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Why Scientists Love 'Lord of the Rings'
HughPickens.com writes: Julie Beck writes in The Atlantic that though science and fantasy seem to be polar opposites, a Venn diagram of "scientists" and "Lord of the Rings fans" have a large overlap which could (lovingly!) be labeled "nerds." Several animal species have been named after characters from the books, including wasps, crocodiles, and even a dinosaur named after Sauron, "Given Tolkien's passion for nomenclature, his coinage, over decades, of enormous numbers of euphonious names—not to mention scientists' fondness for Tolkien—it is perhaps inevitable that Tolkien has been accorded formal taxonomic commemoration like no other author," writes Henry Gee. Other disciplines aren't left out of the fun—there's a geologically interesting region in Australia called the "Mordor Alkaline Igneous Complex," a pair of asteroids named "Tolkien" and "Bilbo," and a crater on Mercury also named "Tolkien."
"It has been documented that Middle-Earth caught the attention of students and practitioners of science from the early days of Tolkien fandom. For example, in the 1960s, the Tolkien Society members were said to mainly consist of 'students, teachers, scientists, or psychologists,'" writes Kristine Larsen, an astronomy professor at Central Connecticut State University, in her paper "SAURON, Mount Doom, and Elvish Moths: The Influence of Tolkien on Modern Science." "When you have scientists who are fans of pop culture, they're going to see the science in it," says Larson. "It's just such an intricate universe. It's so geeky. You can delve into it. There's the languages of it, the geography of it, and the lineages. It's very detail oriented, and scientists in general like things that have depth and detail." Larson has also written papers on using Tolkien as a teaching tool, and discusses with her astronomy students, for example, the likelihood that the heavenly body Borgil, which appears in the first book of the trilogy, can be identified as the star Aldebaran. "I use this as a hook to get students interested in science," says Larson. "I'm also interested in recovering all the science that Tolkien quietly wove into Middle Earth because there's science in there that the casual reader has not recognized."
"It has been documented that Middle-Earth caught the attention of students and practitioners of science from the early days of Tolkien fandom. For example, in the 1960s, the Tolkien Society members were said to mainly consist of 'students, teachers, scientists, or psychologists,'" writes Kristine Larsen, an astronomy professor at Central Connecticut State University, in her paper "SAURON, Mount Doom, and Elvish Moths: The Influence of Tolkien on Modern Science." "When you have scientists who are fans of pop culture, they're going to see the science in it," says Larson. "It's just such an intricate universe. It's so geeky. You can delve into it. There's the languages of it, the geography of it, and the lineages. It's very detail oriented, and scientists in general like things that have depth and detail." Larson has also written papers on using Tolkien as a teaching tool, and discusses with her astronomy students, for example, the likelihood that the heavenly body Borgil, which appears in the first book of the trilogy, can be identified as the star Aldebaran. "I use this as a hook to get students interested in science," says Larson. "I'm also interested in recovering all the science that Tolkien quietly wove into Middle Earth because there's science in there that the casual reader has not recognized."
Except for those pesky Eagles, who fix all the problems, except for that one huge Ring problem wherein no one bothers to ask for their help.
Except for those pesky Eagles, who fix all the problems, except for that one huge Ring problem wherein no one bothers to ask for their help.
I'm a huge fan of the books, but did see a meme earlier today pointing out that great big plot hole. :)
Short version: why didn't they just ask the Eagles to fly them to Mordor? Or over the mountains?
The word you are looking for is Hippies.
Actually, the most fun I've seen in parallels to LOTR is not in science, but in Shakespeare. (Tolkien was an English Prof, remember.) First, the "Crack of Doom" is a phrase which comes from the Scottish Play. Second, two of Sauron's great captains fell in ways in was prophesied MacBeth should fall: The Lord of the Nazgul was struck down by no man of woman born; and Saruman was struck down when the forest came to Isengard.
Just because most of the fans of lord of the rings are (claimed to be) scientists (no actual study was done) does not mean that most scientists are fans of lord of the rings.
And honestly, lord of the rings stinks as a piece of literature. Give me a good sci-fi (or even not-so-good) any day.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Whose primary fans are bored housewives looking for a bodice-ripper novel, or LARP geeks who giggle at the idea of "smallclothes" or "moons blood". And tits. Can't have an HBO miniseries w/o tits.
LotR is a pretty good novel. People who crap on it mostly have trouble with archaic writing styles. It's a decent story, regardless. Certainly blows the whole suite of homage literature (Jordan, Martin et al.) out of the water, as well as most sci-fi.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
More specifically, Manwe. If Manwe and Varda and the rest were to just solve all the problems for Middle-earth, you'd have no plot. Furthermore, if you were in their shoes, would you be all that interested in fixing all their problems? I know I don't even like doing that for my daughters. Also, they'd "laid down their guardianship of Arda" with the fall of Numenor. Strictly speaking, it wasn't their job to fix all problems anymore.
Still, they did care about Middle-earth. So they sent five Istari - weaker spirits who were clothed in flesh and made to feel mortal cares and wants. They were intended to be messengers and encouragers of the good nature of the Free Peoples. They were forbidden to challenge Sauron's power directly. In extremis, one of their Istari could call on the Eagles of Manwe for assistance, as was done a few times during the novels. But any of the Istari calling on them to solve the problem by flying over Orodruin and dropping the Ring into it - I don't think they would have responded to that.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
So, nerds like nerdy things, then? And such nerdyness leads to an affinity for nerdy things?
Well, I'm totally shocked I tell you.
This sounds like a fluff piece written to appeal to neither scientists nor nerds, and passed off as some great insight.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That a troll should disparage LOTR.
Slashdot is a shell of its former self. Even our trolls are less funny than they used to be. To paraphrase the parent, BarbaraHudson stinks as a troll. Give me a good Trollaxor (or even OOG_THE_CAVEMAN) any day.
It's precisely why I can't stand these books. I can't suspend my disbelief that middle earth exists, that magic exists, not the way they use or describe it.
I would imagine more scientists get into comics, with even more detailed and well defined universe, often with rules that are consistent with our own or at least plausibly explained enough to suspend disbelief.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
that though science and fantasy seem to be polar opposites, a Venn diagram of "scientists" and "Lord of the Rings fans" have a large overlap which could (lovingly!) be labeled "nerds."
Now imagine this Venn diagram with one more set for "people who know the DIFFERENCE between polar opposites AND the DIFFERENCE between science and fantasy"... wouldn't that make a great Euler diagram for all the "stupid stories for nerds, stuff that really don't matter"?
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
discuss.
I remember before the movies came out, that I wished more people could experience Lord of the Rings. It was just such an awesome book. I dreamed of the day the work would be known to everyone. Oh, don't get me wrong, lots of people knew LOTR back in the day, but it wasn't mainstream. I knew that if my dream were to come true, the real key would be overexposure. Hey, it's either that or stay a cult classic, right?
Of course, today, my dream has been fulfilled. The movies were great. Lots of haters, but you know what? The director kept most of the themes intact, and that's what counts.
The really ugly haters are on the literature side. The "literati" (LOL what a dumb name) are horrified by Tolkien because he shoves in their face the fact that they don't get to decide what literature is. The readers do. He reminds them that they are less and less relevant with each passing year, and they hate that.
-- Why They Hate Tolkien, by Lew Rockwell
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Look in at a climbing guide to any of the major areas of the northeast and you'll find all kinds of references to the LOR.
I must be the odd guy - I am a scientist, and couldn't care less about The Lord of the Rings. In fact, my worst cinematic experience took place when watching the last LotR movie (dragged in by my wife): in the last three quarters of an hour it seems to be on the verge of ending six or seven times - only to pick up anew every time. I couldn't wait to get out of there.
Scientists are in fact capable of liking and enjoying works of fiction and fantasy, such as Lord of the Rings, or the Bible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
By this I mean if you asked a typical person to picture a tree in his mind, he'd picture a green blob on a brown stick sticking up out of flat green space. Tolkien is the kind of person who'd picture an individual specimen of a specific species of tree growing in a place with unique and describable topography. And the concreteness with which he imagines this kind of thing shows in his writing.
When I was young I read and re-read Lord of the Rings for the magic. Forty years later, I re-read Lord of the Rings for the landscape. You can often orient yourself in a Tolkien scene; do a mental walk through imagining the slope of the land and smell kicked up by the damp grass and heather. There's nobody who writes landscape like Tolkien.
If you're a careful reader -- alright, an obsessive reader -- you can correlate scenes in different plot threads in time by the appearance of the sky and particularly by the phase of the moon. So you know what's happening to Merry and Pippin when we're in a Three Hunters scene, or how far along Frodo and Sam are inMordor during the Battle of the Pellenor Fields. That's a degree of attention lavished on detail beyond any reasonable marketing justification; it must have added years to the drafting of the manuscript. It's not even apparent until you've read the book a half dozen times or more.
That sense of exploring the details of a real scene in space and time would be familiar to any naturalist.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
An awful lot of scientists (at least us old guys) like Asimov & Heinlein and various other scifi authors who gave us all sorts of words which have graduated to general useage. (not to mention, say "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor" and "reverse the polarity")
OTOH, I shudder to think that maybe in 50 years someone will write "all scientists love GoT and name things after the characters."
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
...need a hook to be intersted in science? Really? Central Connecticut State University must suck a lot.
Because Tolkein was a Christian I would have thought that the humanist scientists would hate him and his books. I am sure that Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson hate him.
http://atheism.about.com/od/cslewisnarnia/a/jrrtolkein.htm
If you had a structural geology class in the last 15 years there's a good chance you spent many hours with the Bree Creek Quadrangle exercises.
To me there's no question of why smart people like LOTR: It's mythology completely void of superstition and inflated superimposed real-world meaning. Which makes it every more and a million times more beautyful than anything abrahamic or other book-religions have to offer.
You can read LOTR, dive into the very first, very detailed completely fantasy world, with own languages and glyphs, poetry a huge history and lot's more with out it being degraded and shoehorned into real-world implications. Everyone know's it's made up - you don't have to debate knuckleheads who insist the fiery caverns of Mordor are below our feet and we have to pray to the allmighty Elrond so he and his army of Elves protect us when the end is nigh or any other sort of bullshit. ... At least not today. Who knows what's waiting 2000 years down the line. Imagine civilisation degenerating and only LOTR surviving. Some clergy smart-ass would hijack that two or three centuries down the line - "do as I tell and pay your taxes our you won't get into Minas-Tirit when you die" ... any power-monger would be stupid not to. ... Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Maybe scientists are fans of thoughtful, well-written literature? Just sayin.
You'll be here all week, right?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Kiril Yeskov wrote The Last Ring-Bearer from the premise that "history is written by the victors" and that, perhaps, Lord of the Rings was propaganda written by the victors of the War of the RIng.
For me it was the use of language. Te archaic but lyrical English and the appendices. After I had read it the first time, I think I was 11 or 12, I read the appendices and suddenly I realized huge feat and amount of effort he put into the work. Both in the backstory and in the linguistics. It was eye opening.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
If someone applying for an IT job of some sort, especially programmers, ask them about Tolkien. If they don't know/like Tolkien, they are either brogrammers, H1Bs or just idiots. That is how you hire yourself a good geek.
And this is surprising why? Many scientist/engineer/technical types got their start reading SF&F.
students, teachers, scientists, or psychologists
Psychologists are social scientists, you insensitive clod!
Nothing posted to
Genesis and The Flood were two interwoven stories with different numbers and points of view. Toklein wrote some old childrens stories intergrated imperfectly. Come on, he took over 30 years and 2000 pages, two world wars and time out for teaching. Tokelins oldest son Christopher published 14 books of rough drafts and back stories fro his father's notes.
I had to reread that chapter after seeing the movie. The Hobbit was written (1930s) in the middle of writing the Lord of the Rings (1910s-1950s) , before the Big Story was all fleshed out.
Any great legend has that. Jackson had certain limitations and views.
I never got into Star Wars as much because it had less of a backstory than other scifi universes and felt "hollow".
Honesty, the nerd tendency to reject the statement "but at the end of the day we know we're rationalizing it" is sad, pathetic, hilarious, and fascinating.
Actually, that would be a really interesting study--self-awareness of rationalization. I bet you could tie it in in a useful way with learned intentional decision-making and self-improvement. It's an interesting question what the overlap to the nerd and geek communities are, but those communities are not clearly defined so you've got a whole field to build up. I wonder what studies have been done already... mmm...
Didn't even bother reading to the end. The films were OK. Hobbit was a much better book.
But Gandalf calls Treebeard "the oldest of all living things" and Celeborn calls him "Eldest".
And it was said of Bombadil:
'But in any case,' said Glorfindel, `to send the Ring to him would only postpone the day of evil. He is far away. We could not now take it back to him, unguessed, unmarked by any spy. And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it. Could that power be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not. I think that in the end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First; and then Night will come.'
It was a nice movie,I found some part Dubbed in Hindi on http://onlinemoviewatchs.com/ If someone know more about other part in Hindi please let me know so i can watch !!