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Edgar Allan Poe, Cosmologist
David Mazzotta writes "Bet you didn't know Edgar Allen Poe pre-discovered the Big Bang and Black Holes. This article at the NYT discusses the concept of pre-discovery, or theorhetical anticipation of eventual scientific discoveries. Most of these come from forward thinking physicists, but occasionally they come from a morbid, alcoholic, poet."
I betcha Poe didn't forecast pr0n by telecommunication...
Not sure what's up with all the NYT articles today, but here's the obligitory link: What Did Poe Know About Cosmology? Nothing. But He Was Right.
"All things that are, are fire." -- Heracleitus
Do you think this meant he understood atomic energy?
Or was this just the rap he used to score chicks?
The opposite of progress is congress
Einstein initially pooh-poohed the idea, and it wasn't widely accepted until the 1930's...
Nice... Nice move, NYT. Leave it to someone in the Arts section to write an article discussing physics and science predictions.
Pooh-Poohed?!
Since the article requires registration and I am tired of typing in "asdasdasd" today, forgive me if this comes across as offtopic or irrelevant.
However, it seems to me that the imagining of something amazing hardly equates to the "discovery" of such a thing.
For example: the guy who dreamed up the concept of a flying car is irrelevant compared to the engineer who actually realizes such a thing.
I guess my point is simply that any fool can dream up wild things while under the influence.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
that read this post and mis-read "cosmotologist"
quoth the raven " use the mousse.."
This seems to mean that the entire species acts as a single huge brain, if you like. There needn't be a supernatural explanation for this. It could just be that culture as a whole processes information, the results of this processing turning up in random people's ideas in strange ways. Weird wild stuff...
My site: Free Nature Pictures
HP Lovecraft predicted the existence of horribly betentacled monstrosities from outside the space we know long before they were first discovered lukring unspeakably behind bricked off rooms in the basement of DARPA.
Lovecraft was also an early adopter of continental drift, and it is early adoption, not invention, that we are talking about. The Big Bang did not achieve general acceptance until the 1960s, it is true, however, others besides Poe had proposed similar theories (something about a Cosmic Seed, I recall) before Poe.
In statistical terms - writers are drunken cranks. They are more likely to adopt fringe beliefs before the rest of the population. Some of those fringe beliefs will turn out to be true. The writer will seem prophetic. It's of little significance.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
John Mitchel, in 1783, had the idea that a star could be so heavy that the light itself could not escape its gravitational field. I think this precludes mr. Poe by some decades.
He is now believed to have died of rabies, contracted from one of his pets months earlier. In fact, the records from the hospital where he died actually said that he had abstained from alcohol for the previous 6 months.
Find out more about this theory.
I think of Poe as more of an opium fiend.
Here's a link to the "poem" in question: Eureka. It's appears to me to be simply nine pages of unreadable drivel.
However I did find a rather interesting quote from Poe: "Great intellects guess well."
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
I'm sure he meant that in the nicest possible way.
Being a morbid, alcoholic poet is actually quite cool in certain social circles... especially those who tend to wear lots of black. And eyeliner. Yes, lots and lots of eyeliner.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
Bet you didn't know Edgar Allen Poe pre-discovered the Big Bang and Black Holes.
I predict that they will break open quarks and find even smaller things inside. Presto. In 200 years, I will be a famous founding father of physics!
Science is about the quality of the argument and evidence for a particular hypothesis. Being right for the wrong reasons counts for very little.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Also Kanaad had detailed explaination about atoms and related theories.
Hmmm... Ok.. Chivas on the rocks.
What is with all these angry posts? Nobody's suggesting they rewrite the physics text, give credit to him for the Big Bang theory, or arguing that poetry is as precise as equations.
They're just pointing out an interesting little fact. Good grief, doesn't anyone here take the slightest joy in learning intriguing historical quirks?
Humorless bunch of...
What the NYT article did not discuss, and I wish it had, was what % of Poe's predictions/discoveries proved correct (so far?). Maybe he threa a lot of spaghetti at the wall and some stuck; or perhaps he was quite prescient overall.
It's interesting to look at the authors whose ideas turned out to be valid. Some might still turn out true (H.G. Wells?). Of course in retrospect, we tend to forget the 100's of authors who were merely nuts.
Lagrange... as in the 3 body problem. The Lagrangian points symetrical positions between 2 or more massive bodies create positons of zero gravitational influence. The opposite points produce instances of masximal gravitational influence. This is vector calculus as devised by Newton!!! Refinde by Lagrange.
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
Its misinterpreted 'trivia' like this that belittles the actual work of the professional scientist. Good grief!! If someone as simple as Poe can come up with the origin of the universe what the hell are we paying Stephen Hawking for?!?!? Sack him! He is not worth his wheel chair my man!!! ... and so we all become cretins.
- This and all my posts are public domain. I am a Physicist. I am not your Physicist. This is not Physically advice
they come from a morbid, alcoholic, poet
/. posts come from otherwise intelligent people that think they know about American literature.
/. reader submit a story and state commonplace assumptions that have no basis in fact and, in truth, came from this slander of a dead man.
And sometimes
Living in Richmond, VA, a city where Poe lived for a large part of his life, I have more than a passing familarity with Poe. I've also done a LOT of research on Poe for a screenplay (a new film production company focusing on digital film production is not only interested in this script, but is seriously negotiating for this script).
One of my former teachers is on the board for the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond and I have had long conversations and interviews with the current and former heads of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum.
In short, Poe was NOT an alcoholic (believe me, after years of working in treatment programs, I KNOW alcoholics), and there is little or no evidence he used opium, in any form.
There is strong evidence he may have been diabetic, in which case he could have what amounts to an allergic reaction to alcohol (I'm not an M.D., so I don't know all the details here.) He was also a critic and could write scathing reviews of other writers. True, he was found in a bar, went into a coma, and died a few days later. What many people don't know is that he was found in a bar on election day! I don't rember the exact law, or if the bar was a polling place, but for legal reasons, no alcohol was being served in the bar due to it being election day.
Diabetes would explain problems Poe had if he drunk and it would also explain his death -- a diabetic coma.
As for being morbid -- some of his writing was morbid. I suggest reading something like "The Poetic Principle" if you want background on this. Poe had quite a sharp sense of humor (and quite a sharp ego, as well) and was totally enticed by beauty. While I would call a number of his works morbid, I have not found enough in research to say he was morbid.
One last point: I mentioned he was a scathing critic. When he died, one of the writers he had severly criticized (I'm sorry -- I should remember his name off the top of my head, but I can't remember it) feigned friendship with Poe and asked to write the obit and handle other similar details. He used the chance to lambast and destroy Poe's reputation with slander and libel. The effectiveness of his slander can still be seen today, 153 years after Poe's death, when we see an intelligent
Everyone already knows everything, it's just a matter of remembering, and then deciphering whether what we remembered is fact or fiction. The deciphering part is where the science and maths come into play.
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
It's probably safe to say Pythagoras helped all future philosophers (he pre-dated Socrates and Plato) with the idea of pre-discovery. He was also the main force in creating the precursor to what we now think of as scientific thought.
Pythagoras was the first to really grasp that the mind could understand perfections and processes that existed in purity only outside the realm of our senses. There was a certain divinity of number (not his phrase, although some scholars have called it that) to his teachings.
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
Drugs too, Poe was addicted to laudanum, lets not forget the drugs. Also he drank absinthe, which is a bit more than regular liquor.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
It's a term used in logic, and it's appropriate for the situation. Or would you have prefered a *scientific* techincal term? That makes sense - lots of scientific dribble for the masses to read and try to understand.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
It seems to me that a simpler answer is given by a simple converging power series. Some infinite series converge! Light from stars that are farther and farther away are dimmer according to the inverse square law. Just add them up for any portion of the sky and you get a finite number, no? Why make it more complicated than that?
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
He was known to frequently drink to excess, and died drunk in a gutter -- thus an alcoholic.
And what's the source? See Poe Was Not An Alcoholic, posted above. This is slander from Griswold's obits where he wanted to destroy Poe's reputation.
Find one solid source in ANY Poe biography that states he drank....You can't, because he didn't.
Another intereseting story along the same lines is the fact that Cleopatra was a nymphomaniac and once had a horse lowered down on her, and how well that played out in history class when we were discussing her love affair with Rome's Marc Antony.
Remeber the film "Refer Madness"? The one produced by DuPont in an effort to get marijuana made illegal before the senators and representatives realized that it was the same thing as hemp. The same plant grown by George Washington on his farm, and tended to by slaves, and the same one that the US made the film "Grow Hemp for Victory" about during World War II in an effort to get farmers to grow the plant. The US has expnded a great deal of money and effort in an attempt to remove that film from existance but it recently resurfaced. Hemp was made illegal to protect DuPont's recently discovered method of making paper from wood pulp. This is an inferior paper because it turns to dust within about 300 years. We are furtunate that most of the research at the Vatican, including the first copy of the King James Bible, was published on hemp. So was the Declaration of Independance! Why are we not taught the truth.
The bottom line here is that we are adults! If the government and others would treat us as such then we wouldn't view them with such scepticism. Poe, although he was not an astronomer, was an avid reader of astronomy books and spent many an evening staring up at the stars. Why should we look at any of his conclusions as anything less than possible. After all this world is full of people that are not formally trained in an area of expertise making some very insightful discoveries and observations. Yet we are trained to dismiss these things out of hand. This dismissal is often times unjustified.
Remember Gene Roddenbery? He came up with a transporter because the model shots of shuttlecraft landing would have been too expensive to shoot every week. That transporter was accepted into science fiction as just that fiction; yet slashdot is full of article about how one discovery or another is getting us one step closer to that reality. I don't know that transporters will ever be reality but if they do finally invent it we should give the credit to Gene for making us all dream that it could one day become.
Restore America: Dr. Ron Paul for President!
In his book Flatland, Abbott laid out a basic idea that looks an awful lot like the theory of relativity. Not to mention being a mind bending book any way.
Drugs too, Poe was addicted to laudanum, lets not forget the drugs. Also he drank absinthe, which is a bit more than regular liquor.
Not true. See how lasting a pack of lies can be? Especially when written about a dead man. Rufus Griswold was blasted by some of Poe's criticism, so on Poe's death, faked friendship so he could be Poe's literary executor, then began to slander and libel Poe in his obit. These lies were so effective many people believe them without even thinking about them (including high school lit teachers!). For more info, see my post above -- "Poe Was Not an Alcoholic!"
The plain truth is that he wasn't.
Anyone read 'Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light' by Leonard Shlain? That book highlights some similar occurrences to this throughout history, showing parallels between Salvador Dali to Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci to Isaac Newton, and dozens more, examining and comparing pieces of art to scientific discoveries and theories, then going into lots of detail and explaining each side of the equation.
:)
The book shows through the course of history how artists have stumbled upon and understood in art what scientists later theorized and proved in science. It helps shed a light on not only the parallels between art and science but explain the inner workings of each, and treads through history looking at different art movements and explaining where they're coming from as wellExtremely interesting and compelling read, fairly heady at times, but overall quite good and DEFINITELY worth checking out if this subject interests you.
Oh come off it.. does it hurt your image of Stephen Hawking as a god, that someone so ignorant in this field could have possibly had such thoughts? You don't have to live and die for one idea. It may make you an expert, but then again everyone else is an expert too. That doesn't mean that you can't think outside the box every so often.
You're nothing; like me.
Likewise, black holes are just an educated guess at what might be at the centre of galaxies or left behind in the wake of supernovae. For all we know, the absence of light in these areas may well be merely extremely dense clouds of cosmic dust rather than pinpoints of near-infinite gravitational power.
The Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik has been tracking the star S2 near the center of our galaxy since 1992. After measuring 2/3 of the period, they are able to confirm:
1. Black holes exist.
2. There is one at the center of our galaxy.
See http://www.mpe.mpg.de/www_ir/GC/intro.html
Excellent work by a very dedicated group!
Regards,
Mike
Likewise, black holes are just an educated guess at what might be at the centre of galaxies or left behind in the wake of supernovae. For all we know, the absence of light in these areas may well be merely extremely dense clouds of cosmic dust rather than pinpoints of near-infinite gravitational power.
Black holes are not black. matter falling into the singularity give off massive amounts of energy. There have been many observations of energy emitters centered on the space where calculations should show intense enough gravity to be a black hole. Calculations also show they should emit blue light. From the event horizon in nothing escapes but A LOT of energy escapes in the space preceding it.
Plus, extremely dense dust clouds don't really destroy matter and produce the excessive amount of radiation that black holes do, nor do they have the gravitational effects on other objects on space that a black hole does.
Just curious, but how much astronomy do you actually know? there is quite a bit more substance to back it up than The Cast of Amontilado.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
...a few years back John Astin was here in Des Moines beta testing a one-man show on Edgar Allen Poe. He gave a talk a few days beforehand, and mentioned, among other things, something Poe wrote that did deal with astronomy, and in particular Olbers' Paradox. If memory serves, he said Poe argued for what is in fact the correct answer (stars aren't uniformly distributed).
(If you happen across this, Mr. Astin, I hope you enjoyed the copy of The Quantum and the Jaguar, and the show was great.)
If you want to get to know more about the lesser known sides of Edgar Allan Poe go see Once Upon a Midnight. John Astin (yes, Gomez Adams from the old TV show) gives a fantastic solo performance as the tormented poet.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Actually, in terms of alcohol content, absinthe is equivalent to vodka. Commonly, absinthe is mixed with about an equal amount of water and some sugar (poured over a sugar cube into a glass of water) before it is drunk, mainly to reduce the bitterness of it (absinthe is a wormwood liquor). Absinthe also contains thujone (i think that's the right name), a neurotoxin. This is also currently banned in the U.S.
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all....
--Thomas J. Kopp
Hmm, how are we doing today?
"News": Well, Martin Gardner wrote about Poe's Eureka as cosmology in an article entitled "The Irrelevance Of Everything", reprinted in his excellent The Night Is Large: Collected Essays 1938-1995 . Maybe it was news 7 years ago...
"For Nerds": Real nerds don't click through links requiring "Free Registration" to get at pulpy science "news" articles. They are also conversant with the work of Martin Gardner.
"Stuff That Matters": Uh, yeah.
Look, fellows, if I want to read the NYT Science section, I'll subscribe to the NYT. Could we please quit recycling it all on /.?
This is off my head of course, but I remember reading somewhere that the Titanic disaster was, to use the article's term, pre-discovered, in 1898 by an American author. She wrote a book called "The Titan" (I think), which was about an 8000 ton ocean liner that was reputedly unsinkable, but crashed into an iceberg in its maiden voyage from England to New York. I believe it was meant to be a sort of commentary on the vanity of the ruling classes then.
It's interesting to note that "Titanic" the movie was released exactly 100 years later.
More than mere navel gazing.
Three Cheers for Poe for imagining the Big Bang, black holes, and coming up with a solution to Olber's Paradox. But honestly, whenever I read about Olber's Paradox I wonder if I'm missing something. So go off on that tangent with me for just a minute...
Olber said basically that an infinite number of stars should produce an infinite amount of starlight, so why does it get dark at night? Paradox.
Sorry, but no. The brightness of the sky would depend on how much of that infinite starlight has had time to reach the Earth. The fact that the sky isn't infinitely bright right now doesn't mean it won't get that way someday. No paradox. The only paradox is that this is called Olber's Paradox instead of Olber's Idle Musing.
Don't know why Olber's Paradox gets me going, but it always does. Or am I missing something really simple and obvious, and just being a complete jackass about this?
Poe might not be considered a cosmologist, but he was certainly a cryptographer -- or at least a dabbler in the field. Like many very creative geeks, he did have something of a substance abuse problem. BTW, Absinthe is making something of a comeback in Europe -- the bar at one of the local universities here sells a drink based on Absinthe.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
>If the universe was infinite, as 19th-century astronomers believed, there should be an infinite number of stars as well, plenty, in other words, to illuminate the sky at all times.
That's somewhat misleading because, although there aren't an infinite number of stars (and other luminant stellar objects), there are enough stars to "illuminate the sky at all times." It's just that the amount of light isn't quite perceptable to humans. There are other (mostly nocternal) animals that can see just fine at night, and with light amplification devices (a.k.a nightvision goggles) so can we. So it's not a matter of it being dark at night, it's just a matter of us not being able to see with that level of light.
Of course there's also the matter of there being a finite number of stars and light that hasn't reached us yet, but that's besides the point.
---
Open Source Shirts
He doesn't yet know, but the day (if ever comes) that we can understand everything in OUR universe, will be the day you'd be an IDIOT not to believe in god.
There will be no more magic. Things behave "this" way. Reality is "this" construct that works this way. So fucking what??? That is NOT ANSWERING OUR QUESTIONS. And our last source of answers, our last hope of "solving -not-for-god" will be depleted.
Time to be brothers. Untill then, let there be war and despair...
unfinished: (adj.)
The problem is simple. For example, in economics as it is today, you can't say anything about it that doesn't involve writing long, the harder the better equations. Instead of understading economy we are trying to fit models, and afterwards claim we haven't proved wrong yet.
Any good old fashioned economist that is close to the world will be ale to predict better by "feeling" or "sense" than with any model.
unfinished: (adj.)
Most scientist that I know do not say that their faviorte theories about how the universe work "must be true". They are intelligent people aware of the history of science and they know that many theories have been replaced by others that more closely conform to observed reality. With the current evidence they have formulated theories about the creation of the universe. This is a good and intelligent endevour. There are competing theories about the creation and nature of the universe. This is also a good thing, and a properly scientific thing. There is the MOND theory that explains galactic rotation without dark matter. There are many models for the inflation that probably occurred at the big bang.
To say none of these theories are "discoveries" is correct. They are theories. The discoveries are such things as the cosmic background ratiation that seems to originate from a big bang. It is the job of the scientist to interpret empirical observations into explanations of how the universe works.
I gave up my belief in God when I relized that the only reason I believed in him was that I wanted to believe in him. I will not believe in him again until I have an objective reason to do so. Let's apply Occam's razor the the theory that God created the universe. At first look it is the simplist theory. It can be stated in one sentence, "God created the universe". However, it doesn't end there. We (as scientists) have an obligation to find a theory that explains God. How is it possible that an omnicient, omnipotent being happens to exist? While extremely pleasant to believe in such a being, the likelyhood of such a complex entity "just happening to exist" is extremely unlikely as well.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
nothing in science is held as absolute fact, only people who lack understanding in science make that claim.
There is a model of how a hypothetical Internet site called "Slashdot" behaves.
There is a model of how text entered into this hyprothetical site changes state, through unseen processes called "moderating".
They have detected something that accepts text and causes it to change state based on this hypothetical event called "moderating".
They have concluded this must therefore be "Slashdot".
As "proof" goes, that's fairly feeble.
I am very skeptical about the very existance of this supposed "Slashdot" object, and adhere to the alternate hypothesis that it is in fact thousands of monkeys pounding on typewriters.
Try to prove me wrong. You cannot. There is no scientific proof that "Slashdot" exists, apart from certain observed phenomenon that follow the predicted behavior.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
- "The tangible world is movement, say the Masters, not a collection of moving objects, but movement itself. There are no objects 'in movements', it is the movement which constitutes the objects which appear to us: they are nothing but movement... This movement is a continued and infinitely rapid succession of flashes of energy (in Tibetan tsal or shoug). All objects perceptible to our senses, all phenomena of whatever kind and whatever aspect they assume, are constituted by a rapid succession of instantaneous events."
There are better examples out there, but the idea that the tangible world is made up of movement, which itself is made up of flashes of energy (particles, let's say) is pretty spot on to have come up with before even Newtonian physics."Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
There is only so many basic ways to look at things. Some religion or philospher has used them before. Hindus, Muslims, and others can show these seed ideas in there scriptures.
"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done there is nothing new under the sun"
...a connecticut yankee in king arthur's court.
It was like he was from some future time and then went back there and was bored, knew he couldn't tell anyone how or why he was there. So he decided to make the most of it and write and say stuff, get money from it, hang out, womanize, etc etc. but then grew tired of it and decided to drink himself to death.
so a less pleasant story than the Twain one, but that was what it made me think of.
I don't of course really think that is true, but it was what I pondered as I read the article.
Poe was someone that has always piqued my curiosity - I worked on his cipher, eventually breaking it, and I've read all of his works. I grew up near where his haunts were, and just tend to always perk up and listen when things about him come up.
I hope to someday be found face down in a puddle on the side of the road after a long binge of drinking to eventually die of pneumonnia (sp?). that just seems like the way to go if you ask me.
or strippers/whores, X, heroin, and coke.
one of the two.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
we don't KNOW anything about history; it's all speculation. For that matter, you don't KNOW what happened yesterday, because you only have your memories, which could be wrong.
The article is ABOUT people who dreamed something up and it turned out to seem relatively true; they in no way tried to "discover" anything or state it as fact.
Scientists are human too, just as a religion mind,
can't deep down bear to consider the possible that
god doesn't exist because its to frightning and
horible, so some scientists can't bear to have
here ontologies pull down, it can take years of
evidence to change such peoples minds, and something science just has to wait for the next
generation thats grown up with the new idea and
can except it. For example as the article said general relavity predicted the big bang and black holes but it was years before people really took these ideas seriously.
How is it possible that an omnicient, omnipotent being happens to exist?
Because if he doesn't (and it sure looks like
that right now), we (or some other cilivision)
will slowly learn everything and slowly because
ultimately powerful, and either become or build
one. I just really hope they don't build/become the sort of god that thinks its cool to fly planes into buildings. Maybe it/they could bring us all back from the dead, or maybe it/they'll just have to run a copy everything in simulation.
Maybe we're already in a simulation it/they is running, or perphaps we're both in a simulation and not in a simulation at the same time (a'la schroedingers cat).
In the meantime i'm signed up for cryonic storage
because there's a lot of work, learning (and play) to be done along the way.
Thats what i believe anyway, wierd huh, but i've
got all my bases covered philosophically.
Yes but then Poe didn't have generally relavity,
or Raimanian Geometry to let him consider space as fixable surface that could expand or contract, stuck in Euclids world we had no choice but to consider a center.
oops, I know it is cask (unless of course we are talking a new D&D spell to make a bottle of amotilado appear - would be a good spell to have), i've even read the story more times than I can count (friggin college classes like it).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
An infinite number of stars does not mean that the sky is entirely full of stars. For example, if the number of stars is countably infinite, but space is not, then despite the infinite amount of light produced, we would expect the night sky to be dark.