“Untimely Meditations” by Friedrich Nietzsche (translated by R.J. Hollingdale)

This collection of four of Nietzsche’s essays broadly revolve around the theme of culture. The writings reflect on the characteristics of a cultured man, the role of the philosopher in society, truth and art, the uses of history in modern life, and, specifically, German culture after the Franco-Prussian war. “Culture is, above all, unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people. Much knowledge and learning is neither an essential means to culture nor a sign of it.” In his next essay, Nietzsche discusses the difference between the everlasting and the historical, “With the word ‘the unhistorical’ I designate the art and power of forgetting and of enclosing oneself within a bounded horizon; I call ‘suprahistorical’ the powers which lead the eye away from becoming towards that which bestows upon existence the character of the eternal and stable, towards art and religion. Science—for it is science which would here speak of poisons—sees in these two forces hostile forces: for science considers the only right and true way of regarding things, that is to say the only scientific way, as being that which sees everywhere things that have been, things historical, and nowhere things that are, things eternal.”

Nietzsche delves into the purpose of true philosophy in his essay championing his predecessor, Schopenhauer, “The truthful man feels that the meaning of his activity is metaphysical, explicable through the laws of another and higher life, and in the profoundest sense affirmative…. So it is that all his acts must become an uninterrupted suffering…. He will, to be sure, destroy his earthly happiness through his courage; he will have to be an enemy to those he loves and to the institutions which have produced him; he may not spare men or things, even though he suffers when they suffer; he will be misunderstood and for long thought an ally of powers he abhors; however much he may strive after justice he is bound, according to the human limitations of his insight, to be unjust; but he may console himself with the words once employed by his great teacher, Schopenhauer: ‘A happy life is impossible: the highest that man can attain to is a heroic one.’”

Finally, in an essay on Wagner, he again explicitly mentions culture, aesthetic truth, and art. “Danger and despair lie in wait for every true artist thrown into the modern world…. We can see how the most serious artist will try forcibly to impose seriousness on the institution of which he is part, an institution which has, however, been constructed frivolously and demands frivolity almost as a matter of principle; how he partially succeeds but in the end always fails; how he begins to feel disgust and wants to flee, how he fails to find anywhere to flee to, and is again and again obliged to return to the gypsies and outcasts of our culture as one of them.”

Nietzsche concludes, “The history of the evolution of culture since the Greeks is short enough, if one takes into account the actual distance covered and ignores the halts, regressions, hesitations, and lingerings. The Hellenization of the world and, to make this possible, the orientalization of the Hellenic—the twofold task of the great Alexander—is still the last great event; the old question whether a culture can be transplanted to a foreign soil at all is still the problem over which the moderns weary themselves.” Finally, Nietzsche describes the fate of any true artist, as opposed to the lone philosopher, who has to live within his cultural milieu, “For it is, to be sure, a life full of torment and shame, to be a homeless wanderer in a world to which one nonetheless has to speak and of which one has to make demands, which one despises and yet is unable to do without—it is the actual predicament of the artist of the future; he cannot, like the philosopher, hunt after knowledge all by himself in a dark corner, for he needs human souls as mediators with the future, public institutions as guarantees of this future, as bridges between the now and the hereafter.”

“Pedro Paramo" by Juan Rulfo (translated by Douglas J. Weatherford)

This novella, from 1955, is considered a Mexican classic of magical realism. Reading it also supposedly cured Marquez of a stubborn case of writer’s block. The story begins hauntingly, “I came to Comala because I was told my father lived here, a man named Pedro Paramo. That’s what my mother told me. And I promised her I’d come see him as soon as she died….—Don’t ask him for anything. Just insist on what’s ours. What he was obligated to give me but never did . . . Make him pay dearly, my son, for the indifference he showed toward us.” Before long, real ghosts and spirits make there presence felt in the town of Comala. “If only you could see the horde of souls that roam the streets. They come out as soon as it gets dark, and we’re all afraid of seeing them. With so many of them and so few of us we no longer plead for them to be freed from their torment. There just aren’t enough prayers to go around. Maybe we could say a few lines of the Lord’s Prayer for each one, but what good would that do? And then there’s the matter of our own sins. There’s not a one of us still alive who enjoys the grace of God. We can’t even look toward Heaven without feeling our eyes soiled with shame.” The plot is almost as depressing as it is strange. “—This world grabs onto us so tightly it squeezes out fistfuls of our dust here and there, breaking us into pieces as if to douse the land with our blood. What did we do? Why have our souls rotted away?”

“In Praise of Shadows” by Junichiro Tanizaki (translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker).

Tanizaki is well aware that his aesthetic proclivities cannot be sustained in a rapidly modernizing Japan. Still, he would like to fight the good fight. “For the solitary eccentric it is another matter, he can ignore the blessings of scientific civilization and retreat to some forsaken corner of the countryside; but a man who has a family and lives in the city cannot turn his back on the necessities of modern life.” Tanizaki describes his ideal of beauty in its many forms. “The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows.” He continues on his aesthetic ideal, “We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates…. Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty. Our ancestors made of woman an object inseparable from darkness, like lacquerware decorated in gold or mother-of-pearl. They hid as much of her as they could in shadows, concealing her arms and legs in the folds of long sleeves and skirts, so that one part and one only stood out—her face.” 

Tanizaki contrasts aspects of Japanese aesthetics with those of the West. “Why should this propensity to seek beauty in darkness be so strong only in Orientals? The West too had known a time when there was no electricity, gas, or petroleum, and yet so far as I know the West has never been disposed to delight in shadows.” He continues, “Pitch darkness has always occupied our fantasies, while in the West even ghosts are as clear as glass. This is true too of our household implements: we prefer colors compounded of darkness, they prefer the colors of sunlight. And of silver and copperware: we love them for the burnish and patina, which they consider unclean, insanitary, and polish to a glittering brilliance…. We Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.”

“Vita Nuovo” by Dante Alighieri (translated by Joseph Luzzi)

This is a short book written by Dante about the love of his life, Beatrice. “The sun had already circled the earth nine times since my birth when the glorious lady of my mind appeared before my eyes. Many called her Beatrice, she who blesses, even if they did not know her name…. So she was in the beginning of her ninth year when I saw her, while I was at the end of mine…. Then this awestruck animal spirit, which lives in the brain that receives he perceptions of all the other sensitive spirits, directed its words to the eyes and said to them in Latin, “Your bliss has now appeared.”” The personification of Love then speaks directly to Dante, “And since Beatrice has actually known the gist of your long-held secret for quite a while, I would like you to write some verses that describe the power that I, Love, have over you because of her, and how you have devoted yourself to her ever since you were a boy.”

This book is mix of prose and verse sprinkled together. However, as the chapters build in momentum the verse takes prominence, while the prose becomes explanatory. Dante begins a poem, “My lady brings love to the eyes,/ To see her is to feel her grace./ All men stare where she passes by,/ Her greeting causes trembling heart,/ So that, eyes down, a man turns pale,/ Lamenting over his defects,/ As she dispels all pride and wrath./ O ladies, help me sing her praise.” Dante has a premonition of his love, Beatrice’s, death. “Lord Love then said, “I hide no more:/ Now come to see your lady’s rest.”/ My wild fantasy conveyed/ Me to my lady’s sad remains,/ And when I found her body there,/ I saw her face covered by veil,/ She wore a look of modest grace,/ As if to say, “I am in peace.”” Alas, his foreboding proved all too prescient, “Time was, her beauty shed such joy—/ And now it’s fled the eyes for good,/ Transformed to loveliness of soul,/ Sending to heaven up above/ A light of love that angels see,/ Causing their lofty minds to stare/ In wonder at such female grace.”

“In Praise of Floods” by James C. Scott

In this short book, Scott uses the Ayeyarwady River in Burma as a lens to discuss the evolution of rivers across geological time, as well as, particularly, the effect that humans have had on their path and their health. “If we consider a river to be an assemblage of life-forms dependent on the flow of water, silt, sand, clay, and gravel—all the elements that we call a river—then our conception of the entity must necessarily include all of its upstream tributaries and all of its delta distributaries. Not only are they all connected as a system of moving water and floodplains, many of the life-forms that depend on the river migrate between the many watercourses and rely on the flood pulse for their nutrition and reproduction…. The annual flood pulse is the most consequential movement of a river for all the life-forms dwelling in and around it. Whether impelled by monsoon rains, snow or glacial melt, or seasonal rains, the flood pulse represents that part of the year during which the river overflows its channel banks and inundates the adjacent floodplain. It may, year by year, vary in its amplitude, its timing, and its duration. But it is a completely natural part of the annual cycle of a river’s hydrology.”

Over the centuries, agriculture has been, arguably, the largest source of anthropogenic destruction to a river’s natural flow. “Only rich, annually renewed alluvial soils could, given the constraints of transport in the ancient world, provide the concentration of manpower and taxable, storable foodstuffs that made even modest state-making possible…. The most common form of early agriculture is known as “flood recession agriculture” (in French: cultivation decrue). It is still practiced throughout the world because it has been shown to be the most labor-saving form of agriculture…. The flood does almost all the work…. All that remains for the cultivator to do is broadcast or insert seeds in the prepared soil, giving the crop a head start on other plants…. Along with clearing the land for crops (deforestation), the second founding act of floodplain agriculture is drainage. This is, in effect, the war to exterminate mud and replace it with well-drained soil. What remains are watercourses (drainage and irrigation ditches) and arable land.”

The formation of the nation-state was an integral part in the course of river modifications. “The early state is an ecologically invasive, artificial order. Fixed-field agriculture, irrigated wet rice, and aboveground simultaneously ripening cereals all require a simplification of the landscape…. The state is constantly modifying its environment, simplifying it…. Whereas the hunter-gatherer adapts to the complex rhythms of the natural world to subsist, the early state strives to subdue this movement and complexity—to create a state-serving habitat. A state-serving habitat is one stripped down to a narrow band of domesticated crops and domesticated animals…. The key to the nexus between cereals and states lies, I believe, in the fact that only cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation and appropriation: they grow aboveground; their yield can be assessed; they are storable, portable, and can be used as rations; and most of the crop ripens at the same time. This last characteristic is crucial, for it means that tax and tithe gatherers can appropriate all or part of the harvest.”

Scott concludes his paean to the natural wild-flowing river, “The river is a living hydrological community that helps spawn, feed, and shelter large numbers of flora and fauna, from algae to insects to dolphins. The life-sustaining watershed system, if allowed to move as it will, is more productive of life and biodiversity than virtually any other natural system. Any intervention by hard-path engineering to maximize the return from a river is likely to damage its life-giving properties, making it far less productive over the long term…. The hubris embedded in cost-benefit analyses and their cousin ecosystem services is nothing short of staggering. Given our wealth of ignorance about the environment and interspecies connections, it seems presumptuous to assume that hard-path engineers know more than the river…. Soft-path engineering has the singular advantage of intellectual modesty with respect to what we actually know about river movement and its environmental effects…. Soft-path engineering accepts variability in the river’s movement as valuable until proven otherwise. Meanders, backwaters, ephemeral wetlands, braids and channels, swamps—all anathema to hard-path engineering—are presumed by soft-path engineers to be biotically important.”

“Moby-Dick or The Whale” by Herman Melville

Even for most who have yet to read this novel, people know that it is about a whale. Melville takes massive deviations from his plot, which is, at heart, a whale hunting voyage, to digress on the anatomy and history of the sperm whale, the details of the construction and everyday mechanics of a whaling ship, the ethnicity, background, personalities, and responsibilities of its crew, the culture, history of warfare, and dietary habits of Polynesians, and much more. But in the end, this is a novel about one man, Captain Ahab, and his obsession with one white sperm whale, Moby Dick, who took his leg in battle on the high seas.

The novel is told by Ishmael, a former merchant marine, who is on his maiden whaling voyage. “They say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease in manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though…. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the slightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas—entire strangers to them—and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here they sat at a social breakfast table—all of the same calling, all of kindred tastes—looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they had never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green Mountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior whalemen!”

Most American whaling ships, in Melville’s time, launched their multi-years voyages from Nantucket. “Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and rests on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a Noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China.”

Melville stressed that the whaleman was born from particular stock. “And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who offers to ship with the Phaedon instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware of such an one, I say: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm richer.” Melville describes Ahab’s ship in the midst of its hellish journey, “Then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul.” It is not until the last thirty pages of the novel that the Pequod, finally, gives chase to Moby Dick, “They were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all; though it was put together of all contrasting things—oak, and maple, and pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp—yet all these ran into each other in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced and directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities of the crew, this man’s valor, that man’s fear; guilt and guiltlessness, all varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that fatal goal which Ahab their one lord and keel did point to.”

“A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs that Made our Brains” by Max S. Bennett

Bennett explicitly states at the beginning of this book that his discussion only details the path to intelligence that humans, specifically, took through the evolutionary process. That said, in his explanations, he references the commonalities that primates, mammals, vertebrates, and multi-celled creatures, etc shared with human development, when appropriate. “Breakthrough #1 was steering: the breakthrough of navigating by categorizing stimuli into good and bad, and turning toward good things and away from bad things. Six hundred million years ago, radially symmetric neuron-enabled coral-like animals reformed into animals with a bilateral body. These bilateral body plans simplified navigational decisions into binary turning choices….

Breakthrough #2 was reinforcing: the breakthrough of learning to repeat behaviors that historically have led to positive valence and inhibit behaviors that have led to negative valence…. Brains formed into the basic template of all modern vertebrates: the cortex to recognize patterns and build spatial maps and the basal ganglia to learn by trial and error. And both were built on top of the more ancient vestiges of valence machinery housed in the hypothalamus…. While trial and error does not explain all of animal learning, it undergirds a surprisingly large portion of it…. To solve the temporal credit assignment problem, brains must reinforce behaviors based on changes in predicted future rewards, not actual rewards. This is why animals get addicted to dopamine-releasing behaviors despite it not being pleasurable, and this is why dopamine responses quickly shift their activations to the moments when animals predict upcoming reward and away from rewards themselves…. Both disappointment and relief are emergent properties of a brain designed to learn by predicting future rewards…. In the brain, the result was the vertebrate cortex, which somehow recognizes patterns without supervision, somehow accurately discriminates overlapping patterns and generalizes patterns to new experiences, somehow continually learns patterns without suffering from catastrophic forgetting, and somehow recognizes patterns despite large variance in its input…. It is also not a coincidence that pattern recognition and reinforcement learning evolved simultaneously in evolution….

Breakthrough #3 was simulating: the breakthrough of mentally simulating stimuli and actions…. [The] neocortex enabled animals to internally render a simulation of reality. This enabled them to vicariously show the basal ganglia what to do before the animal actually did anything. This was learning by imagining. These animals developed the ability to plan. This enabled these small mammals to re-render past events (episodic memory) and consider alternative past choices (counterfactual learning)…. If you have a rich enough inner model of the external world, you can explore that world in your mind and predict the consequences of actions you have never taken…. It is when the simulation in your neocortex becomes decoupled from the real external world around you—when it imagines things that are not there—that its power becomes most evident…. Habits are automated actions triggered by stimuli directly (they are model-free). They are behaviors controlled directly by the basal ganglia. They are the way mammalian brains save time and energy, avoiding unnecessarily engaging in simulation and planning…. Humans and, indeed, all mammals (and some other animals that independently evolved simulation) sometimes pause to simulate their options (model-based, goal-driven, system 2) and sometimes act automatically (model-free, habitual, system 1)….

Breakthrough #4 was mentalizing: the breakthrough of modeling ones own mind…. This in effect, meant that these primates could simulate not only actions and stimuli (like early mammals), but also their own mental states with differing intent and knowledge…. The bigger the neocortex of a primate, the bigger its social group…. Animals who fell into the strategy of group living evolved tools to resolve disputes while minimizing the energetic cost of such disputes. This led to the development of mechanisms to signal strength and submission without having to actually engage in a physical altercation…. Understanding the minds of others requires understanding not only their intentions but also their knowledge…. The best evidence for social projection theory is the fact that tasks that require understanding yourself and tasks that require understanding others both activate and require the same uniquely primate neural structures…. When a primate watches another primate do an action. its premotor cortex often mirrors the actions it is observing…. Teaching requires understanding what another mind does not know and what demonstrations would help manipulate another mind’s knowledge in the correct way…. Understanding the intentions of movements is essential for observational learning to work; it enables us to filter out extraneous movements and extract the essence of a skill…. Both theory of mind and anticipating future needs are present, even in a primitive form, in primates, but not in many other mammals….

Breakthrough #5 was speaking: the breakthrough of naming and grammar, of tethering our inner simulations together to enable the accumulation of thoughts across generations…. First, humans evolved bigger brains…. Second, humans became more specialized within their groups…. Third, population sizes expanded…. And fourth, most recent and most important, we invented writing. Writing allows humans to have a collective memory of ideas that can be downloaded at will and that contain effectively an infinite corpus of knowledge…. We synchronize our inner simulations, turning human cultures into a kind of meta-life-form whose consciousness is instantiated within the persistent ideas and thoughts flowing through millions of human brains over generations…. The emergence from language was as monumental an event as the emergence of the first self-replicating DNA molecules. Language transformed the human brain from an ephemeral organ to an eternal medium of accumulating inventions.”

“An Experiment in Criticism” by C.S. Lewis

Lewis pontificates on the art of reading well. “The first reading of some literary work is often, to the literary, an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement an furnish a standard of comparison. Their whole consciousness is changed. They have become what they were not before…. Scenes and characters from books provide them with a sort of iconography by which they interpret or sum up their own experience.”

Lewis steps back to describe what makes a reader a good reader. “The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way…. The distinction can hardly be better expressed than by saying that the many use art and the few receive it…. We must never assume that we know exactly what is happening when anyone else reads a book…. No novel will deceive the best type of reader. He never mistakes art either for life or for philosophy. He can enter, while he reads, into each author’s point of view without either accepting or rejecting it, suspending when necessary is disbelief and (what is harder) his belief…. Every episode, explanation, description, dialogue—ideally every sentence—must be pleasurable and interesting for its own sake…. It is very natural that when we have gone through the ordered movements which a great play or narrative excites in us—when we have danced that dance or enacted that ritual or submitted to that pattern—it should suggest to us many interesting reflections…. But we had better not feather on them the philosophical or ethical use we make of it.” Lewis concludes, “And if it is worth while listening or reading at all, is is often worth doing attentively.”

“Open Socrates” by Agnes Callard

Callard begins by describing what she calls “untimely questions.” These are questions whose presumed answers we take as a given and base how we run our lives upon these suppositions. These are questions we do not want asked and ruminated over. “When we settle on answers to the central questions of our lives without ever having opened up those questions for inquiry, that is a recipe for wavering. A mind tasked only with thinking its way through the next fifteen minutes is likely to find itself acting inconsistently.” Callard begins by quoting Socrates, himself, ““I go back and forth about all this—plainly because I don’t know.” What causes Socrates to waiver is his failure to have inquired sufficiently…. Socrates thinks that his circumstances call for inquiry, whereas his interlocutors are inclined to cut off the inquiry and move on with their lives. As Socrates sees it, by preemptively closing the questions, they consign themselves to a lifetime of wavering.”

Socrates attempts to answer these foundational questions by pausing for a minute and not assuming anything. This is something the typical person cannot do. We cannot do this because the answers to these questions are intertwined with how we already live our lives. “We cannot “step back” to a detached position from which having no answer at all is permissible: questions and answer are magnetically attracted to one another, and the space for thought is eliminated.” Socrates attempts to answer these questions through dialogue. “Each of his conversations is a high-wire act in which Socrates manages to sustain an inquiry into the very question his interlocutor is least likely to tolerate. These are untimely questions.”

What is Socrates’ method? Socrates needs dialogue to unearth the answers to these untimely questions. “At first, Socrates’ interlocutors often conflate the activity of defining the concept in question with that of showing how it applies to and affirms their own behavior…. They first feel that the questions are so straightforward as to hardly deserve consideration, and then give “answers” that amount to performative self-affirmations…. People need to approve of the choices that they are, at that very moment, making. Socrates’ questions pinpoint beliefs the person needs to have…. A belief that one needs to have is a belief that one is acting on…. I don't pause to consider how an action should be performed when I am already performing that action…. The relevant belief is already operational…. The most interesting and most elusive questions will be the ones whose answers we must give at every moment of our lives, for their whole duration…. Our load-bearing answers to untimely questions tend to give rise to predictions that specify what needs to be true in the future in order for my answer to guide my action in the present…. When something matters to our ability to navigate our lives, we need to have a belief about what will happen, because we make use of that belief, in the activity of living.”

Furthermore, Callard stresses, Socrates is concerned, firstly and lastly, with defining the terms of the debate. Correct and complete definition is paramount, “Socrates is always telling his interlocutors to treat what he is saying as a question about what X is, not as a problem about how to find an X. He’ll instruct them not to break X into pieces, or not to simply give an example of X…. Socrates sometimes speaks of the Form of Justice, or the Form of Piety, or the Form of whatever X he and his interlocutor are examining. “The Form of X” simply refers to the version of X that you must have in mind so as to answer the question “What is X?” This is why “The Form of X” is synonymous with “X itself” or “the essence of X.”… The Form of X is X, considered as a question to be answered, rather than as a problem to be solved.… A Socratic definition… is the endpoint, the quarry.”

Finally, Callard stresses what makes Socrates unique. “Socrates’ identification of the quest to be a good person with a quest for knowledge underlies the distinctively Socratic denial that anyone ever acts against their better judgment…. If you actually knew what you should do, you would do it. So long as you don’t know, holds Socrates, the proper ethical attitude is an inquisitive one.”

“What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics” by Adam Becker

This book is about the controversies involved in the foundational knowledge of quantum physics. Quantum physics has been integral in developing such practical science as nuclear warheads and silicon transistors. Despite this, the very basic foundations of how and why quantum calculations actually work are still in dispute. In explaining the different theories still posited, Becker explains some of the basic science, the history behind various theories, the methods of various experimental setups, and why a clear conclusion has yet to emerge.

Most physicists subscribe to the Copenhagen Theory. “The Copenhagen interpretation states that quantum physics is merely a tool for calculating the probabilities of various outcomes of experiments…. Quantum physics proves that small objects simply do not exist in the same objectively real way as the objects in our everyday lives do.” It does not exist in the real world. Niels Bohr stated, “there is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description.” Pascal Jordan continued, “the electron is forced to a decision. We compel it to assume a definite position; previously, it was, in general, neither here nor there…. We ourselves produce the results of measurement.” The measurement itself affects the outcome. The electron before was in a superposition, but the measurement interacted with it, it moved to a definite position. “Quantum physics uses infinite collections of numbers called wave functions to describe the world. These numbers are assigned to different locations: a number for every point in space…. The Schrodinger equation ensures that wave functions always change smoothly—the number that a wave function assigns to a particular location never hops instantly from 5 to 500. Instead, the numbers flow perfectly predictably: 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and so on. A wave function’s numbers can go up and down again, like a wave—hence the name—but they’ll always undulate smoothly like waves too, never jerking around too crazily…. The wave function doesn’t tell you how much of the electron is in one place—it tells you the probability that the electron in in that place…. Once you find that electron, a funny thing happens to its wave function. Rather than following the Schrodinger equation like a good wave function, it collapses—it instantly becomes zero everywhere except in the place where you found the electron…. The Schrodinger equation holds all the time, except when you make a measurement.”

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle stated that either you could know the location of an electron or how fast and in what direction it was going, but not both at once. “Heisenberg found a precise formulation of how much information you have to give up about an object’s momentum in order to learn more about its position, and vice versa. You could know a lot about where an object was or a lot about how it was moving—but you couldn’t know both at the same time.” Bohr added to the uncertainty principle the issue of complementarity. He stated, “any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation not to be neglected…. an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation.” Becker explains, “the quantum world could only be considered real in conjunction with some kind of measurement apparatus to study that world. And the behavior of the objects in that world, as indicated by such an apparatus, would be best described as either particles or waves, but never both simultaneously. These descriptions are contradictory—a particle has a definite location, which waves don’t.” Bohr did not view this as a problem, however. He stated, “we are not dealing with contradictory but with complementary pictures of the phenomena.” According to Copenhagen, this wave/particle duality is inherent in all quantum phenomena.

Within Copenhagen there was not complete consensus, but all the physicists agreed that it was pointless to talk about what was really happening in the macro world. Quantum physics was not a theory of the world as it actually is. It is a tool for making predictions. “Making accurate predictions about the outcomes of measurements was, for them, enough.” Bohr stated, “there is no quantum world. Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties on the quantum theory being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.” Heisenberg stated, “the atoms or the elementary particles are not as real [as phenomena in daily life]; they form a world of potentialities rather than one of things or facts…. The idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them is impossible…. The transition from the ‘possible’ to the ‘actual’ takes place during the act of observation…. The transition from the ‘possible’ to the ‘actual’ takes place as soon as the interaction of the object with the measuring device, and thereby with the rest of the world, has come into play; it is not connected with the act of registration of the result by the mind of the observer.” John von Neumann threw his considerable weight behind the Copenhagen interpretation with a proof, which stated that wave functions normally obey the Schrodinger equation, but collapse upon measurement. Von Neumann stated, “we therefore have two fundamentally different types of interventions which can occur in a system. [When an object remains undisturbed, the equation] describes how the system changes continuously and causally in the course of time. [But once measurement is made] the arbitrary changes by measurement [are] discontinuous, non-causal, and instantaneously acting…. We must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer. Quantum mechanics describes the events which occur in the observed portion of the world, so long as they do not interact with the observing portion, with the aid of the [Schrodinger equation], but as soon as such interaction occurs, i.e. a measurement, it requires the [collapse of the wave function].”

Einstein disagreed with the Copenhagen consensus. He felt, “the programmatic aim of all physics [was] the complete description of any (individual) real situation (as it supposedly exists irrespective of any act of observation or substantiation.)” His greatest problem with the Copenhagen interpretation was the issue of locality: “the principle that something that happens in one location can’t instantly influence an event that happens somewhere else.” He viewed the instantaneous wave function collapse as violating locality. Schrodinger brought to light the issue of entanglement. “When any two subatomic particles collide, they almost always become entangled. When a group of objects forms some larger object, like subatomic particles in an atom or atoms in a molecule, they become entangled. In fact, nearly any interaction between any particles would cause them to become entangled, sharing a single wave function…. For any entangled system, Einstein’s choice applied: either the system is nonlocal, or quantum physics can’t fully describe all the features of the system.”

David Bohm was the first man to come up with a counter interpretation that could explain the foundations of quantum physics. This was the Pilot Wave Theory. Becker relates, “particles have a wave nature, but there’s nothing “complementary” about it—particles are just particles, and their motions are guided by pilot waves. Particles surf along these waves, guided by the waves’ motion (hence the name). Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle still holds—the more we know about a particle’s position, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa—but according to Bohm, this is simply a limitation on the information that the quantum world is willing to yield us. We may not know where a given electron is, but in Bohm’s universe, it’s always somewhere…. Bohm’s theory is mathematically equivalent to the Schrodinger equation, the central equation of quantum physics, and therefore it must make the same predictions as any other interpretation.”

The famous double-slit experiment showed the differences between Copenhagen and Bohm. Richard Feynman quipped that the double-slit experiment “has in it the heart of quantum mechanics…. In reality, it contains the only mystery.” Becker states, “the idea of particles, Copenhagen claims, is complementary to the idea of waves. The ideas are contradictory—photons cannot be both particles and waves…. When you aren’t measuring the position of a photon, it is a wave. Thus, photons can interfere with themselves as they pass through the double slit. But measuring the location of a photon forces it to behave as a particle: when the photon hits the screen behind the double slit, it must strike in only one spot.” Becker contrasts that explanation with Bohm’s theory, “photons, according to Bohm, are particles surfing on waves. While a particle can only pass through one slit, its pilot wave passes through both and interferes with itself. That self-interference, in turn, affects the motion of the particle, because it is guided by the wave…. Putting photon detectors on each slit affects each photon’s pilot wave—no matter how ingenious the design, any photon detector must alter a photon’s pilot wave, as ensured by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which in Bohm’s interpretation places limits on how much measuring devices can avoid interfering with the things they attempt to measure…. In Bohm’s account, although measurement can influence a particle’s motion, all particles have definite positions whether or not anyone is looking at them…. In Bohm’s pilot wave interpretation, strange quantum behaviors are minimized for larger objects, which is why we don’t see them in the everyday world.” Bohm’s interpretation did away with the superpositions of electrons and was able to incorporate measurement devices into the quantum descriptions. However, it did not solve Einstein’s problem of nonlocality, “allowing particles to influence each other instantaneously at long distances. A single particle, wandering the universe on its own without bumping into anything, is guided in its path by its own pilot wave and is perfectly local. But introduce a second particle that interacts in any way with the first, and suddenly they are linked—entangled—and the pilot wave of one particle will change depending on the precise location of the other particle, no matter how distant it may be…. Because Bohm’s theory involved faster-than-light connections between particles, it appeared difficult to extend Bohm’s ideas to incorporate special relativity.”

Hugh Everett III was the next physicist to find the Copenhagen interpretation lacking. He took the measurement problem, that wave functions collapsed upon measurement, seriously. He understood that it placed any observer in a solipsistic position. Instead, Everett proposed a single universal wave function, “a massive mathematical object describing the quantum states of all objects in the entire universe. This universal wave function, according to Everett, obeyed the Schrodinger equation at all times, never collapsing, but splitting instead. Each experiment, each quantum event, spun off new branches of the universal wave function, creating a multitude of universes in which that one event had every possible outcome…. There is only one copy of you in each branch of the wave function, and, even if you repeat the experiment, this will still be true—there will be more branches, but each branch will still only have one copy of you. And the Schrodinger equation dictates that each branch will carry on independently of the others, with hardly any interaction between branches…. To each person in each branch on the universal wave function, their world appears to the the only world.” This was Everett’s Many-Worlds Theory.

John Bell was another Copenhagen heretic. He believed Von Neumann’s proof was incorrect. It purported to rule out any explanation of quantum physics that used hidden variables. “A hidden-variables interpretation assigns definite locations or other properties to quantum objects before they are observed, even if those properties can’t be calculated from the theory itself. These properties go unseen in the mathematics of quantum physics.” Bohm’s pilot wave interpretation is one such theory. Bell thought Einstein’s EPR paper, which questioned the locality of quantum physics, was another way around hidden variables. Bell tried to resolve the differences between Copenhagen, Bohm, and EPR. “The single wave function shared by the two entangled photons guarantees that they will always behave in the same manner when encountering two polarizers with matching axes…. Therefore, if nature is local, the wave function is not everything—there must be hidden variables. So either quantum physics is incomplete, or nature is nonlocal. We cannot have both locality and completeness in quantum physics…. So either the predictions of quantum physics are wrong and nature can be local, or quantum physics is right and “spooky action at a distance” is real.” Bell explained, “certain particular correlations, realizable according to quantum mechanics, are locally inexplicable, They cannot be explained, that is to say, without action at a distance.” This was Bell’s impossibility proof. “Bell’s theorem really leaves only three unequivocal possibilities: either nature is nonlocal in some way, or we live in branching multiple worlds despite appearances to the contrary, or quantum physics gives incorrect predictions about certain experimental setups.”

Dieter Zeh was the next quantum physicist to poke holes in the Copenhagen consensus. He independently came up with a Many-Worlds Theory, which in many ways resembled Everett’s. (Everett left academia for the Pentagon after barely receiving his PhD at Princeton after squabbles with Bohr, his thesis advisor, John Wheeler, and others at Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen and so his theory was promptly forgotten.) Zeh started by positing, “let’s assume that the universe is a closed system, like a nucleus.” Becker continues that Zeh’s “general idea, a system in a superposition, with its components strongly entangled—could explain how measurement works in quantum physics, without resorting to any of the tricks the Copenhagen interpretation used…. Quantum physics says that the measurement device will become strongly entangled with the thing it’s measuring…. The measuring device interacts with the experimenter, and everything else in the room, and eventually the entire universe—so when a small quantum system interacts strongly with a large object, ultimately, the entire universe ends up like Schrodinger’s cat, splitting into dead-cat and alive-cat “branches.” And the inhabitants of each branch of the universe only see one outcome…. The different branches of the universe are extraordinarily unlikely to interact.” Zeh explained, “the observer sees only one component [of the Schrodinger’s cat state] and not the superposition of all the others. So, that solves the measurement problem.” Bryce DeWitt added, “the universe is constantly splitting into a stupendous number of branches, all resulting from measurementlike interactions between its myriads of components. Moreover, every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in every remote corner of the universe is splitting our local world on earth into myriads of copies itself.” This interpretation, therefore, never requires any wave functions to collapse. It does require an almost infinite number of universes, however. We are actually living in a multiverse.

This Multi-Worlds interpretation was bolstered by the discoveries of String Theory and of the concept of inflation, which “says that the very early universe expanded extraordinarily quickly for a minuscule fraction of a second—increasing in size by a factor of about 100 trillion trillion in about a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second—then resumed expanding more slowly…. According to inflation, the universe is unable to escape “eternal inflation”: as inflation ends in one part of the universe, it continues in others, and “bubbles” of noninflating universe continually appear in the inflating region. We live in one of these bubbles; other bubbles would be their own universes, cut off from all others, and each might have its own laws of physics and assortment of fundamental particles. And because inflation is eternal, there would be an infinity of these bubbles—an infinite multiverse of inflation. String theory, meanwhile, doesn’t describe a single universe but instead describes a “string landscape,” a phenomenally huge number of possible universes—10^500 or more.”

Another possible interpretation is Information Theory. “If the wave function is information of some sort, rather than being a physical object, then many of the puzzles at the heart of quantum physics seem to melt away. In particular, the measurement problem seems much easier to explain if the wave function is information—your information changes when you make a measurement, so it’s no surprise that wave functions change dramatically when measurements occur…. [However] information-based interpretations of quantum physics ran the risk of collapsing into solipsism as well. If the information that the wave function represented was your information, what makes you so special?”

A final quantum interpretation is Spontaneous-Collapse Theory, which “manages to leave most of the predictions of standard quantum physics intact, while altering them enough to solve the measurement problem…. In Spontaneous-Collapse Theory, the quantum wave function is real, but it doesn’t obey the Schrodinger equation perfectly. Instead, sometimes the wave function collapses. But this collapse has nothing to do with observation or measurement—the collapse happens entirely at random, for no reason at all, whether or not anyone is looking…. Though a single-particle wave function might not collapse on average until a billion years have passed, the solid objects of our everyday lives…. are generally composed of at least 10 million billion billion individual particles. If each one of those particles’ wave functions is compulsively pulling the handle of its own slot machine, then, on average, at least one of them will hit the collapse jackpot every millionth of a second. But because the particles…. are all continually interacting with each other, they’re all entangled—which means they all share a single wave function…. As Bell put it, in Spontaneous-Collapse Theory, Schrodinger’s cat “is not both dead and alive for more than a split second.””

Quantum physics has enormous predictive power in the real world. The equations have yielded amazing advancements in science and technology. Therefore, it somewhat amazing that its basic foundations are still in dispute. Most physicists today believe in the Copenhagen interpretation. In graduate programs it is taught that Bohr was right and Einstein wrong. However, dissent has also grown. Today, the multi-worlds interpretation has garnered a few famous adherents, especially among those who still work specifically on the foundations of quantum theory. Perhaps one day a true consensus will truly develop.

“On the Aesthetic Education of Man” by Friedrich Schiller (translated by Keith Tribe)

Schiller felt that aesthetic appreciation led to an increase in moral behavior. In his view, living during the time of the French Revolution, he existed in a degenerate age. “Culture of the capacity for feeling is the more urgent need at this time, not merely because it will enable better insight into life, but because it prompts the improvement of such insight itself.” The artist had certain responsibilities. “Live with your century, but do not be its creature; serve your contemporaries, but give them what they need, not what they praise…. Chase from their pleasures all caprice, frivolity, and coarseness; so will you imperceptibly banish them from their actions, and finally from their convictions. Wherever you find them, surround them with refined, great, inspirational forms, encircle them with symbols of excellence, until appearance conquers reality, and art nature.”

Idealism, as philosophized by Kant, was the spirit of the day. Schiller combined these views with a practicality of living within the objective world. “Beauty conceived in reality in no way belies the concept we have already formed of it in speculation; only that, here in reality, it has much less freedom…. The man presented to beauty by experience is material already spoiled and recalcitrant, who robs it of so much of its ideal perfection when mixing it with his individual character…. It is man who transfers to beauty the imperfection of his individuality.” He next defines the aesthetic. “The soul thus moves from sensation to thought through an intermediate disposition in which sense and reason are both active…. If the condition of sensuous determination is called the physical, while the condition of rational determination is called the logical and moral, then this condition of real and active determinability has to be called the aesthetic.” However, aesthetics has its limits, “Beauty provides no single result for either intellect or will; it follows neither one single intellectual aim, nor any one moral purpose; it discovers not one truth, does not help us fulfill any special duty.”

Form, not the subject matter, is the purpose of true art. “The sublimity of a work of art can only consist in its close approximation to that ideal of aesthetic purity…. The work of the artist must overcome not only the limitations that the specific character of his art involves, but also those presented by the particular material with which he works. In a genuinely fine work of art the content should do nothing, the form everything; for it is form alone that has an impact on the whole man, while content affects only his individual powers. However exalted and comprehensive the content may be, it always has a limiting effect on the mind, and true aesthetic freedom is to be expected only from the form. This is the real artistic secret of the master, that he erases material with form.” In the end, it is the view of the subjective individual and not the object in actuality that can inform art “Only insofar as appearance is sincere (expressly abjuring all claim to reality), and only insofar as it is autonomous (renouncing all support from reality), is appearance aesthetic…. It is incidentally not at all necessary that the thing in which we discover beautiful appearance is without reality, if only our judgment of this thing takes no account of this reality.”

“The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche (translated by Shaun Whiteside)

In his first book, Nietzsche details the role of Greek tragedy in forming humanity’s conception of aesthetics. “Art derives its continuous development from the duality of the Apolline and Dionysiac…. To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that in the Greek world there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Appolline art of the sculptor and the non-visual, Dionysiac art of music. These two very different tendencies walk side by side, usually in violent opposition to one another…. By a metaphysical miracle of the Hellenic ‘will’, the two seem to be coupled, and in this coupling they seem at last to beget the work of art that is as Dionysiac as it is Appoline— Attic tragedy.”

First, Nietzsche zooms out to convey how aesthetics relate to reality. “We can indeed assume for our own part that we are images and artistic projections for the true creator of that world, and that our highest dignity lies in the meaning of works of art—for it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified…. Only in so far as the genius is fused with the primal artist of the world in the act of artistic creation does he know anything of the eternal essence of art.”

Nietzsche describes, in minute detail, the composition and meaning of Attic tragedy, as it was first performed in Athens, “The ground walked upon by the Greek satyr chorus, the chorus of the original tragedy, is an ideal ground, a ground lifted high above the real paths of mortal men. For this chorus the Greeks built the floating scaffold of an invented natural state, and placed upon it natural beings invented especially for it. It was on this foundation that tragedy arose…. The satyr, the Dionysiac chorist, lives in a world granted existence under the religious sanction of myth and ritual….

The satyr, like the idyllic shepherd of our own more recent age, is the product of a longing for the primal and the natural; but how firmly and fearlessly did the Greeks hold onto this man of the woods…. Nature, still unaffected by knowledge, the bolts of culture still unforced—that is what the Greeks saw in their satyr…. He was the archetype of man, the expression of his highest and most intense emotions, an inspired reveler enraptured by the closeness of his god…. The chorus is a living wall against encroaching reality because it—the satyr chorus—depicts existence more truly, more authentically, more completely than the man of culture who sees himself as the sole reality…. The contrast between this authentic, natural truth and the lie of culture masquerading, as the sole reality is like the contrast between the eternal core of things, the thing in itself, and the entire world of phenomena…. The symbolism of the satyr chorus analogously expresses the primal relationship between the thing in itself and the world of appearances….

This interpretation perfectly explains the chorus in Greek tragedy, the symbol of the crowd in a Dionysiac state…. The tragic chorus of the Greeks is older, more primordial, indeed more important than the ‘action’ itself…. We now know that the stage, and the action, were fundamentally and originally conceived only as a vision, that the sole ‘reality’ is the chorus, which generates the vision from within itself…. In its vision this chorus beholds its Lord and master, Dionysus, and hence it is always a chorus of votaries…. In this function of complete devotion to the god, it is the supreme, Dionysiac expression of nature, and therefore, like nature, it speaks under the spell of wise and oracular sayings. Sharing his suffering, it is also wise, heralding the truth from the very heart of the world…. 

This is the Apolline dream state, in which the daylight world is veiled and a new world, more distinct, comprehensible and affecting than the other and yet more shadowy, is constantly reborn before our eyes…. The language, colour, mobility and dynamic of speech become completely separate spheres of expression in the Dionysiac lyric of the chorus and the Apolline dream world of the stage. Everything that comes to the surface in the Apolline part of Greek tragedy, the dialogue, looks simple, transparent and beautiful.”

Finally, Nietzsche concludes by revealing the role myth and tragedy played in shaping our culture at large, “Without myth all culture loses its healthy and natural creative power: only a horizon surrounded by myths can unify an entire cultural movement. Myth alone rescues all the powers of imagination and the Apolline dream from their aimless wanderings. The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, omnipresent and unnoticed, which protect the growth of the young mind, and guide man’s interpretation of his life and struggles. The state itself has no unwritten laws more powerful than the mythical foundation that guarantees its connection with religion and its growth out of mythical representations.”

“The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays” by Jose Ortega y Gasset (translated by Helene Weyl et al.)

Ortega y Gasset, never a wholehearted fan of modernity, nevertheless reluctantly concedes the value of modern art. As usual, he gives a characteristic patrician twist, perhaps not intended by the artists themselves, ““From a sociological point of view” the characteristic feature of the new art is, in my judgment, that it divides the public into the two classes of those who understand it, and those who do not…. Hence the indignation it arouses in the masses. When a man dislikes a work of art, but understands it, he feels superior to it; and there is no reason for indignation. But when his dislike is due to his failure to understand, he feels vaguely humiliated…. The art of the young compels the average citizen to realize that he is just this—the average citizen, a creature incapable of receiving the sacrament of art, blind and deaf to pure beauty…. The time must come in which society, from politics to art, reorganizes itself into two orders or ranks: the illustrious and the vulgar.”

The dehumanization of the subject and processes of art is, for Ortega y Gasset, modern art’s defining characteristic. “When we seek to ascertain the most general and most characteristic feature of modern artistic production we come upon the tendency to dehumanize art…. Far from going more or less clumsily toward reality, the artist is seen going against it. He is brazenly set on deforming reality, shattering its human aspect, dehumanizing it.” The other characteristic is for art not to take itself too seriously. “To insist on neat distinctions is a symptom of mental honesty. Life is one thing, art is another…. The first consequence of the retreat of art upon itself is a ban on all pathos. Art laden with “humanity” had become as weighty as life itself…. To look for fiction as fiction—which, we have said, modern art does—is a proposition that cannot be executed except with one’s tongue in one’s cheek. Art is appreciated precisely because it is recognized as a farce…. The new art ridicules art itself…. Art has no right to exist if, content to reproduce reality, it uselessly duplicates it. Its mission is to conjure up imaginary worlds. That can be done only if the artist repudiates reality and by this act places himself above it. Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.”

Finally, Ortega y Gasset posits a purpose of modern art, “Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness…. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill a youthfulness into an ancient world.”