estimations of the real and the faultily annointed

this week’s book of grievances is in approach of presence. reading texts from niels bohr, werner heisenberg, emmanuel levinas, jacques derrida, and st. augustine, i will attempt to miscontrue our auspices of immediacy. topics include,

sensible and insensible collapse
complementarity and the shades of present
quantum postulate
vulgarity of gaze and yields of shared space
mirror, superego, interpellation review
presence as illusory in chain of reference
trace as simulcrum of presence
inability to describe what may be known (echoes of ambiguity and discontinuity!)
confession: may the tumults of variety cease toward an ever-present opening

try the audio: Presence

David and Clara Shoemaker working in an x-ray laboratory at Oregon State University, 1983.

Husband and wife crystallographers David and Clara Shoemaker were, in many respects, an unlikely couple.

David Shoemaker was born on May 12, 1920 in the tiny town of Kooskia, Idaho. Clara Brink was born on June 20, 1921 in Rolde, Holland. Both moved through their primary studies in orderly fashion and progressed to undergraduate work in chemistry – David at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Clara at the University of Leiden.

In 1942 David received his bachelor’s degree from Reed and moved directly to the California Institute of Technology. Working under Linus Pauling, David quickly established himself as a promising doctoral candidate. His research was initially divided between Pauling’s expansive program of scientific war work and, later, a series of crystallographic investigations. While in Pasadena, David determined the structure of sixteen molecules, most notable among them threonine, an amino acid.

Upon receiving his Ph. D. in 1947, David – with the assistance of Pauling – was subsequently named a Guggenheim fellow, studying at both Oxford and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. Aged 27, he was among the youngest of his era to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Group photo of participants at the Conference on Current Problems of Physics. Copenhagen, Denmark. September 1947. Niels Bohr sits in the front row, far left. David Shoemaker is seated in the second row, fourth from right.

Clara’s path through graduate studies was somewhat less smooth. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of Leiden in 1941, shortly before the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and the subsequent closing of the university. Despite the turbulence of World War II, Clara was able to commence her graduate studies through the University of Utrecht, though much of her coursework was self-taught, conducted in her parents’ home. Despite these handicaps, Clara completed her doctoral examinations on time, in 1946, after which point she assumed an assistantship at the University of Utrecht and learned the techniques of x-ray crystallography, commuting one day per week to Amsterdam to study under the renowned crystallographer Caroline MacGillavry.

The years immediately following the close of hostilities were fruitful ones for both David and Clara. Having returned home from his Guggenheim trip, David was named a Senior Research Fellow at Caltech, where he solved the difficult structure of DL-serine and began the research program that came to define much of his (and Clara’s) career – a broad series of investigations into the structures of complex transition-metal phases. In the meantime, Clara became a full-time crystallographer, first studying crystal structures of monovalent ions at the University of Leiden and later working for one year at Oxford, where she conducted research on the crystal structure of vitamin B12 under Dorothy Hodgkin, the 1964 Nobel laureate in Chemistry.

In 1951 David was hired away from Caltech by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he began investigating zeolite structures as an Assistant Professor. Two years later, dissatisfied with the working environment at the University of Leiden, Clara took a one-year leave of absence to work on transition metals at M.I.T. Her laboratory in Cambridge was run by David Shoemaker.

In 1954 David renewed Clara’s leave of absence for an additional year and by 1955 it was clear that Clara would not be returning to Europe – on August 5th, the couple was married. Shortly thereafter Clara transferred to Harvard Medical School to work under the biochemist Barbara W. Low. One year later, Clara gave birth to the couple’s only son. While caring for the newborn Robert, Clara worked from home on the International Tables of Crystallography.

The Shoemakers enjoyed a productive tenure at M. I. T. – David was promoted to full professor, began a lengthy service on the U. S. National Committee for Crystallography (including a three-year term as President) and published widely, including a textbook titled Experiments in Physical Chemistry, which would eventually run through six editions.

In 1970 David was elected President of the American Crystallography Association. That same year, the Shoemakers relocated to Oregon State University, where David had been hired to chair the Department of Chemistry. In reaction to the university’s nepotism guidelines, Clara arranged to work as Research Associate under Dr. Ken Hedberg – like David Shoemaker, a former graduate student of Linus Pauling. The arrangement lasted for several years until the university’s rules were relaxed.

Model of the crystal structure and superstructure of the K Phase, Mn77Fe4Si19. Model built by Clara B. Shoemaker, David P. Shoemaker and Ted E. Hopkins.

During his tenure as department chair, David oversaw two major building projects – the construction of a new chemistry laboratory facility and the renovation of the chemistry offices and research building. Over that same period of time, Clara trained several graduate students in techniques of x-ray crystallography, publishing papers with many of her protégés. The couple retired in 1984, though they continued to conduct important work on transition metal phases as well as the controversial topic of quasicrystals.

The Shoemakers remained close friends with Linus Pauling, though they did dispute certain of Pauling’s claims about the nature of quasicrystals. In 1995 David Shoemaker, himself in fading health, spoke of his long association with Pauling at a memorial conference organized at Oregon State University. David’s comments detailing his recollection of the discovery of the alpha-helix caused something of a stir in the audience, as the provenance of the alpha-helix work has long been a matter of some dispute.

David Shoemaker on the Discovery of the Alpha Helix

Afterward, Shoemaker offered this clarification:

My memory may have been faulty in claiming to have seen Pauling actually taping his cardboard amide linkages together to form a helix, but Professor William Lipscomb, in a talk that preceded mine, showed a drawing in Pauling’s own hand of an alpha-helix rolled out flat, showing what points the polypeptide chain joined together in the helix. The drawing was titled ‘alpha helix. First drawn March 1948. Linus Pauling.’ My visit to Oxford was from January to March 1948.

David Shoemaker died of kidney failure on August 24, 1995, some six months after the Pauling memorial conference. His wife Clara, a close friend of our department, passed away on September 30, 2009. Over the course of their professional association, David and Clara published thirty-six scientific papers together.

The David and Clara Shoemaker Papers are just one of the many collections held in the OSU Libraries Special Collections.

In my last discussion of the challenges involved in writing about the history of science in the 20th century, I noted that local narratives can be taken to be revealing of broader issues, but that such narratives can also simply reflect back some larger narrative already understood to exist.  In this post we take this consideration to the case of the national narrative.

John Krige’s 2006 book American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe is, I would say, an important step in the establishment of a historiography of post-1945 science on the European continent.  Until recently, the history of scientific Europe in this period has not been systematically explored.  1999’s Science under Socialism, edited by Dieter Hoffmann and Kristie Macrakis (who just joined Krige at Georgia Tech this year), etched out a picture of science in East Germany.  Cathryn Carson has written on science in West Germany (publications list here).  In 1998’s The Radiance of France (out in a new edition this year), Gabrielle Hecht wrote on the development of the unusually important nuclear power industry in that country.  The object here is not to put together a complete bibliography, but if anyone wants to add to the picture of this historiography, please do leave a comment.

Krige’s book covers a lot of important bases, looking at the Marshall Plan, NATO, the State Department and CIA, the activities of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the establishment of CERN (on which he has written more extensively elsewhere) as institutions linking American and European science and politics.  (Here one should also make note of Ron Doel’s ongoing project to study American science’s diplomatic uses.)  Similar to Needell’s book on Lloyd Berkner, the emphasis here is on individual cases.  In this case, different deliberations are marshaled into a narrative linking the “reconstruction” of scientific Europe to the larger narrative of America’s political “hegemony” in western Europe as part of an effort to build a bulwark against Soviet influence in the east: “The case study approach I have followed does not make for an integrated narrative.  Each example throws into relief a different facet of the process of empire building.  Underlying them all is the struggle to contain Communism” (256-7).

The book walks a line between confrontation and conservativeness in its claims: “This book is not ‘anti-American.’  My argument is permeated not with hostility to the United States but with a sense of the Realpolitik and its meaning in the Cold War.  I reject as morally arrogant and self-deceptive that view of American exceptionalism that hold that whereas ‘other states had interests, the United States had responsibilities’: all great powers have both” (14).  Krige is challenging Geir Lundestad here.

The book’s thesis and its analytical focus on archive-level negotiations seem designed to persuade those who might be convinced of an utter lack of self-interest and a complete purity of idealism in American foreign policy.  The term “hegemony” is used to reject such a position; the term’s definition is watered down in such a way that the story cannot help but stick.  Hegemony, Krige emphasizes, is “co-produced”, meaning that European beneficiaries of American scientific assistance not only agreed to its terms, but enthusiastically so.  He further details American elite scientists’ respect for European autonomy, with the obvious constraint that American resources not be used to support communism.  That such measures were insufficient to allay all criticism, including French reluctance to commit to transatlantic alliances (as expressed most clearly in de Gaulle’s 1966 withdrawal from NATO) can be seen as further evidence that such forms of intervention constituted a hegemony.  The lack of overt exercise of power merely serves to render that hegemony less visible.

The overarching picture Krige presents is surely correct: the American scientific model was both highly influential, and American resources were not provided free of American approval of the ends to which they would be put.  I suspect this argument is unlikely to reach an audience that needs to be convinced of it.  This, to my mind, makes the focus on national narrative unfortunate, since it tends to take on an overriding importance in the presentation of more local narratives.

That scientific diplomacy was designed to accord with American foreign policy goals is obvious; that diplomatic goals were in the balance in the intricacies of scientific politics is not, yet the presentation continually takes it for granted that they were.  This results in some strained presentation, as when Krige suggests on p. 185 that Niels Bohr might have ethically erred in the mid-’50s in not informing international guests at his Copenhagen institute—if, indeed, he didn’t; “we will probably never know”—that he was being funded by the Ford Foundation, and that his Ford Foundation contact, Shepard Stone, was explicitly aligning the Foundation’s programs with those of the CIA’s ironic (but, Krige allows, sincere and unalloyed) plot to promote an image of the United States as a supporter of open dialogue between nations.  (It was of course expected that this dialogue would result in new strategically-useful information on what was happening in science behind the Iron Curtain.)

A similar sensibility inhabits Krige’s presentation of the development of NATO projects, wherein particular suggestions presented by Americans automatically become identified with the American hegemonic project, and rejection of said suggestions becomes anti-hegemonic “European” resistance.  Thus, when American NATO representatives present a scheme for an international MIT-like technology institute, its defeat is taken to be of clear significance in the narrative arc of American techno-hegemony, as well as clear evidence of the blindness of Americans to “local specificities and to existing European strengths” (225), even though the proposal was widely embraced by European representatives, even though the scheme’s opponents had no objections to the kind of education to be offered, and even though the eventual scuppering of the proposal seems to have been on the rather mundane grounds that it might negatively impact existing universities.

Similarly, when MIT physicist Philip Morse worked with NATO to spread operations research (OR) in European militaries in the early 1960s, his scheme to promote a pedagogy of OR not unlike that offered in his burgeoning program at MIT (which included instruction in advanced mathematical techniques) was rejected.  This is taken to represent a rejection of an “American” model of OR in favor of a British model.  What Krige does not note is that at that time American military OR was essentially identical to British OR, and that what Morse was promoting was still a fairly peculiar vision for OR training as it pertained to the military services.  Most of my own research on this subject is not widely published, and none of it was in 2006, so this should by no means have been clear (and I’m willing to accept counter-arguments).  However, more caution in equating the Morse model with an “American” model might have prevented confusion as to the larger meaning (or lack thereof) of the success or failure of this or that model of OR.

The incidents portrayed in Krige’s book are important contributions to the historiography.  In the area of OR, for instance, there is no other material on OR in NATO, and I myself have not researched the specific topic so it is useful to me personally.  Krige also makes important contributions to the historiography of the impact of anti-communism on scientific work (as in the work of Jessica Wang): anti-communism clearly became Rockefeller Foundation policy in the early 1950s—against the Foundation’s avowed lack of concern for scientists’ political beliefs—as Foundation officials worried that mainstream biologists with communist sympathies would use Foundation funds to promote Lysenkoism.  However, this book also reinforces my feeling that the labyrinthine 20th-century archive tends to reflect more than it reveals when read too strictly in view of pre-posed concerns, such as national narratives.

the edible attribution: sincerity

this week’s book of grievances will suffer the sincere. this show will explore the association between seeing and believing,  the damaging impact of the cult of the serious on society, and the assessment of the real risk in the wake of the impossibility of the sincere. O! to the roles we play! here’s the mp3: Sincerity

i will engage the following texts for this irreverent exegesis of solemnity:

Moore, Capitalism

Melville, Les Enfants Terribles

Levinas, Totality and Infinity

Coens, A Serious Man

Monty Python, “Joke Warfare”

Zupancic, The Odd One In

Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature

Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy

Sologub, The Petty Demon

myth of the straightforward

aren't we all on the outside

In the first article we gave an overview of the shift that took place from the modern to the post modern era and the effect it had on mission.  Firstly Bosch mentions that we are standing on the verge of the post modern era, but, on the other hand we are still firmly grounded in the modern era.  We cannot move forward if we do not look back on the influences of this era. 

There are various reasons why the modern era is experiencing its end.  These reasons are diverse.  It includes the thoughts of Karl Barth, Immanuel Kant and philosophy and the most influential events were probably the two world wars.  The modern era were marked by the importance of reason and the autonomy of the individual.  The post modern era however, challenges these factors.  All secrets of the world cannot be unlocked by reason and the trust in human abilities only led to two world wars and disappointment.  According to Bosch the revolution in thinking came with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr in the field of physics. 

The Era of Enlightenment are challenged in the following ways:
1. The expansion of Rationality
Objectivity was seen as a myth.  Metaphors, symbols, rituals, signs and myths, which were not previously seen as expressions of rationality are not seen as irrational anymore.  Rationality must make room for experience. 
2. The subject-object Relation
The subject was over-amplified while the object (or the world) was almost ignored.  The world was only seen as something to discover and to use.  
3. Die rediscovery of the Teleological Dimension
The Enlightenments focus on cause and effect rather than purpose ultimately left the universe meaningless.
4. The Challenge to Progress Thinking
The human race led the Enlightenment down.
5. The Enlightenment brings radical distinction between facts and values
Our factual existence has brought forward ideologies such as Nazism. The post-modern era have fortunately not chosen for subjectivism, but rather a tempered realism which includes the judgement of values. 
6. Chastened Optimism
The Enlightenment believed that all problems, in principle, are solvable.  People are again becoming conscious of the reality of evil-in human beings and in society.  The horizons are no longer limitless.  We again realise that we cannot know more than a fraction of reality. 
7. Towards Interdependence
In contradiction with the Enlightenment we have found that we cannot live without others and that the individual who only strive towards his/her own happiness exists in a meaningless bubble. 
In this first discussion it became clear that we are definitely entering a new era.  In this entering of this new era it is however necessary to realise that this movement towards post modernity is not yet finalised.  A very good observation were made that faith with only rationality and knowledge and no experience is empty. 

The conclusion were made that the church today functions in a relatively new paradigm, therefore the church needs to understand mission in a different light.  This new understanding of mission needs to look for continuity between the past while at the same time also leave room for difference and change.  In this regard Bosch states that a creative tension exists between the old and the new.  Despite these current changes the church still has the responsibility to realise hope to the world.  

In the next blog we attempted to ask the questions related to the new challenges we face. In this regard we found that rather than answering these questions, the discussion developed more on the changes presently at hand.  In our post we mentioned that the only constant is change.  According to the comments it rather seems that the only constant is uncertainty.  In our previous article we also discussed the emergence of a Post modern Paradigm.  In this case it led to the isolation of the church because the church is still partly functioning within a modern framework, in the hope that the problem of the society, who is living only with the focus on the present, will sort itself out in the end.

Some of the challenges that the church and its mission faces are as follows:  
Marks of the post modern paradigm can be alienation, fragmentation, and polarization, the question it poses to us is how do we live together as the reconciled, yet diverse body of Christ?
How do we take advantage of the technology that brought the world much closer together to deepen our awareness of one another and of our independence?
 How do we proclaim Christ so that the good news is heard in an age of saturated information?
How, in this time of growing interrelatedness as human beings and with ecology of the whole creation, will we as Christians relate to persons of other religions or no religion?
How, together with others, shall we be co-creators with and stewards of the creation in a post modern world living with the consequences and the contributions of the modern era?
How shall we bear witness in word and deed that faith becomes active in lives of love, service, and striving for justice and peace?

All of the above questions bring with them more uncertainty than certainty.  And this uncertainty brings with it tension.  That is probably the reason why these aspects were discussed.  All of the comments agreed that the emergence of the Post modern era is a welcomed change.  The church functioning within this new paradigm has the responsibility to handle these changes in the correct manner.  It also came to light that God is part of this movement towards a better future.  Technology also accelerated this process of interlinking the community of faith.  It is necessary to read the signs of the age that we are in and actively try to envision how these signs predict future changes. Another important aspect is that attitudes of adaptability are cultivated.

In the last post the question were asked whether the church successfully adapted to its changing environment.  It seems that the church is experiencing difficulty with adapting.  The reasons might be because the church had difficulty with staying in contact with the world or maybe because the church can’t measure up to the requirements of the world and its rationality. 

In a post modern world it became clear that the concept of rationality needed to broaden its horizons. The Post modern concept of rationality concedes that experience is a foundational aspect of rationality. Bosch gives a great answer in our opinion.  He states that ‘true rationality also includes experiences.’  With this distinction is possible for the Church to acknowledge the importance of rationality without losing all credibility.  There thus remains a special tension between rationality and religion.  This tension should be addressed, not ignored.  This is clearly seen in the New-age movement.  Anyone who reads the Bible would soon find themselves in some difficulty when applying this same method. 

The replies on these observations brought to light that post modernity changed knowledge.  Post Modernity tells us that knowledge doesn’t have to be dependent on facts.  Something can be seen as true in spite the fact that we cannot comprehend it without rational thought.  The possibility is that people in our post modern world are starting to realise that statements concerning God doesn’t have to be untrue if it cannot be proven. 

In conclusion we agree with G.K Chesterton who once stated that the church is a house with a hundred gates.  This means that no one enters at exactly the same angle.  The importance of shifting towards a post modern paradigm is to beware the becoming of our own religion and rather let other people help us to see God through their eyes.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

Le contraire d’une vérité banale, c’est une erreur stupide. Le contraire d’une vérité profonde, c’est une autre vérité profonde.

माझ्या एका रोजनिशीमधूनः

निल्स बोरनी आपल्या घरच्या दाराला घोड्याची नाळ बांधली होती. एका शस्त्रज्ञाने बोरना याबद्दल विचारले,”तुम्ही तर शस्त्रज्ञ. तुम्ही अशा अंधश्रद्धेवर विश्वास ठेवता?”

तेव्हा बोर म्हणाले,”जो या गोष्टी मानतो त्याचं भलं करतो व जो मानत नाही त्याचंही भलं करतो.”

Copenhague, una obra en dos actos de Michael Frayn
Lectura dramatizada
Compañía Teatre de La Incertesa

14 September 2009
IDEC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Balmes 132-134
08008 Barcelona

En el marco del Máster en Comunicación Científica, Médica y Ambiental, el Instituto de Educación Continua (IDEC) de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra y la Compañía Teatre de la Incertesa presentan la lectura dramatizada de Copenhague, una obra de teatro de Michael Frayn.

La compañía Teatre de la Incertesa nació en Barcelona en noviembre de 2002 durante la celebración de la XII Semana de la Ciencia. Des de la Regidoria Ciutat del Coneixement del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona se propuso la lectura dramatizada de la obra como una de las actividades dirigidas a la difusión y al acercamiento de la ciencia a los ciudadanos. Este tipo de obras son las que se plantea interpretar esta compañía en un intento de aproximar el mundo de la ciencia a los espectadores.

Copenhague se trata de un diálogo ficticio basado en hechos y en personajes históricos reales: la obra versa sobre el encuentro que se produjo en Copenhague en 1941, en plena Segunda Guerra Mundial, entre el físico danés Niels Bohr y el alemán Werner Heisenberg, a quien muchos consideraban relacionado con el régimen nazi. El gran misterio entorno al encuentro entre Bohr y Heisenberg reside en si Heisenberg sólamente pretendía intercambiar ideas científicas o si buscaba colaboración para desarrollar proyectos armamentísticos:

Heisenberg – “…Nadie entiende por qué fui a Copenhague. Lo he explicado una y otra vez. A Bohr mismo, y a Margarita. A los interrogadores, a los oficiales de inteligencia, a periodistas, historiadores. Cuanto más lo explicaba más incierto resultaba. Bueno, con mucho gusto haré un nuevo intento. Ahora que ya estamos muertos y no le hacemos daño a nadie, y no traicionamos a nadie.”

La obra se estrenó en el National Theatre de Londres en 1998 y superó las 300 representaciones. Su estreno en Broadway fue el 11 de abril de 2000 en el Royal Theatre y se representó 326 veces. Actualmente sigue representándose en varios países y sigue siendo motivo de acalorados debates académicos en congresos internacionales. Copenhague también ha recibido diversos premios, incluyendo el prestigioso Premio Tony a la mejor obra de teatro en 1999.

“Endlessly fascinating?. The most invigorating and ingenious play of ideas in many a year!. An electrifying work of art!” Ben Brantley, The New York Times

La obra fue adaptada como serie de televisión en 2002, con Daniel Craig como Heisenberg, Stephen Rea como Niels Bohr, y Francesca Annis como Margrethe Bohr.

Más información sobre la obra

Guión de la obra (versión argentina)

Quantum physics, which originated in work conducted by Max Planck and Albert Einstein at start of 20th Century, is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behavior of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood. Niels Bohr once said if quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.

In quantum mechanics any situation is a blend of every possible option of what might happen and this blend is called a wave function. This seems to work for light. Sometimes light can act as a particle and sometimes as a wave. Atoms, it has been found, seem to follow the same rules. As the world is made of atoms, the world must follow the rules of quantum mechanics. Obviously in the real world life doesn’t spend its time sitting on the fence, things just happen. But in quantum mechanics things happen only when this wave function collapses and only one possibility is left.

At some point a situation has to stop having every possible outcome. When an event is observed then all the other possibilities suddenly disappear. It’s like saying that the universe is based on chance. One enormous casino. What happens next is based on chance not on an absolute certainty. Imagine the universe as a horse race with lots of evenly matched horses. Until the race is over you can’t tell which horse is going to win. With quantum mechanics the idea is that the race isn’t over until someone decides to check on the result. This is where the science fiction idea of ‘parallel universes’ comes from. If every possible outcome is waiting to happen perhaps it really does happen in another quantum universe. Every horse wins in some reality.

Erwin Schrödinger was the man who first discovered the equations that quantum mechanics relies on. Even he couldn’t believe the idea that nothing happens until someone looks to check it. He invented the most famous cat in science – Schrödinger’s cat. If nothing happens until it is observed then imagine the following. A cat is put in a box with a small gadget that will release poison. This poison will be released by something that is controlled by the laws of quantum mechanics, for example radioactive decay. Radioactive atoms are ones that are unstable and spontaneously break down into smaller atoms. So there is a lump of radioactive material and a device to detect if an atom has broken down. This atomic break-up has a 50:50 chance of happening in one hour. According to quantum mechanics, until the box is opened an hour later both outcomes should co-exist. The cat should be both dead and alive at the same time until someone observes the result.

Despite what some people think, this story was meant to show how Niels Bohr’s interpretation of quantum mechanics was wrong. It was just an interpretation. There is an easier way of thinking about this. Quantum mechanics does seem to explain a lot of things about atoms and light. This craziness of a cat that is both dead and alive only applies if you stick to the idea that everything happens until it is measured by a person. There is no paradox if you just change to the idea that a quantum event happens when the result interacts with anything. When the radioactive atom in the box decays, the cat will only die when the radioactivity detector in the box detects it. When a particle that follows quantum mechanics interacts with anything it has to commit to being one thing or another. So a quantum mechanic event can set up a sequence of events that end up with a cat that is dead or alive without needing it be both at the same time.

All this cat really tells us about quantum mechanics is that trying to use quantum mechanics to explain normal day-to-day life doesn’t work. Understanding atoms doesn’t help you understand a whole cat, but then again understanding cats doesn’t help you understand atoms, so it works both ways (no matter what cats say). Einstein’s problem with quantum mechanics was summed in the idea that ‘God doesn’t play dice’. Everyone seems to remember that but do you know not what Niels Bohr said in reply: “It is not the job of scientists to prescribe to God how he should run the world.” (Some excellent advice, were that more of his fellow scientists followed it instead of penning best sellers on atheism.) 

At the end of the day quantum mechanics does make sense in its own realm and offers explanations for strange effects that have no other explanation. In the traditional interpretation of quantum theory –sometimes also called the “Copenhagen,” “standard,” or “orthodox” interpretation — one must, to avoid paradoxes or absurdities, posit the existence of so-called “observers” who lie, at least in part, outside of the description of the world provided by physics. That is, the mathematical formalism which quantum theory uses to make predictions about the physical world cannot be stretched to cover completely the person who is observing that world. What is it about the “observer” that lies beyond physical description? Careful analysis suggests that it is some aspect of the rational mind.

This has led some eminent physicists to say that quantum theory is inconsistent with a materialistic view of the human mind. Eugene Wigner, a Nobel laureate in physics, stated flatly that materialism is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” Sir Rudolf Peierls, another leading twentieth–century physicist, said, on the basis of quantum theory, “The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being…including its knowledge, and its consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”

Admittedly, this is a highly controversial view. That is only to be expected, especially given the materialist prejudice that affects a large part of the scientific community. Moreover, the traditional interpretation of quantum theory has aspects that many find disturbing or implausible. Some even think (wrongly, in Dr. Steven Barr’s opinion) that the role it assigns to observers leads to subjectivism or philosophical idealism. Dissatisfaction with the traditional interpretation has led to various rival interpretations and to attempts to modify quantum theory. However, these other ideas are equally controversial. The controversy over quantum theory will not be resolved any time soon, or perhaps ever. But, even if it is not, the fact will remain that there is an argument against materialism that comes from physics itself, an argument that has been advanced and defended by some leading physicists and never refuted.

Recently the Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to “affirming life’s spiritual dimension”, has been won by French physicist Bernard d’Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.

d’Espagnat says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things. Some suggest that observers play a key part in determining the nature of things. Legendary physicist John Wheeler said the cosmos “has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen.”

D’Espagnat worked with Wheeler, though he himself reckons quantum theory suggests something different. For him, quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately “veiled” from us. The equations and predictions of the science, super-accurate though they are, offer us only a glimpse behind that veil. Moreover, that hidden reality is, in some sense, divine. Along with some philosophers, he has called it “Being”.

The deeper questions in physics are bound to interact with the religious/philosophical assumptions of the physicist. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God. Mark Vernon, who writes science articles, did a little research and came up with the following:

1. THE ATHEIST

Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg is well-known as an atheist. For him, physics reflects the “chilling impersonality” of the universe. He would be thinking here of, say, the vast tracts of empty space, billions of light years across, that mock human meaning. He says: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”

So for Weinberg, the notion that there might be an overlap between science and spirituality is entirely mistaken: “I have to admit that, even when physicists will have gone as far as they can go, when we have a final theory, we will not have a completely satisfying picture of the world, because we will still be left with the question ‘why?’ Why this theory, rather than some other theory? For example, why is the world described by quantum mechanics? Quantum mechanics is the one part of our present physics that is likely to survive intact in any future theory, but there is nothing logically inevitable about quantum mechanics; I can imagine a universe governed by Newtonian mechanics instead. So there seems to be an irreducible mystery that science will not eliminate.

But religious theories of design have the same problem. Either you mean something definite by a God, a designer, or you don’t. If you don’t, then what are we talking about? If you do mean something definite by ‘God’ or ‘design,’ if for instance you believe in a God who is jealous, or loving, or intelligent, or whimsical, then you still must confront the question ‘why?’ A religion may assert that the universe is governed by that sort of God, rather than some other sort of God, and it may offer evidence for this belief, but it cannot explain why this should be so.”

2. THE SKEPTIC

The Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, shows a distinct reserve when speculating about what physics might mean, whether that be pointlessness or meaningfulness. He has “no strong opinions” on the interpretation of quantum theory: only time will tell whether the theory becomes better understood. “The implications of cosmology for these realms of thought may be profound, but diffidence prevents me from venturing into them,” he has written. In short, it is good to be humble in the face of the mysteries that physics throws up.

3. THE PLATONIST

Oxford physicist Roger Penrose differs again. He believes that mathematics suggests there is a world beyond the immediate, material one. Ask yourself this question: would one plus one equal two even if I didn’t think it? The answer is yes. Would it equal two even if no-one thought it? Again, presumably, yes. Would it equal two even if the universe didn’t exist? That is trickier to contemplate, but again, there are good grounds for a positive response. Penrose, therefore, argues that there is what can be called a Platonic world beyond the material world that “contains” mathematics and other abstractions.

4. THE BELIEVER

John Polkinghorne worked on quantum physics in the first part of his career, but then took up a different line of work: he was ordained an Anglican priest. For him, science and religion are entirely compatible. The ordered universe science reveals is only what you’d expect if it was made by an orderly God. However, the two disciplines are different. He calls them “intellectual cousins”. “Physics is showing the world to be both more supple and subtle, but you need to be careful,” he says. If you want to understand the meaning of things you have to go beyond science, and the religious direction is, he argues, the best.

5. THE PANTHEIST

Brian Swimme is a cosmologist, and with the theologian Thomas Berry, wrote a book called The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. It is avidly read by individuals in New Age and ecological circles, and tells the scientific story of the universe, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human consciousness, but does so as a new sacred myth. Swimme believes that “the universe is attempting to be felt”, which makes him a pantheist, someone who believes the cosmos in its entirety can be called God.

The simple explanations of quantum theory come from a kids’ science blog called “journeybystarlight.”

Lately, I’ve been watching quite a few videos on youtube. I find many of the discussions that the more thoughtful videos engender to be quite instructive. I wonder at times if people really listen to each other’s words either in the videos themselves or in theirt comments and replies. I find some of the debates fascinating. Questions such as whether suffering is objective or subjective. Do we create our own universe and everything in it or do we perceive reality as being objective and/or consensual?  When we conceptualize our perceptions do we use language or does language come as an expression of those perceptions? I find all of these questions to be fascinating.

At times it seems apparent that for at least some of the people discussing these issues, the opposing points of view cannot even be conceived. It appears to me as if they cannot map the opposing viewpoint onto their view of reality. At the point in the discussion where these areas get hit on each other’s maps, the conversation is what science fiction writer Samuel Delaney called rupture.

In the now unfortunately out-of-print novel Lady Slings the Booze , Spider Robinson has his characters discuss the term rupture and how to deal with maps that may be different from our own.

“After a few seconds of silence, she managed to find some words. “Joe, are you familiar with the phenomenon Samuel Delany calls ‘rupture’?”

“Hey, I never get that carried away.”

“There it goes again. Rupture occurs when you think you are in the middle of a conversation with someone. . . and suddenly discover that you’ve merely been making noises at each other, that there is a previously unsuspected chasm between you beside which the Marianas Trench is a pothole. We have come to a pointof rupture, Joe. You don’t know what I mean, and I’m not sure I understand what you said. I think we must be using different maps.

….

” The street I’m pointing to doesn’t exist on yours.”

“Okay. How do I get one of your maps?”

“You’ll just- have to draw your own, I’m afraid.”

I sighed. “Look, Lady, I’m not trying be to difficult. But how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

Priscilla spoke up. “Map-making isn’t hard. Just tricky.”

“I’m listening,” I said politely.

“Four stages. The obvious three are: look around you carefully, record what you see, and integrate it. It’s the very first part that’ll trip you up, and it’s the most important of all.”

“It’s the whole thing,” Lady Sally corrected. “The other three happen automatically; you couldn’t stop ‘em if you tried-once you do the first thing.” -

Damn it, the PI isn’t supposed to be the straight man. “Which is?” -

- “Throw out all the old maps you already have in the glove compartment,” Priscilla said.

Lady Sally nodded. “Forget all the reports of earlier explorers. You can’t discover America if you keep shying away from the edge of the world. And if you do find it, you’ll waste years asking to be taken to Kublai Khan.”

Why would we wish to open our minds or maps to new territories we haven’t accepted before? Why travel anyplace new? I can think of several reasons. Perhaps we wish to learn whatever the new outlook may teach us and in my experience there exist  few viewpoints, opinions, philosophies or places that have absolutely nothing to teach us. Even what may seem to be an  absurd notion to us may lead to some fascinating paths or fancies. Perhaps the more points of view that we can understand, the more comprehensively we can defend our own .Perhaps as the Danish physicist Niels Bohr said “The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement, but the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.” . and  It might be that the ‘profound’ truths that oppose our own may be the hardest for us to map.

No matter the reason, I find it difficult to understand how people have these troubles entertaining viewpoints that seem to be in opposition to their own. After all if the metaphor of mapping new territory does hold up, wouldn’t most people enjoy a free trip, no matter where it might lead?

Il Danese Tranquillo. Niels Bohr: un fisico e il suo tempo (1885-1962) di Abraham Pais

Se, accostandovi a questa biografia di Niels Bohr, avevate in mente le vertigini di “Sottile e’ il Signore”, dimenticatevele.

Pais, in pieno attacco di storicite acuta, affastella liste di viaggi di Bohre di finanziamenti da lui ricevuti, tratteggia persino un abbozzo di storia della scienza in Danimarca, ci si perde tra i continui rimandi, qualche aneddoto personale o de realto, senza riuscire a intravedere una logica compiuta nella narrazione.

C’e’ da dire che Pais non e’ aiutato certo dalla biografia di Bohr, crocevia della fisica della prima parte del novecento. Bohr lavora e si confronta con tutti i massimi scienziati dell’epoca da Rutherford ad Einstein, passando per Heisenberg, Kramer, Dirac. Tutti ospiti del suo Istituto di Copenaghen, il primo vero istituto internazionale nella storia della scienza, nel quale Bohr esercita appieno la sua funzione di scienziato manager, curandone tutti gli aspetti, non solo quelli scientifici, ma anche economici e architettonici. Eppure tra i numerosi contributi chiave forniti da Bohr, ci rimane ad oggi “solo” quello piu’ filosofico di tutti, quello della complementarieta‘ e del concetto di fenomeno, considerando che il suo massimo contributo alla fisica del suo tempo, cioe’ la prima teoria dei quanti e’ stata abbondantemente superata.

Insomma la figura di Bohr, centrale per la Fisica novecentesca, emerge solo a tratti, affogata tra i troppi dettagli e da un impostazione del testo che non riesce mai decidersi a concentrarsi sulla storia personale di Bohr  o sugli argomenti da lui trattati nel corso della vita.

The Great Scientist Niels Bohr

It is believed that if you hung a horseshoe at the front of your house then Evil forces will remain far from you.

Now have a look at the conversation between Niels Bohr and an unknown man.

After seeing a Horseshoe hung outside Niels Bohr’s  house the man asked Bohr that even being a scientist how could he believe in all this superstition . Bohr replied that he didn’t believe in it . Then the man asked why he had hung horseshoe then . Bohr replied that he had been told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.

Image via Wikipedia

Quantum mechanics is generally regarded as the physical theory that is our best candidate for a fundamental and universal description of the physical world. The conceptual framework employed by this theory differs drastically from that of classical physics. Indeed, the transition from classical to quantum physics marks a genuine revolution in our understanding of the physical world.

One striking aspect of the difference between classical and quantum physics is that whereas classical mechanics presupposes that exact simultaneous values can be assigned to all physical quantities, quantum mechanics denies this possibility, the prime example being the position and momentum of a particle. According to quantum mechanics, the more precisely the position (momentum) of a particle is given, the less precisely can one say what its momentum (position) is. This is (a simplistic and preliminary formulation of) the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle for position and momentum. The uncertainty principle played an important role in many discussions on the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, in particular in discussions on the consistency of the so-called Copenhagen interpretation, the interpretation endorsed by the founding fathers Heisenberg and Bohr.

This should not suggest that the uncertainty principle is the only aspect of the conceptual difference between classical and quantum physics: the implications of quantum mechanics for notions as (non)-locality, entanglement and identity play no less havoc with classical intuitions.

(Via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Michael Milken, 60000 Deaths, and the Story of Dendreon (Chapter …

In this, the final chapter of the Dendreon saga, we wonder how many biotech companies have been destroyed by criminal stock manipulators and their captured accomplices.

Financier Michael Milken popularized the use of high yield debt (also known as junk bonds) in corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions. This fueled a boom in leverage buyouts and hostile takeovers. Milken&s network of high-yield …

D.H. Blair, the Mafia-affiliated brokerage founded by Lindsay Rosenwald&s father-in-law (the so-called “king of stock fraud”) and managed for some time by Rosenwald and Michael Milken&s former national sales manager, received much of …

D.H. Blair, the Mafia-affiliated brokerage founded by Lindsay Rosenwald&s father-in-law (the so-called “king of stock fraud”) and managed for some time by Rosenwald and Michael Milken&s former national sales manager, received much of …

In this, the final chapter of the Dendreon saga, we wonder how many biotech companies have been destroyed by criminal stock manipulators and their captured accomplices.

bild von CarbonNYC

Ich habe im letzten Artikel ja schon darauf hingewiesen, dass ich einen Post über die “Kill Zones” verfassen werde. Dieser Post wird dann der Auftakt der neuen Serie “Court-Re-Vision” hier auf MYG sein.

In der Serie werde ich das Spielfeld analysieren und “Sweetspots” (also Orte auf dem Spielfeld von denen man besonders gut attackieren kann) definieren. Ich werde anhand von Schaubildern und evtl. mit Videos versuchen zu klären von welcher Position man welche Optionen hat und zudem Möglichkeiten aufzeigen, inwieweit man dieses Wissen in das eigene Training inkorperieren kann.

Das ist ja schön und gut, Benny, aber wofür muss ich das wissen?

Das ist die falsche Einstellung. Wenn du schon deine Go-to-Moves hast, konstant scoren kannst, in der Lage bist schwierige Pässe sicher zu spielen und weißt wo du in der Defense stehen musst und Angst hast deine “Kreativität” oder deinen Spielspaß zu verlieren, dann kann ich das verstehen, aber nicht tolerieren. Natürlich läuft Basketball intuitiv ab, aber wenn du weißt, dass du effektiver angreifen könntest, indem du den Raum besser nutzt und weißt was für Optionen du von welchen Positionen hast, dann hast du auch die Möglichkeit durch Wiederholung diese neuen (optimierten Handlungen zu internalisieren (zu verinnerlichen) und ein besserer Spieler zu werden. Deine Kreativität ist nicht vom Zufall und der damit verbundenen Unberechenbarkeit abhängig, sondern von deiner Fähigkeit Situation richtig einzuordnen und dementsprechend zu handeln. Mehr Wissen schafft mehr Möglichkeiten, auch wenn dieses Wissen von dir verlangt dein Spiel auf bestimmte Aspekte zu limitieren.

Einfaches Beispiel:

Ein Gesetz verbietet dir ab 8 Uhr Basketball zu spielen. Jetzt hast du die Möglichkeit das Gesetz einzuhalten oder es zu brechen. 2 Optionen.

Würde es das Gesetz nicht geben würdest du einfach auf den Platz gehen. Du könntest das Gesetz also nicht brechen. 1 Option.

Das bedeutet für dich, dass jede Limitierung auch neue Möglichkeiten schafft. Entwickelst du feste Grundmuster in deinem Spiel, dann kannst du diese zu bestimmten Zeiten brechen und Vorteile daraus ziehen. Sei so effektiv und effizient wie es geht, und manchmal noch ein bisschen mehr.

Basketball bleibt unberechenbar, allerdings muss man wissen wie man handeln muss, damit man kreative Lösungen auf dem Spielfeld finden kann. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass man ohne das richtige Training und das richtige Hintergrundwissen gleichwertige Entscheidungen trifft ist sehr gering. Sammel alle Informationen, die du bekommen kannst und finde dann heraus dir wirklich etwas bringt.

“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.”

Niels Bohr

Ich mache schon viele Fehler für dich, du kannst dich auf die Arbeit auf dem Platz konzentrieren. Das ist alles was du machen musst, um besser zu werden.

Und Glaub mir, die “Court-Re-Visions” werden dir dabei helfen.

—-

Für Videos bräuchte ich Unterstützung. Wer würde als Spieler zu Verfügung stehen wollen? Wer würde Kameramann spielen? Meldet euch, wenn ihr Interesse habt.

And don’t forget the beer & frozen peas. Yep, life’s kinda like that… except that my mother, well, she is of normal intelligence. Now my father, he… is also of normal intelligence. Really, other than that it’s pretty much a one-for-one parallel. Or maybe it just seems that way because I’ve been sick all weekend and have been watching Mr. Show by the truckload. That, and trying to make up all of the learning I missed in class last week. So it’s been a slow few days, but it’s these easy-going sick days I actually rather cherish. There’s an excuse to kick back and take it slow, a forced restfulness that could otherwise be construed as laziness. Really, livin’s all in the way you tell it, each telling a unique universe of objects and events. Some words to express this:

“Isn’t it strange how [Kronberg Castle in Denmark] changes as soon as one imagines that Hamlet lived here? As scientists we believe that a castle consists only of stones, and admire the way the architect put them together. The stone, the green roof with its patina, the wood carvings in the church, constitute the whole castle. None of this should be changed by the fact that Hamlet lived here, and yet it is changed completely. Suddenly the walls and ramparts speak a different language. The courtyard becomes an entire world, a dark corner reminds us of the darkness of the human soul, we hear Hamlet’s “To be or not to be.” Yet all we really know is that his name appears in a thirteenth-century chrinicle. No one can prove he really lived here. But everyone knows the questions Shakespeare had him ask, the human depths he was made to reveal, and so he too had to be found in a place on earth, here in Kronberg. And once we know that, Kronberg becomes a quite different castle for us.”
-Niels Bohr, 1924.

So this post has been a bit stream of consciousness, but hey my mind’s coming off a cold and hopped up on caffeine. Time to attack the week, tell some stories. To all, keep on keepin’ on. It’s the only way to be.

Listening to: Sometimes in the Fall, Phoenix

di Simona Maggiorelli

Picasso

Estate tempo di riposo. E, finalmente, tempo di letture. Si direbbe con il signor Lapalisse. Quelle agognate durante tutto l’inverno affogato di impegni e di lavoro. Ma a dare retta a un certo vecchio e usurato costume dei giornali nostrani, che sotto il solleone vanno a caccia di gossip e delitti, gli italiani con l’arrivo delle ferie manderebbero anche il cervello in vacanza. Stanchi di questo vecchio adagio, curiosando fra le novità in libreria, ci siamo immaginati un piccolo vademecum per chi sia già con un piede sull’aereo, sul treno, sulla bicicletta… cercando di fare incetta di enzimi per la mente…

Sotto l’ombrellone

«Tempo!», chiedono con le mani gli allenatori di Pallavolo. E di questi tempi vacazieri, quelli del Beach Volley sulle spiagge. E allora diamoci tempo per un tuffo nelle pagine per cercare di capire qualcosa di più di questo strano Paese in cui viviamo. Un Paese in cui i giornali dei grandi gruppi editoriali “non sempre” fanno il proprio lavoro, mentre singolarmente, e con coraggio, giornalisti e scrittori, passandosi il timone, scrivono la vera storia degli ultimi anni. Parliamo, per esempio, di giornalisti come Lirio Abbate, al lavoro quotidiano in Sicilia contro la mafia, ma anche autore di libri come I complici, tutti gli uomini di Provenzano da Corleone al parlamento (Fazi) scritto due anni fa con Peter Gomez; un libro, pensiamo, che ognuno di noi dovrebbe avere in casa.

Ma pensando a Napoli, alle stragi di camorra e non solo, parliamo anche dei libri di Roberto Saviano che, recentemente per Mondadori ha raccolto i suoi reportage scritti fra il 2004 e il 2009, nel libro La bellezza e l’inferno. Abbate e Saviano, due giornalisti diversissimi, ma che in questo Paese strano vivono entrambi sotto scorta. Una stranezza che la statunitense Freedom house ha passato al vaglio classificando l’Italia all’ultimo posto in Europa per la libertà di stampa.

In campagna

Dedicato a chi va in campagna. In senso letterale. E metaforico, pensando a ciò che si muove o non si muove, ahinoi, a sinistra sulla scena politica italiana. Pensando al teatrino delle candidature alle primarie del Pd a cui già in questi giorni stiamo assistendo e, a chi non rassegnandosi a morire democristiano, berlusconiano o finiano, già si sente in campagna elettorale per le elezioni regionali dell’anno prossimo. Così, fra i molti titoli nuovi che ci si propongono ci viene, in primis, da suggerire come lettura per l’estate il libro, anche se non nuovissimo, di Beppino Englaro Eluana, la libertà e la vita (Rizzoli) accanto a Storia di una morte opportuna, il diario del medico di Welby, Mario Riccio, pubblicato da Sironi.

Poi venendo ai libri freschi di stampa, un titolo importante come Religione e politica (Meltemi) in cui si ricostruisce tutto il percorso che va da Del Noce a Habermas allo statuto del Pd, che in molti ricorderanno, stabiliva che la religione non fosse un fatto al limite privato, ma dovesse rientrare a pieno titolo nel dibattito pubblico; persino, in quello parlamentare. Ma guardando ancora in casa propria pur sforzandoci di pensare Antonio Di Pietro di sinistra, memori delle sue sacrosante battaglie da magistrato, vale la pena approfondire la deriva populista dell’Antonio nazionale, analizzata da Alberico Giostra in Il Tribuno. Vita politica di Antonio Di Pietro (Castelvecchi).

Per chi va in montagna

Pensieri in vetta, dopo lunghe camminate. Un libro, un rifugio. Recita il titolo di una rassegna di incontri con l’autore in Alta Badia, che il 5 agosto, a La Villa-Corvara, invita il direttore del domenicale de Il Sole 24 ore, Riccardo Chiaberge, a presentare il suo ultimo libro La variabile Dio (Longanesi) che indaga le radici dell’insanabile conflitto fra religione e scienza. Ma di scienza e di scoperte mentalmente “ad alta quota” si occupa, fra romanzo e storia, anche il libro del fisico Gino Segré, Faust a Copenaghen (Il Saggiatore) che ricostruisce la vita, le relazioni (nonché la passione per l’alpinismo) e l’impegno assoluto nella ricerca del gruppo di scienziati, sei uomini e una donna, che nel 1932 lavoravano per Istituto di fisica teorica di Copenaghen.
Erano il gruppo di Niels Bohr e di Werner Heisenberg, i “rivoluzionari” della fisica quantistica. Per i più contemplativi, invece, c’è il bel libro curato da Chiara Dall’Olio La Montagna rivelata Fotografie di grandi viaggiatori e alpinisti tra ’800 e ’900 (Skira) e per gli scalatori del limite, invece, il libro testimonianza di uno dei più grandi scalatori al mondo, Alexander Huber La montagna ed io (Corbaccio). E ancora sul versante più “domestico”, riecheggiando il titolo del celebre viaggio in Italia di Dürer, ecco In viaggio sulle Alpi (Einaudi) di Marco Albino Ferrari, che l’autore presenta il 24 luglio a Courmayeur.

Per chi va al lago

Maurizio Pallante, il teorico italiano della decrescita, presenta il 23 luglio nel Parco Laghi Margonara a Gonzaga, in provincia di Mantova il suo ultimo libro La felicità sostenibile (Rizzoli) che parte da alcuni assunti semplici ed essenziali: tra processo di trasformazione e uso finale, una lampadina a incandescenza disperde il 95 per cento dell’energia; per ricavare una bistecca di manzo da un etto, occorrono tremila litri di acqua. Invitando a una battaglia, in teoria elementare ed evidente a tutti, contro gli sprechi. Ma un pesante sasso nel lago stagnante della politica italiana, che sotto Berlusconi (e purtroppo, anche sotto l’ultimo governo di centrosinistra) si è dimostrata quanto mai genuflessa ai diktat vaticani lo getta in primo luogo Gianluigi Nuzzi, con il libro Vaticano Spa (Chiarelettere).
In un Paese cattolico come il nostro da alcune settimane, curiosamente, in cima alle classifiche di vendita dei libri troviamo proprio questo titolo che documenta come lo Ior, la Banca vaticana, abbia negli anni prestato il fianco al riciclaggio di denaro sporco. E non solo. Una storia che si riesce a mettere ancor più a fuoco leggendo il libro di Nuzzi in parallelo con il libro Qualunque cosa succeda del giovane avvocato Umberto Ambrosoli, figlio dell’assassinato Giorgio (appena uscito per Sironi con la prefazione di del presidente Carlo Azeglio Ciampi). E per chi voglia andare ancora più a fondo in questa storia cruciale d’Italia, utilissima è anche la lettura comparata del libro Il Caffé Sindona (Garzanti) che gli autori Gianni Simoni e Giuliano Turone presentano il primo agosto a Courmayeur proprio con Umberto Ambrosoli.

Per chi viaggia

«Per viaggiare basta vivere», scriveva giustamente il portoghese Fernando Pessoa. E proprio per chi sceglie di vivere intensamente attraverso un viaggio ci sentiremmo di suggerire alcuni titoli che ci liberano dalla maschera della felliniana Gelsomina: di chi nulla sa, ma peggio ancora, nulla vuole sapere. Pensiamo a libri come l’autobiografia di Rebya Kader, ex imprenditrice dello Xinjiang, acclamata ai massimi gradi del parlamento cinese perché «arricchirsi è glorioso» e poi subitaneamente cacciata per la sua strenua difesa dei diritti umani nel Turkmenistan orientale. Qualche mese fa Kadeer, leader degli uiguri, esule negli Usa dopo anni di prigione in Cina, è venuta in Italia per presentare il suo libro, La guerriera gentile (Corbaccio), preconizzando un drammatico giro di vite nella sua terra.
Alla luce degli oltre 800 morti denunciati da fonti uigure, uccisi dalla repressione cinese, questo appassionante libro è essenziale per tentare di capire cosa sta succedendo. Dall’Estremo al Medio Oriente, altri focolai di rivolta e repressioni che si consumano sanguinosamente sotto il nostro sguardo distratto. Pensiamo all’Iran e alla rivolta di tanti giovani contro le elezioni truccate dal presidente Ahmadinejad. Anche in Italia sono usciti alcuni titoli che interrogano radicalmente il regime, a cominciare dalla Storia dell’Iran 1890-2008 (Bruno Mondadori) dell’italo-iraniana Farian Sabahi e dalla Storia dell’Iran dai primi del ’900 a oggi di Ervand Abrahamian (Donzelli).

Ma non solo. Con fantasia, raccontando per metafore, spinte da esigenze espressive ma anche dalla necessità di sviare la censura, giovani scrittrici iraniane raccontano tra le righe il cambiamento sotterraneo che la società di Teheran sta vivendo, anche grazie all’impegno delle donne. La studiosa Anna Vanzan ha raccolto le loro voci nel libro Figlie di Shahrazad. Scrittrici iraniane dal XIX secolo a oggi (Bruno Mondadori). E ancora. Dal Medio Oriente all’emergenze dell’Africa, Benito Li Vigni, esperto di geopolitica nel libro I predatori dell’oro nero e della finanza globale (Baldini Castoldi Dalai), indaga a tutto campo sui legami tra «mondo del petrolio» e potere politico-finanziario, inquadrando le verità nascoste che riguardano il futuro dei giacimenti, le guerre, le tensioni geopolitiche e l’uso dell’«arma petrolifera» da parte dei maggiori produttori, primo fra tutti la Russia. «Lungo una sorta di cintura che lega il Sud del mondo, passando dall’Iraq al Sudan e alla Nigeria, per arrivare in Venezuela e Colombia scrive Li Vigni – gli “imperi del profitto” si scontrano e si alleano. La fame di petrolio spinge a mutamenti epocali negli assetti politici internazionali, basti pensare alla silenziosa colonizzazione cinese dell’Africa e a un evento impensabile come l’affacciarsi della flotta militare di Pechino nel Mediterraneo». Uno scenario instabile nel quale si affaccia la «svolta verde» di Barack Obama e la sua politica estera fin qui moderata.

E ancora a chi voglia viaggiare con cognizione in terra d’Africa suggeriamo I signori della sete (Piemme) di Sergio Grea che offre – in chiave di romanzo ma sostanziata da una fitta messe di documenti – un drammatico spaccato delle conseguenze delle guerre per una risorsa primaria come l’acqua. Il libro sarà presentato il 19 luglio a San Marzano Oliveto in provincia di Asti. Last but not least, un libro essenziale per chi quest’estate prendesse le rotte dell’India: parliamo di Quando arrivano le cavallette (Guanda) della scrittrice e coraggiosa reporter Arundhati Roy. Nonostante i passi avanti che ha fatto la più grande democrazia mondiale, sono molte ancora le pagine di ingiustizia. La straordinaria romanziera de Il dio delle piccole cose qui fa cronaca di denuncia documentando azioni di apparati dello Stato deviati e la corruzione di una magistratura prona agli interessi delle multinazionali.

Per chi sta a casa

«L’amore è un viaggio. Ed è meglio viaggiare che arrivare, come diceva qualcuno». Quel qualcuno era il maestro del romanzo d’avventura Stevenson, quello dell’Isola del tesoro. Ma chi siglava questa nota nel 1918 era uno scrittore di lingua anglosassone, forse ancor più grande: D.H. Lawrence, l’autore scandaloso per quegli anni del romanzo L’amante di Lady Chatterly. Di Lawrence in questi giorni Adelphi fa uscire una interessante raccolta di saggi intitolata Classici americani. Di fatto una serie di folgoranti ritratti, di grande penetrazione psicologica di maestri come Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne (l’autore de La lettera scarlatta) e di Herman Melville. Il libro, scritto in prima persona, ha come voce narrante quella di un ragazzino di 11 anni che vede suo padre morire improvvisamente.

Ma volendo continuare a viaggiare con la mente nella grande e contraddittoria terra americana, Adelphi offre anche un altro titolo da non perdere di vista: l’affascinante Zia Mame di Patrick Dennis in cui si racconta la grande mela degli anni Venti ricca di jazz e nuove culture con lo sguardo ancora una volta di un ragazzino rimasto orfano, ma in questo caso affidato a una affascinate zia che non aveva mai voluto sposarsi. E ancora per restare in terra a stelle e strisce, mentre il giovanissimo Todd HasakLowy in Prigionieri (Minimum Fax) traccia un corrosivo ritratto dell’America dei nostri giorni in cui – ipse dixit «tutto è andato completamente a puttane, il governo, le grandi aziende, tutto», esce in rinnovata edizione italiana Uomo invisibile (Einaudi), il romanzo dello scrittore afroamericano Ralph Ellison, che per primo nel 1947 seppe fondere la tradizione orale del Sud con il registro poetico di Dostoevsky per raccontare la storia di un meticcio che ha più di qualche assonanza con quella del presidente Obama, il quale in passato, se non proprio citando Uomo invisibile, ha fatto riferimento ai libri di Ellison.

Un tempo, parlando di superpotenze culturali e non solo politiche, sbirciando da casa il mappamondo e avendo a portata di mano una degna biblioteca, a questo punto, si sarebbe andati a scovare qualche perla di novità letteraria nei territori della ex Urss. Ma letterariamente parlando oggi la temperatura culturale di Mosca sembra essere “non pervenuta”. Come se di dittatura in dittatura, da quella staliniana a quella putiniana, la voce dell’arte fosse stata più che mai tacitata. Mentre le voci critiche dei giornalisti, drammaticamente, vengono azzerate a colpi di pistola. Come la cecena Natalya Estemirova, come Anna Politkovskaya. Alle quali Voland dedica Ragazze della guerra di Susanne Scholl, in uscita nei prossimi mesi.

Nello scacchiere mondiale dell’arte, accanto a nuovi voci emergenti da vaste aree e continenti fin qui ingiustamente considerati periferia del canone occidentale come India, Africa, Caraibi, America Latina, svetta ancora, nonostante la censura, il colosso cinese, che uno scrittore di tradizione alta come Mo Yan ne Le sei rincarnazioni di Ximen Nao (Einaudi) racconta con accenti epici e sottile ironia nel passaggio lungo mezzo secolo che va dalla riforma agraria, alla rivoluzione culturale di Mao, fino agli esiti più recenti, di un’economia liberista e macchiata di sangue. Più giovane, caustico e disposto a raccontare gli ultimi anni della storia cinese al grado zero, Ma Jan, l’autore di folgoranti storie dal Tibet, raccolte in Tira fuori la lingua (Feltrinelli), nel nuovo romanzo Pechino è in coma (Feltrinelli) traccia un poderoso e agghiacciante ritratto di quel che è accaduto nel Paese di Mao a partire dal quel fatidico 4 giugno 1989 in cui la migliore gioventù cinese morì n piazza Tienanmen.

Dovunque andiate

«Nonostante l’epoca sia così nera, così difficile, piena di teologi, di ladroni, la poesia non ha perduto il suo valore, la sua efficacia, l’unica cosa che rimane ancora che possa trasformare il mondo, almeno allusivamente – un ultimo miracolo che ci resta – è forse la poesia; anche per questo suo dono di avere gli occhi divaricati, di poter abbracciare diverse cose insieme… ». Così, ricordando queste parole forti che Angelo Maria Ripellino affidò al suo Splendido violino verde (Einaudi), dovunque andiate o non andiate, ci sono dei libri che non deludono mai: sono le raccolte di versi.E fra i tanti classici a cui si può ricorrere per trovare buona linfa, ne segnaliamo anche uno uscito in questi mesi. è Ecco il mio nome (Donzelli) del poeta siriano Adonis. Un libro di versi dedicato al Medio Oriente dove l’autore è nato, ma anche ai sentieri incrociati di New York e di Parigi, dove ha scelto di vivere. A far da filo rosso della raccolta i temi che Adonis esplora poeticamente da cinquant’anni, il desiderio, il rapporto con la donna, il rifiuto della violenza, a cominciare da quella della religione. «Sono nato anti-ideologo e areligioso, perché temo molto tutti coloro che hanno la risposta a ogni domanda», spiega Adonis in una recente intervista.«Il monoteismo è la fonte dei nostri problemi e delle guerre che hanno sempre insanguinato il Mediterraneo; questo posso dirlo certamente come conoscitore dell’islam. Ma lascio a voi la critica del giudaismo e del cristianesimo, gli altri due grandi monoteismi». Nei suoi versi Adonis configura una sua laica antropologia. Con parole risonanti, sfaccettate, dense di significati. Lontane da ogni astrattezza filosofica. «Io vedo l’uomo come essere capace di amore e come creatura anti violenta. Credo davvero che l’uomo possa essere al sommo della creazione, intesa non in senso religioso, ma naturalistico».

dal quotidiano Terra, 18 luglio 2009