Letter 79: On the rewards of scientific discovery
I have been awaiting a letter from you, that you might inform me what new matter was revealed to you during your trip round Sicily, and especially that you might give me further information regarding Charybdis itself.
I know very well that Scylla is a rock—and indeed a rock not dreaded by mariners; but with regard to Charybdis I should like to have a full description, in order to see whether it agrees with the accounts in mythology; and, if you have by chance investigated it (for it is indeed worthy of your investigation), please enlighten me concerning the following: is it lashed into a whirlpool by a wind from only one direction, or do all storms alike serve to disturb its depths? Is it true that objects snatched downwards by the whirlpool in that strait are carried for many miles under water, and then come to the surface on the beach near Tauromenium?
If you will write me a full account of these matters, I shall then have the boldness to ask you to perform another task—also to climb Aetna at my special request. Certain naturalists have inferred that the mountain is wasting away and gradually settling, because sailors used to be able to see it from a greater distance. The reason for this may be, not that the height of the mountain is decreasing, but because the flames have become dim and the eruptions less strong and less copious, and because for the same reason the smoke also is less active by day.
However, either of these two things is possible to believe: that on the one hand the mountain is growing smaller because it is consumed from day to day, and that, on the other hand, it remains the same in size because the mountain is not devouring itself, but instead of this the matter which seethes forth collects in some subterranean valley and is fed by other material, finding in the mountain itself not the food which it requires, but simply a passageway out.
I have been awaiting a letter from you, that you might inform me what new matter was revealed to you during your trip round Sicily, and especially that you might give me further information regarding Charybdis itself.
I know very well that Scylla is a rock—and indeed a rock not dreaded by mariners; but with regard to Charybdis I should like to have a full description, in order to see whether it agrees with the accounts in mythology; and, if you have by chance investigated it (for it is indeed worthy of your investigation), please enlighten me concerning the following: is it lashed into a whirlpool by a wind from only one direction, or do all storms alike serve to disturb its depths? Is it true that objects snatched downwards by the whirlpool in that strait are carried for many miles under water, and then come to the surface on the beach near Tauromenium?
If you will write me a full account of these matters, I shall then have the boldness to ask you to perform another task—also to climb Aetna at my special request. Certain naturalists have inferred that the mountain is wasting away and gradually settling, because sailors used to be able to see it from a greater distance. The reason for this may be, not that the height of the mountain is decreasing, but because the flames have become dim and the eruptions less strong and less copious, and because for the same reason the smoke also is less active by day.
However, either of these two things is possible to believe: that on the one hand the mountain is growing smaller because it is consumed from day to day, and that, on the other hand, it remains the same in size because the mountain is not devouring itself, but instead of this the matter which seethes forth collects in some subterranean valley and is fed by other material, finding in the mountain itself not the food which it requires, but simply a passageway out.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 79
I have always been one of those pesky fellows who not only likes to figure out how things work, but also to discover why they work as they do, yet I struggled greatly with my classes in physics, chemistry, biology, or mathematics. While I was desperately curious, I was a painfully slow learner, hardly helped by a tendency to dwell upon the details, and by the time I had worked my way through the first chapter, the other students had already finished the rest of the book.
If I asked for explanations, I was given a hasty description, or I was merely told to memorize the formula. Without building on an account of the causes, I was clueless, so, at some point, my betters decided I was more creative than I was analytical, and they steered me toward literature, history, and philosophy. It’s a shame, not just because such a dichotomy is facile, but because a touch of patient demonstrating might have helped me to become a very different sort of man.
I did, however, strive to become a teacher who never left anyone behind, even if it meant learning less while learning it thoroughly. Years later, I was asked to teach algebra and geology to high school students, by a headmaster who foolishly assumed I was a polymath, despite my protests. I spent the summer ploddingly teaching myself, and I then presented the material with a certain type of student in mind, the one who was inquisitive, though he had sadly been labeled as “dumb”.
Seneca’s enthusiasm about the natural sciences is precisely the sort of attitude I believe can return some vitality to the rote tedium of education. What sort of conditions will generate a whirlpool? Are the stories about Charybdis to be taken literally, or are they symbolic? Why do people observe that Mt. Aetna seems to be shrinking? Is it something about the composition of the volcano itself, or should we rather examine the qualities of our own perceptions?
We have an unfortunate tendency to dismiss the ancients as being ignorant about the sciences, when our own advancements depend upon the very foundations they had gradually built. There is a good reason why it was once called “natural philosophy”, a wisdom that seeks to discover the hidden reasons behind the order of the material world; we would do well to recover that authentic sense of wonder.
I’m afraid I often see “science” reduced to a yet another form of dogmatism, a blind deference to the infallible authority of supposed experts, not unlike the distortion of faith we see employed by so many religious demagogues. Instead of standing in awe of the mysterious, it is a surrender to conformity, where the matter is either “settled” or has suddenly “evolved”, depending upon whatever happens to be politically convenient.
It has come so far in academic circles that skepticism is no longer a healthy sense of doubt, but more of a fortress mentality, where anything extraordinary is immediately rejected as being impossible. The shortsighted once claimed that gorillas and Komodo dragons didn’t exist, since no scientist had yet studied one in his laboratory; we should have the humility to admit that we simply don’t know, before we denounce it as ridiculous. And here I thought only stubborn children will insist that it isn’t real if they can’t see it.
I am so relieved to find Seneca with a heart full of wonder about what makes the world tick, which Aristotle rightly described as the beginning of all philosophy. The true scientist is characterized by a mind both open and logical, at once broad and precise, not by the status of his professional credentials.
I have always been one of those pesky fellows who not only likes to figure out how things work, but also to discover why they work as they do, yet I struggled greatly with my classes in physics, chemistry, biology, or mathematics. While I was desperately curious, I was a painfully slow learner, hardly helped by a tendency to dwell upon the details, and by the time I had worked my way through the first chapter, the other students had already finished the rest of the book.
If I asked for explanations, I was given a hasty description, or I was merely told to memorize the formula. Without building on an account of the causes, I was clueless, so, at some point, my betters decided I was more creative than I was analytical, and they steered me toward literature, history, and philosophy. It’s a shame, not just because such a dichotomy is facile, but because a touch of patient demonstrating might have helped me to become a very different sort of man.
I did, however, strive to become a teacher who never left anyone behind, even if it meant learning less while learning it thoroughly. Years later, I was asked to teach algebra and geology to high school students, by a headmaster who foolishly assumed I was a polymath, despite my protests. I spent the summer ploddingly teaching myself, and I then presented the material with a certain type of student in mind, the one who was inquisitive, though he had sadly been labeled as “dumb”.
Seneca’s enthusiasm about the natural sciences is precisely the sort of attitude I believe can return some vitality to the rote tedium of education. What sort of conditions will generate a whirlpool? Are the stories about Charybdis to be taken literally, or are they symbolic? Why do people observe that Mt. Aetna seems to be shrinking? Is it something about the composition of the volcano itself, or should we rather examine the qualities of our own perceptions?
We have an unfortunate tendency to dismiss the ancients as being ignorant about the sciences, when our own advancements depend upon the very foundations they had gradually built. There is a good reason why it was once called “natural philosophy”, a wisdom that seeks to discover the hidden reasons behind the order of the material world; we would do well to recover that authentic sense of wonder.
I’m afraid I often see “science” reduced to a yet another form of dogmatism, a blind deference to the infallible authority of supposed experts, not unlike the distortion of faith we see employed by so many religious demagogues. Instead of standing in awe of the mysterious, it is a surrender to conformity, where the matter is either “settled” or has suddenly “evolved”, depending upon whatever happens to be politically convenient.
It has come so far in academic circles that skepticism is no longer a healthy sense of doubt, but more of a fortress mentality, where anything extraordinary is immediately rejected as being impossible. The shortsighted once claimed that gorillas and Komodo dragons didn’t exist, since no scientist had yet studied one in his laboratory; we should have the humility to admit that we simply don’t know, before we denounce it as ridiculous. And here I thought only stubborn children will insist that it isn’t real if they can’t see it.
I am so relieved to find Seneca with a heart full of wonder about what makes the world tick, which Aristotle rightly described as the beginning of all philosophy. The true scientist is characterized by a mind both open and logical, at once broad and precise, not by the status of his professional credentials.
—Reflection written in 11/2013
IMAGE: Carl Spitzweg, A Scholar of the Natural Sciences (c. 1880)
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