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Eureka! Archimedes Revealed
pin_gween writes "The Mercury News has an AP wire that shows science uncovering history. 800 years ago a monk scrubbed the text off a goatskin parchment to write prayers. Nothing unusual there, except the parchment contained writings from a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest. Now scientists are using x-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, to cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. It takes 12 hours to scan one page, then the information is posted online."
So, in other words, you could say that Archimedes had the first post. :) Sorry, could not resist.
Well, that, and the fact that some monk dude scrawled his love letters to god all over the bloody text!
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
4 Carrots
2 Pints of milk
Brithday card for aunt Mavis
I heard an interview with one of the scientists on the CBC. He said that there was possibly some new stuff that we didn't know about. In particular, there seems to be a section which tries to figure out how many different ways there are to solve a problem. So it seems that Archimedes was wondering about combinotorics.
Although this is a cool discovery, it would have been cooler if the lost writings were by a Greek intellectual whom we have less information about, say Heraclitus. Well, there is always the possibility that this technique could be used to recover other "lost" texts.
Philosophy.
Check out the article -
It was probably the only reason we got these writings in our hand.
If it was just the text of archimedes, then it would have been destroyed during the dark ages...
Since it was a prayer book, nobody dared, and now we have the data.
Every action has consequences, and some of them are inconcieveable
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
I would say to put any Anti-Religious Zealotry aside, and think about it this way. How many files have you deleted from your hard-drive that perhaps in a couple hundred years would allow archeologist to get better insight on your generation, or the previous ones. Parchment was not as cheap as it was today. It took considerable amount of work just to create it, and Rubbing out the Old stuff for the New stuff seems like best situation, for the times. This period was well in the dark ages, saving old stuff wasn't the goal or even seemed that valuable. And besides as far as most were concerned at the time, this is old stuff from a dead civilization, make room for our new more modern method.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is a fairly obscure term, so most non-specialists don't know it. A "palimpsest" is a piece of parchment that has been re-used. This particular palimpsest contains stuff by Archimedes; and so it is called "the Archimedes Palimpsest." It is not "a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest," it is THE Archimedes palimpsest.
Finally I can use my LIS nerdiness on slashdot, bastion of computer, science, and math nerds.
The summary says "Nothing unusual there, except the parchment contained writings from a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest," using the term palimpsest incorrectly. By calling it "a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest," the summary implies that Archimedes wrote something--a Palimpsest--which was then copied and found on this random scrap of parchment.
In actuality, a palimpsest is a parchment already inscribed where the original ink was scraped off for reuse. Parchment, being the skin of a calf, sheep or goat, was in the Middle Ages very expensive (there is an argument that the Gutenberg revolution was fuelled more by cheap paper then by the printing press, but I digress). It was not discarded, but often reused by monks in Medieval scriptoria.
Many works from antiquity, once thought lost, are found serendipitously through palimpsest, many of them pagan works overwritten in favour of Christian ones. So, what we have found is a palimpsest of a manuscript copy of Archimedes, not a copy of Archimedes' palimpsest
"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days, bribery and corruption
are common, children no longer obey their parents and the end of the
world is evidently approaching." --Archimedes goatskin, 210 B.C.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I had a bible on vellum made by some printing company called Gutenberg, but some asshole called Martin Luther scribbeld all these corrections over it, so I used it to light the fireplace.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Dude, the "monk" wrote in Greek, in Constantinople. Whether it actually was a "monk", or just a scribe, or a priest, who scrubbed and copied that thing, is a different story. Anyway, 1229 Constantinople was a pretty rough place, and the Greek clergy wouldn't have been terribly rich; they've never been very interested in pagan Greek literature in the Eastern Church anyway. Now, in Paris, at the same time, there are plenty of priests, monks and friars who would be very eager to see what that text said (at least in translation). And there were active centers of Greek-Latin and Arabic-Latin translation of scientific texts at the time, especially in Spain.
The dark ages were more a result of the collapse of the Roman Empire. The monks were among the few people who kept education going. The monasteries of Ireland were one of the few bastions of learning and knowledge during the Dark Ages.
chmod 711
a hard line between the academics and the "public"...
The hard line is in your head. Scientists are part of "the public".
The only thing stopping you from becoming a scientist is a few years of education. During this process you will not only learn the important stuff but also more importantly you will learn where and how to find the knowledge you need. There's no conspiracy to keep information from you, but it seems that you want to know things without actually having to learn them. No one is obligated to pour knowledge into your head. That stopped once mom and dad got fed up of answering your questions as a toddler. You can find all of those "obscure science magazines" at any decent library, or online. Perhaps you would also like to complain about scientists writing in "obscure technical jargon" in these magazines as well?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
One thing to keep in mind is that just because this palimpset is the only copy that we know about today, doesn't mean that there weren't other copies extant at the time it was reused; and at the time it was probably not such a unique text. Remember that Constantinople (now Istanbul) had just been sacked in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, and things were still quite chaotic. At that time (1229) the city would still have been controlled by the Crusaders (it was not retaken by the Byzantines until 1261). In addition the city was sacked again in 1453 when it was conquered by the Turks, after which the Church and Byzantine civilization in general underwent systematic persecution and suppression. All of these disruptions have caused the loss of huge numbers of texts.
The Archimedes manuscript is not the only manuscript reused to make the prayer book - there are several other texts that were also used, including some others which are now also our only remaining copies. These include both pagan writers and other Christian texts. Again, we have little reason to think that any of these would have been considered particularly unique at the time.
Events have not been kind to ancient manuscripts generally; what we have left today is only a relatively small sampling of what was originally a vast ancient literature. The Church has often been blamed, and in the case of pagan religious texts there may be some justice in the charge; but what have doubtless been much bigger culprits for the bulk of the destruction have been marauding armies, fires, floods, and simply the ravages of time as old manuscripts decay without having been copied.
Mob of Jews kills Christians. Mob of Christians get angry, seek revenge, kill Christians and burn some stuff. That's hardly a matter of being for or against learning and science. It was opposing tribes rioting against each other. Reminds me very much of Northern Ireland, where the problems are really two cultures clashing, rather than two religions.
I'm sure that members of the church did at times have in influence on the decline of the Roman Empire, something I never claimed to ignore, but as the church and state become intermeshed, that brought corruption, so it is more an illustration of the problems of church getting mixed up, rather than a proof of Christianity being anti-knowledge. i think that that the way the church got so involved with the state is a travesty and thoroughly unbiblical. Constantine made a lot of mistakes in that regard.
The church of Rome actually had very little influence on many areas of Christianity e.g. Celtic Christians and Eastern Orthodox during this time, so it's also rather unjust to tar all of Christianity with the same brush, especially given that the Protestant view is that the Roman church became increasingly corrupt during this time, requiring the Reformation. Christians involved with the Reformation had a very high of science and knowledge, seeing it as the Christian's duty to investigate God's creation, just as many monks had previously seen it as their duty to record history, providing us with a great part of the little history we have from the 'Dark Ages.' Incidentally, this view was carried on into latter centuries and well embodied by such scientists as Faraday and Maxwell, who were very passionate about science, but also staunchly evangelical Christians.
I suggest you take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Dark ages to see some of the misconceptions and biases that people have concerning the term and the time.
Yes - read the Scholarship section on the project web page. For example, http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/scholarship_ne tz2.html which shows that Archimedes knew about Infinity and used it in a proof. The Greeks were fascinated by large numbers - questions like "can you count the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world?" - but it was thought they did not have the concept of actual infinity. The palimpsest shows that this was known some 2000 years ago, then forgotten for centuries.
how can anyone really get a feel for the importance of this discovery if they don't post some of the translated texts? Oh, I forgot- We're supposed to accept the fact that it's important because they say so
Well, unless you have a background in Archimedes, mathematics, or ancient greek (all the domain of "they"), I don't think you're going to be able to understand the importance of even a translated work. Despite your protestations, all opinions on this kind of thing aren't equal. People who have these backgrounds are much more qualified to interpret what this stuff means (and no, that certainly doesn't include me by any stretch of the imagination). I find this attitude kind of strange. You don't actually want to learn any of these subjects, but expect to be able to just read a 2200 year old text and instantly understand the context of the work without listening to what other more qualified people have to say. Would you expect someone who doesn't know C++ to be able to instantly know what the source code of a program means without knowing C++?
It's more than a little funny that you're critisizing the researchers for publishing the raw scans of the data, (so anyone in the world can study them), but not instantly freely publishing the fruits of their labor. There is often a quite valid criticism of researchers hoarding the raw data of vitally important pieces for years. I believe the dead sea scrolls are a prime example of this. But that's not the case here. If you really wanted to you could learn greek and translate the thing yourself. That's the only "barrier" that exists here.
There's also another important point to make here. Have you seen the scanned texts? Even with the special x-ray enhanced versions it's a big mess. It's not as if this is a 20 minute job via google translation. This kind of thing is generally done very slowly with groups of people working together. It's also a competition between all these groups to make discoveries. There was a really good Nova special on the text a few months ago, and translating the texts was a very painstaking process.
Instead, the passages the translated probably sound boring and so they'll publish it in obscure science journals- All the public will hear about (I fear) is "Look! We're so cool for recovering the pampliset!"
Well, science has long used scientific journals to communicate polished ideas to other people in the field. The papers are written for a specialized audience, so the general public likely wouldn't understand the vast majority of them since it's assumed everyone has a general background in the area of expertise. The main barrier of these journals isn't the obscurity of them. With a little less laziness you could easily go and find the names of them. The main barrier is just expense. It costs a lot of money to subscribe to these journals, so your average Joe just can't afford them. There's a movement to change this because scientists don't like spending thousands of dollars on journals anymore than average Joe does, so many people are moving towards publishing on the internet.
True, they are cool for translating this thing, I agree- But why not give the public a better pathway into understanding the meaning of this find by showing us the money? Would it really kill them? Maybe we, the public, can appreciate the inherent value of even some obscure, boring-sounding passages?
Science takes time, and research isn't free. At some point I'm sure that a concensus translation will be available. It might be even made available for free, but I would have no problem with charging money for it. Why should they be expected to give away thousands of hours of work for free? You seem to have this attitude that if it's not published on the front page of the New York Times, then the scientists are trying to hide something.
I have the same complaint about PBS and the recent special on "String Theory"- These science programs (which are admittedly better than nothing) work
AccountKiller
But why should Archimedes give everyone execute rights to his writing?
Preliminary translations will take months - once the have deciphered the images, this isn't just a case of running it through Bablefish.
The first step is character recognition - a human has to examine each character and determine what it is. Once that's done, entire words can be examined to see if they actually are words. (Foulups in the character recognition can pridace wgrds taat kjflas moue aljefh.) Once *that* is done, the words can be strung together and sentences roughly translated - if they orange bluebird, then they have to redo some of the earlier steps. Worse yet, the meaninings of the various Greek words don't map directly into English - so each of the words and possible meanings have to be compared and considered in context. (A single sentence can possible have anywhere from 2-3 to 5 or more possible meanings.) That process has to be repeated again at (what would correspond to) the paragraph level, and then again at the chapter and book levels.