matters, or it may be that quantum theory is incomplete and that once it is properly extended, all the “weirdness” will disappear.
Again, quantum theory and relativity seem to be independent of each other, so that while quantum theory makes i seem possible that three of the four known interactions can be combined into one mathematical system, gravitation—the realm of relativity—as yet seems intransigent.
If quantum theory and relativity can be combined, a true “unified field theory” may become possible.
If all this is done, however, it would be a still finer refinement that would affect the edges of the known—the nature of the big bang and the creation of the Universe, the properties at the center of black holes, some subtle points about the evolution of galaxies and supernovas, and so on.
Virtually all that we know today, however, would remain untouched and when I say I am glad that I live in a century when the Universe is essentially understood, I think I am justified.
Follow through
Make your dreams come true
Don’t give up the fight
You will be all right
Cause there’s no one like you
In the universe
Don’t be afraid
What your mind conceals
You should make a stand
Stand up for what you believe
And tonight we can truly say
Together we’re invincible
And during the struggle
They will pull us down
But please, please let’s use this chance to
Turn things around
And tonight we can truly say
Together we’re invincible
Do it on your own
Makes no difference to me
What you leave behind
What you choose to be
and whatever they say
Your soul’s unbreakable
And during the struggle
They will pull us down
But please, please let’s use this chance to
Turn things around
And tonight we can truly say
Together we’re invincible
Together we’re invincible
And during the struggle
They will pull us down
Please, please let’s use this chance to
Turn things around
And tonight we control history
Together we’re invincible
Together we’re invincible
(Muse)