Slashdot Mirror
Albert Einstein - Person of the Century
fat_mike writes "Seems that Time Magazine has picked Albert Einstein as Person of the Century. You can check out the scoop here at Drudge Report. " I think I could agree with this, but it's really almost impossible to qualify something like this, although it does give me pleasure to have the icon *really* match the story.
In all sense of fairness, we all dont' directly know him except for his theories and what history books tell us. And who is person of the century is not very subjective. Saying who contributed most to physics might be more appropriate. IMHO, I would think Mark Twain, Erickson (psychologist of Social Psych), Piaget, Pavlov and others were more important. But then again, that's my subjective view for man of the century.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
My take on this - if it is true - is that it is a reflection of the .com/geek mainia that is flooding the mainstream. Time is a political rag. If they stuck to their guns they would have chosen FDR or Ghandi. Einstien would be a rational choice for Slashdot but I have to wonder about Time magazine. Of course, I wonder about just everything that the mainstream media does these days....
Einstein was indeed a brilliant man...but he was also very...wrong. A lot. Einstein would not have been the scientist of the century...that one would have to go to Neils Bohr. This man, one of the creators of quantum theory, understood the universe in a way that Einstein never could. Einstein was very entrenched in classical physics..he was absolutely sure that the universe was, in essence, a great "clock." A clock whose gears could be seen by science, and understood in the most basic sense, ultimately.
/.'ed
:)
Bohr, on the other hand, was open enough to realize the value of quantum mechanics. He saw the outcomes of quantum theory as nature's way of telling us that we have no business imposing our own macroscopic concepts on nature itself. Ideas such as color, particle, and wave have essentially no meaning in terms of electrons, quarks, and photons. Do a search on "Copenhagen interpretation" or "Einstein Bohr debates" to find out how Einstein was so shortsighted in his quick disregard of "quantum strangeness" and "weird forces at a distance" thought experiment...see the quantum physics story posted earlier for details...it's about two photons being emitted in opposite directions having a superposition of two states until one is measured...then the other becomes definite...also see "Schrodinger's cat" for an interesting thought experiment">. Anyway, Bohr was a greater thinker than Einstein, without a doubt..at this level where philosophy and science intertwine.
I would have to agree underservedly about their selection as Einstein for man of the century. Bohr was a scientist and philosopher. Einstein was a cultural icon. In his personality, his naive political beliefs, and ultimate quotability have made him an ultimately unique figure, recognized worldwide. His disregard for any cultural norms made him loved. He was also a man of paradox....showing a tremendous understanding of everything, so much more than the average genius...but also displaying a magnificent naivite in every aspect of his being. Einstein represents the goals, ideals, and accomplishments of this century more than any man - culture, science, politics....
I'll shut up now, and I'm sorry if most of this was mentioned in the article...it was
Did i miss anything?
Does it really matter who "Time" chooses? Who decides at Time who the person of the century is? It's an editor/owner type of deal. Why should I listen to some guy in a suit telling me that the man of the century is Einstein or whatever?
I recommend you all stop waisting your time thinking what a single most important person of the century is. Just think about "people" who have influenced particular fields or parts of the every day life.
There is no single "Man of the century" that will be the man of the century for everyone.
PS: Why not have a person of the century? Women are people as well.. maybe TIME hasn't figured that one yet.
I think Einstein was a fantastic choice because he was not "spiritual" as Gandhi was. This century marked a decay in the spiritual, a decline in Christianity; People finally are looking beyond Christ for answers. Science has overtaken religion finally this century. It is mainstream. People are more likely to have a cell phone or a pda than a cross in this day and age. Now I'm not saying this is an entirely good thing. That probably won't be known for quite some time. Maybe in the next hundred years? But I do know that Einstein would have been my choice as well. It's about time we start appreciating true genius!
A search for "Einstein" results in 190,720 pages found. "Roosevelt" scores 2nd with 175,130 hits. "Gandhi" is found on 62,695 web pages.
This might not be the best way to judge people and their influence on the society (There are only 436 pages about "John Postel", but every Slahsdotter will agree that his work influenced the life of everybody on Earth in the past decade)
But looking for some name on Altavista is a good way to judge people's popularity among the web users (how does this relate to popularity among the general public, I don't know).
Einstein's science may have directly affected everybody's life, but he had become an icon for the whole sceintific field. Have you seen the science icon on Slashdot?
He deserves being the person of the century.
Actually, I'd disagree with that. The E=MC2 formula ultimately led to the development of atomic weapons and nuclear energy. Those developments have impacted just about everyone on the planet. Gandhi's influence on the world was very minor by comparison.
Einstien is probably the best choice from the aspect of "this is someone we're proud of."
;). Aside from the passion of the moment, computers and the Internet, Einstien's work also made possible the earlier communications revolutions, such as TV.
Who has had real impacts on the 20th century? Well... Hitler and Stalin come to mind. Both individuals certainly changed the course of history in a way that, possibly, no one else could. Hitler's aftermath, especially, is still being felt today. The reunifcation of Germany and the events in Bosnia after communism's collapse are both events that have hitler's fingerprints on them. Of course, few would want to commemorate sharing a century with him...
You might argue that Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr., and others of a more humane bent had a major impact on the 20th century. Certainly, their impact on their homelands was great... and their philosophies have inspired many beyond the borders of the lands where they primarily did their work. But, quantifying their direct impact on any arbitrary world citizen's daily life is hard. There are still the opressed, there are still those killed in the name of supressing freedom.
Einstien is a safer choice. His work has weaved its way into our lives on a daily basis. His papers basically jump-started the field of quantum mechanics, which gave rise to modern electronics, which gave rise to Slashdot (how could you get more noble?
And... of course, his little E=MC^2 equation was put to rather dramatic use in Hiroshima, and held the world hostage to the fear of complete and utter destruction for the better part of half a century.
I guess, in all, that sort of duality is symbolic of the 20th century. We've seen advances in medicine that can cure as a matter of course what was incurable at the start of the century. We can save the unsaveable, give relief to those in great pain. And, we've also seen the infliction of pain en-mass, from the mustard gas of WWI, to the ovens of Auschwitz. We saw the Earth rise over the barren wastes of the moon, a tiny, fragile world... conspicuosly lacking the lines demarking the arbitrary borders that people have fought and died over. We've also seen that we can destroy the Earth (at least for ourselves) either quickly through nuclear explosion and fallout, or slowly through CO2, DDT, CFC, and...
Einstien, as part of all this, can be credited with the best and damned with the worst. Well, perhaps damning is too strong a word. Certainly, though, it's a warning that even the work of what seemingly was a kind, gentle man can wreak havoc when let loose in this world.
Sadly, Adolf Hitler is without much question, IMO, the true man of the century. WWII has altered our lives in profound ways. Beyond the deaths of millions and the rewriting of European borders. He also has affected how America deals with threats, ie Hussien, Vietnam, Korea, all directly affected by wartime interaction with axis powers. I think Albert Einstein is the Scientific personality of the century, but not the "man of the century"....
-- Moondog
You're right, it's late and i didn't quite say exactly what was meant. Einstein wasnt entrenched in classical physics at all. What he steadfastly believed was the same thing classical physicists: that the universe could be completely understood through the scientific process, eventually. Einstein believed that there were no mysterious probabilisitic elements to the universe. He saw quantum physics as a manifestation of our current limitations - limitations which will be overcome shortly enough. He stated that we simply didn't know enough to explain it, not that electrons were these weird probability waves.
/. isn't a place for modern philosophy.
He refused to believe that the universe was not totally mechanistic....this has implications on randomness, chaos, and determinism, but
Perhaps you got him confused with Paul Erdos.
There's no reason for a sig here.
A leader of his people, unsupported by any outward authority, a victorious fighter who always scorned the use of force; a man of wisdom and humility who has confronted the brutality of Europe with the dignity of the simple human being and has at all times risen superior ..... Generations to come, will scarce believe that such a man as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth"
- Albert Einstein on Gandhi
While it is obviously flawed to try and work out who was the most significant out of Einstein, Ghandi, JFK and any number of great people, there is one person who bears special consideration. I think, in the very long march of history, perhaps many thousands of years from now, people will remember this as the Turing century. Quantum physics and relativity will be historic relics, while politicians and spiritual leaders will have assumed mythical status. One concrete, profound change will remain wedded inseperably to the future of humanity: the conception of the general purpose programmable computer, or Turing Machine. Why? Because it is the computer that is the first real extension of the human mind. In a similar way that an axe or hammer is an extension of an arm, the general purpose computer is the direct extension of what makes us inherently different to other known species: intelligence. I will not try and predict the future of computing or speculate any further on the future of humanity (many others have done this already in this context), but will ask you this: Would you even be reading this message if it wasn't for Turing?
Note -- please see this web site for more information on Turing's life and achievments.
Perhaps you fail to realize what beliefs Einstein actually held concerning religion.
I will give you one of my favorite quotes of his:
"Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind."
Micah
I prefer The Onion's choice for Man of the millennium: Death
You are right in that GPS wouldn't work without relativity. We are deeper down in the gravity well than the satellites, and the frequency shift caused by the signal falling down to us must be taken into account (it's not the same as the Doppler effect, also taken into account in GPS).
In 1957, a german student named Rudolf Mössbauer invented a very precise method for measuring this effect, using gamma rays emitted by radioactive nuclei. This method was much more precise than all other confirmations of Einstein's general relativity theory at the time, and Mössbauer was awarded the 1961 Nobel prize for his invention.
But I don't think relativity has been proved beyond a doubt. We never reach the final truth in Science, but we are always moving closer to it.
I wonder if Time had chosen Einstein if he hadn't emigrated to the US when he fled from Nazi-Germany. Some people have even claimed Einstein for America, although he retained his Swiss citizenship until his death in 1955.
Einstein himself had ambivalent feelings towards Americans. After his first visit to the US he noted, among other things, that Americans are somewhat shallow compared to Europeans.
Still, I think that even from a global perspective Einstein was probably the best choice.
Take any semiconductors course and 99% of all the material you study is based on Einstein's equations. Are semiconductors important? You might argue that a biologist should be man of the century but the fact is, you're not a biologist. It's semiconductors which feed you, semiconductors which clothe you, semiconductors which allow biologists do get research grants. Well that just about qualifies Einstein for man of the century doesn't it.
- Time Magazine racist by appointing Albert Einstein instead of Martin Luther King, Jr.!
- Time Magazine feminist by appointing man of the year but not woman of the year!
- Time Magazine pro-fascist by appointing Albert Einstein for man of the year, who was born in Germany!
- Time Magazine anti-God and pro-Satan by not appointing religious official as man of the year!
Beware! Time Magazine is stealing your childrens' minds, and making them do the dark lord's work! Do not let them be stolen from right under your nose! Take the time to talk to your children about Time magazine.--
For instance: He used them in South Africa for years before trying them in India. You'll note that South Africa's Apartheit system didn't fall until long after Ghandi's death.
A major power block in Britain, on the other hand, was looking to unload India from the British Empire. It was very expensive to keep it under control, and they could use the money at home. Ghandi gave them the excuse they needed to cut India loose.
Ghandi's prescription for how Jews should handle their oppression in Nazi Germany amounted to going peacefully to the ovens, the better to make the Nazis look bad.
Similarly, Martin Luther King's Ghandi-inspired non-violent protests set the stage for the extension of full civil rights to Blacks in the US. But for years Black protesters (along with non-black civil rights marchers) were beaten, jailed and killed, while the rights were still denied.
The extension of civil rights for real came right after the riots of '68 - when the Blacks (having obtained the moral high ground via years of ineffective non-violent protests) finally made it clear that there would be no more mister nice guy.
And it seems to me that the continued lionization of Ghandi and King, and their non-violent protests, combined with the near purging of such people as Malcom X or Charlie Thomas from the historical record, is very convenient for those who would like to detour any future opposition political movements into a decade of ineffective posturing.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think some people here on Slashdot have expressed their surprise at TIME's selection of Albert Einstein as Person of the Century.
What is interesting is that TIME had three final candidates (probably a week ago): Albert Einstein, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Mahatma Gandhi. Roosevelt was perhaps the most influential US President of this century, a leader that created our modern welfare system during the Great Depression and led our country through most of World War II. Mahatma Gandhi was the leader that preached non-violent civil disobedience and was instrumental in getting independence for India.
TIME probably did not choose FDR or Gandhi because their influence were mostly domestic--their influence during their primes were confined to the United States and India.
But Einstein's contributions to modern science are incalculable: the Special and General theories of relativity paved the way for most of the scientific research of this century. The fields of atomic energy, particle physics and electronics owe a huge debt to Einstein's work on relativity.
But yet, Einstein was a big dichotomy of sorts. He was a major pacifist, but yet was one of the signees on the letter that led to the creation of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. One wonders what kind of regrets he had late in his life for being a signee on that letter.
TIME chose Einstein because he best represents the modern scientific age that is the 20th Century, but also because Einstein often wondered with open regret the effects of modern science.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The winner for the Person of the Millenium: Johan Gutenberg.
Gutenberg--by creating the low-cost hot-metal movable-type printing press--caused an explosion of knowledge that literally overturned Europe and eventually the world.
Before Gutenberg's time, information was either handed down orally or hand written in an extremely laborious manner. Gutenberg's invention allowed not just a few copies, but thousands of copies of books to be created in a very short period of time. It allowed the dissemination of religious, philosophical and scientific knowledge on a scale previously unheard of.
Through the printing press, scientific knowledge thought lost from ancient Greek and Roman scientists were rediscovered, along with new scientific knowledge from the Arabs. We also rediscovered the ancient philosophers and their ideals.
It also set into place the revolution that was to change religion in Europe: Martin Luther's famous Ninety-Five Theses would have stayed a curiosity but for the fact that his comments spread like wildfire thanks to the printing press.
It's only with the development of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 that we have an invention that rivals the influence Gutenberg's printing press has on the world.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The planet is Mercury. Relativistic physics is needed to correctly calculate it's orbit.
The fact that he worked so hard to try and disprove Quantum Theory is his great contribution to Quantum Physics. The only way that it was able to become what it is to day was for people of caliber of Eistein and Schrodinger to try and disprove it mathematically. Ultimatly, the only way they could attack it was philisophically, sisinctly in Einstein's quote (I think this is exact) "God does not play with dice", refering to the assignment of probablities; and Schrodinger with his famous "Cat" Thought Experiment.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Watson and crick stole their data from a female collegue, who was then completely forgotten
If there was a villan in the story it is Wilkens, who showed Rosalind Franklin's data to Watson and Crick without telling Ms. Franklin. Wilkens was a dirtbag who treated Ms. Franklin quite poorly when she was in his lab. Rosalind Franklin was actually quite pleased that Watson and Crick used her data to determine the structure of DNA.
It is too bad that Franklin died before Watson Crick and Wilkens won the Nobel for the determination of DNA structure. She surely would have shared in the award, however Nobel Prizes are not given posthumously.
Adolf Hitler is without much question, IMO, the true man of the century
No, but he might qualify as the monster of the century. Although the competition is stiff.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
J.S. Bach.
A man who wrote an entire enclyopedia worth of music without writing a single bad note. A man from from whom much of western music directly descends from, including the music you listen to. A man who affects more of us in our daily lives than we can possibly imagine. A man who had more than 20 children from the same wife. A man whose music is as relevant today as it was 350 years ago. A man who could see truths so deep that we still have no way of analyzing them today.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Thanks to him, our concept of formal logical systems will never be the same:
[From Around Gödel's Theorem]"Mathematics is the part of science you could continue to do if you woke up tomorrow and discovered the universe was gone."
Z. the M. [Cursing the fact that /. doesn't support markup for superscripts and subscripts... ;-)]
Zontar The Mindless,
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
We'll remember them only as long as you Americans dont try and credit the Wright Brothers with inventing powered flight.
And I'll remember Australia if they remember that the Wright brothers were famous for inventing CONTROLLED powered flight.
To me one of the things that recommends people like Gandhi is the lack of inevitability. Einstein is constrained by the physical reality he works with. His vision must fit the facts of Michelson-Morley and Lorentz-Fitzgerald, as well as the orbital measurements of Mercury. If Einstein doesn't develop Relativity, surely others will do so. Otto Hahn was splitting the atom long before Einstein signed his letter to FDR.
Gandhi's way is NOT inevetable. Quite a few former outposts of the British Empire have fallen into despotism and anarchy. Gandhi fought hard and not entirely succesfully against religous war and persecution. His work led to the establishment of the world's large democracy where there was previously no such institution. By shear force of his great spirit he led millions to non-violence, some thing rare indeed in the war filled 20th century.
The sheer quantity of music produced by JS Bach is incredible. Just look at the BWVs compared with, say, the Köchels for a sense of the volume. Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin all had copies of the WTC. Chopin especially praised it as a daily font of inspiration. Many would have picked Mozart. I don't think so. Mozart is trendy and overhyped. Yes, he did very pretty stuff. Sometimes he did great works. But truly, Mozart is accorded more glory in our superstar-filled age than he would to me appear to legimately merit.
Sometimes I hear in Mozart the echoes of a greater work that came before him. On glory and reflected glory, do but compare the Kyries between the Bach Bm Mass and the Mozart Requiem. Do you hear the resonances? Now, study the harmonic work, the counterpoint. What doubt is there as to who was the master? I recommend the Joshua Rifkin recording of the Bm.
Go listen to the Bach suites for unaccompanied cello, or the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin. Listen to the haunting pain in the Sarabande in the 2nd cello suite. Listen to the joy and light in the 6th one. Listen to the phantom instruments that aren't there in the fugues for solo violin, and 'ware the divine terror of regarding a musical intelligence that could piece together so awe-inspiring a contrapuntal work on what is fundamentally a single-threaded instrument. Now find string works by Mozart. Oh, they're nice enough, but majesty?
For the keyboard, listen to Bach's St Anne fugue for organ, or the many shorter works, like the Dm (Dorian) prelude and fugue. Or just play through the 48. Now, what do we have from Mozart and the kyeboard? Plenty of stately classical music, of course. But greatness? Hm. Yes, I suppose so. The Dm piano concerto is fine enough, I'll grant you that. And some of the piano sonatas are, again, pretty. But still you feel yourself more often in the presence of a child prodigy than of a measured master. What keyboard work of Mozart comes close to the opera magna for organ from Bach? Perhaps it exists, but I don't know it. I wish I did.
At this time of the year, the Bach Christmas works are especially noticeable. The quiet chorales and glorious choruses fill us rapture and inspiration. Who here this season has not heard the simple but compelling melodies of Jesu bleibet meine Freude ("Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring") or Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott ("A Mighty Fortress is Our God")? Don't get lost on mechanics and subtleties of counterpunctual intricacies. Melody--plain, simple, and warming melody--is at the very heart of Bach, the foundation for everything else. In his vocal works, melody is right there waiting for you to hum along to.
Please don't mistake me. I love Mozart. I really do. I doubt a week goes by without playing something of his. I love Beethoven, too. And Chopin. And Schubert. And Liszt and Mendelssohn and Schumann. And fifty other delightful composers who never get the time of day, much to our impoverishment.
But no day finishes without Bach in my life, somewhere. Sometimes he is in my fingers. Sometimes on the CD player. Sometimes he finds his way into my whistle, or shower singing. Sometimes I sit in meetings and let my fingers trace through inventions and fugues on the conference table. And best of all, on those long flights across the ocean, I sometimes close my eyes and quietly let the the Bm Mass or St Matt's unfold in silent sonority and sublime splendor in my mind's eye. After all, who really needs piped-in airplane music when you can at will summon up Bach?
If you are not yet accquanted with it, do yourself a favor: go out today and get the Canadian Brass's recording of the Art of the Fugue. It is a warm and comforting work, perfect for sitting by the fireplace on a cold and wintry night with family and friends. You will be happy you did this.
In a lot of ways Einstein is a good choice because of the symbolism. A man of peace and intellect forced to flee the tyranny, wars, racism and genocides that are Europe's main contribution to history in the 20th century.
A man who gave the world great intellectual accomplishments only to be remembered as the enabler of nuclear terror - he becomes the harbringer of the duality of technology as a force for both good and evil.
A quiet, retiring person who has fame shoved on him, at the end of the century he becomes one of the first of a wave of celebrities created by the media for their own purposes.
Once the transistor was invented, the integrated circuit became inevitable, and once the IC was invented, the information society became inevitable. Some might argue that the transistor could not have been devised without Quantum Mechanics and that therefore men like Heisenberg (who was roundly castigated by Einstein for promoting such an "absurd" theory) should have been considered. But then relativity and quantum mechanics were inevitable given the results of insightful empericists once given Hamilton's mathematical physics discoveries in the 1800s, such as the quaternion and the relativity of changes in state of the observer vs changes in the state of the observed (embodied in the Hamiltonion equation).
A triumvirate like Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley isn't a single "person", but I would argue that their innovation, in spite of the "support" of Bell Labs, was not inevitable and that it has had as great an impact on the world as Guttenberg's press did when it lead to decentralization of literacy at the dawn of the Enlightenment, Protestant Reformation, Age of Exploration and finally the state craft of the late 1700s that renewed republican forms of governance.
Seastead this.
A man who had more than 20 children from the same wife.
;)
From where I sit, that speaks much more to his wife's ability not to die in childbirth than to anything on his part. Maybe she deserves some credit for her achievement.
The rest of your post is spot on, though.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
You're forgetting that "Einstein" is still a popular surname. If you search altavista for +eins tein -albert, you'll come up with 134,250 pages found. Albeit, plenty of people refer to Einstein by just his surname, but plenty of those 134k pages have nothing to do with our dear Albert.
/. munged "+einstein" by inserting a space in the middle.
Now if I could just figure out why
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
George Bernard Shaw wrote to The Times of London about an overzealous editor with a wooden ear: ``There is a pedant on your staff who spends far too much of his time searching for split infinitives. Every good literary craftsman uses a split infinitive if he thinks the sense demands it. I call for this man's instant dismissal; it matters not whether he decides to quickly go or to go quickly or quickly to go. Go he must, and at once.''
Let me state up front, categorically, that there exists no rule banning split infinitives in English. If you believe me, skip the rest. If you don't believe me, then perhaps you should check with Oxford. :-)
What you're seeing here is widely consider to be unreasonably fallout from the nutty English grammarians of the 18th century who tried to reanalyse English using Latin grammar. Why? They thought that Latin was the most nearly perfect language they do. Innumerable bogus rules have been injected into the heads of the weak-mined. Such rules include the rule to never split infinitives, as well as the one that prepositions are not words to end sentences with. These bogosities have no place in English.
Look at this sentence: ``He learned to quickly read.'' If you make it ``He learned quickly to read,'' you've altered the meaning, and if you make it ``He learned to read quickly,'' you've introduced an infelicitous ambuiguity. Did he learn quickly, or read quickly?
Consider, please, the following:
The confused folks who decry interposing an adverb between the particle to and the following verb will have an impossibly difficult time finding a better home for really in the previous sentence. Not one of these means the same thing as the forbidden phrase means, and at least one isn't even grammatical:- Really, I don't want to understand you.
- I really don't want to understand you.
- I don't really want to understand you.
- I don't want really to understand you.
- *I don't want to understand really you.
- I don't want to understand you, really.
- I don't want to understand you.
In the sentence above, the verb in the infinitive is, in fact, only understand, without its to component. Why do I say this? Because copious examples of verbs in the infinitive without that to are readily demonstrable.- I helped her to break the ice.
- I helped her break the ice.
- I saw her break the ice.
- I made her break the ice.
- I let her break the ice.
See? With many verbs, you don't even have to have a to in the infinitive. In his book The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker writes: Here's a longer quote from Fowler (1965):This all shows that you should boldy split infinitives as the sense demands. Or, if you prefer ``ought to'' over ``should'', that you ought to boldly split infinitives. :-)
You can read more about Paul Hoffman's writings on Paul Erdös through the given link.
Some anonymous coward dun said:
I really hate to be the bearer of bad news to you, but unless you happen to be a member of that class of bacteria whom contain chlorophyll, your life is ultimately going to depend on the death of others. Period.
Yes, this even applies if you're a strict vegan; you end up killing a plant in some fashion (by breaking off its naughty bits and eating them [flowers and fruits; flowers are plant gonads, and fruits are exactly equivalent to an animal's uterus or the yolk-sac in an egg], by ripping its lungs and stomach out [leaves], by ripping out its mouth [roots, which absorb nutrients--which are largely from the death of other creatures--more below], or by eating the entire unborn plant [seeds, which are equivalent to eggs and/or fetuses]). Furthermore, the vast majority of plants do require organic nutrients--most of which are from:
Dead animals/plants which have decayed (read: used in part as food by bacteria and other lifeforms)
The excrement of animals and/or plants (with some plants, nitrogen is necessary; for others it's a waste product--this is why you grow corn and beans together, because it balances out in the end) which used other animals/plants in part or in whole as food.
In other words--unless you intend to stop eating at all, and stop breathing for that matter (oxygen is a toxic waste product for several kinds of bacteria, carbon dioxide is a toxic waste product for many forms of life here too) then your life--like it or not--will directly or indirectly cause the death or be the result of the death of some other life on the planet. Period. Yes, it's cruel in a way, but nobody said Mother Nature had to be nice all the time (there are times when she can be a real mother :). If you've a problem with this, I suggest one take it up with God/Goddess/the singularity at the beginning of the universe/the laws of physics which allowed DNA and proteins to form into life/[insert your favourite Moving Force of Life here].
Now...what one CAN do, mind, is make certain that the loss of life needed to sustain one's self and life on the planet causes the least amount of suffering to anyone else [for large values of "anyone" including non-human forms of life], one can try to "do good" by the life one must take to live, and one may decide not to indulge in wasteful taking of life (murder is wasteful, IMHO; then again, so is trophy hunting--if you're going to kill an animal on purpose, please, use as much of it as you can--it's only respectful). Give respect to the life you take to live, and maybe give a little bit of thanks for it (yes, I admit that I do think of the corn and pig and chicken eggs and green-beans that gave their lives so I might have food).
You can't really eliminate all killing to live, because it's kinda built into the system at this point. Death, like it or not, is an intrinsic part of life; you will eventually die (nobody likes to think of this, I know)...but your body will feed plants and bacteria and earthworms and suchlike, who'll get eaten by chickens or other birds or cows, who will in turn maybe be eaten by your grandkids (so in a weird sort of way, your own death has contributed to the survival of your grandkids because they can eat). It's all part of the cycle, and it's pretty much how things work. I think honestly the best we can do is give respect that life IS taken so we may live, and give respect to that which did give its life, and only take as much as needed and try not to be wasteful and take life besides that which we need to take to live on--which I think is entirely possible and doable, and makes sure that things don't get TOO out of whack. It doesn't help to pretend life doesn't depend on death, though.
(Yes, I know this sounds terribly morbid, but it's a subject I've been giving rather deep thought to for quite a number of years. It's something I actually hold as a sort of moral code--yes, you DO take life to live, even plants. Do good by that which gave its life so you may live, and treat humans and your fellow creatures with respect, and don't take life wastefully, and things should work out. You might even call it a bit pragmatic. I just don't see why people are so terrified of death, though, and why people seem to see taking plants' lives as different from animal lives (maybe because humans are animals too--I've just not seen anyone yelling "FRUITS AND SEEDS ARE ABORTIONS!" the same way people yell "Meat is murder!"...hell, I feel better about eating cows than about trophy hunting or fur-trapping [which I see as terribly wasteful--nobody really NEEDS fur to make clothes out of unless they're in a survival situation or in the high Arctic/Antarctic, and nobody needs to kill a deer just so one can mount its head over the fireplace]--at least most slaughterhouses use the whole darn cow down to the hooves. Admittedly, I DO go for organic beef when possible [because the moos aren't pumped fulla chemicals, and organic farming techniques tend to be kinder to the moos than factory farming], but I'm not going to delude myself in thinking eating a veggieburger or a portabella-mushroom sandwich is any less a taking of life than eating the remains of a former resident of Laura's Lean Beef Angus Farm is. In a way it kinda bugs me when people do that, because in a way they're being dishonest--if they'd just say "I don't think eating animals is respectful to the animal or good for the environment, so I've gone vegan and you should too" I'd probably not cringe so much. :)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Godel proved that you have to pick one: either a mathematical system is inconsistent or incomplete. That is, either you can prove false things to be true (obviously a bad thing) or there are statements that can't be proved to be true even if they are true (which is the world we're stuck with).
What was particularly important about Godel's proof was that it was about arithmetic itself. Since all of our mathematical systems incorporate arithmetic in some fashion, all of our mathematical systems suffer from this problem.
Godel essentially proved that there are infinitely many unsolvable mathematical problems. Tie this in with Turing's proof that there are infinitely more uncomputable problems than computable ones, and it doesn't look too good for the home team.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
and who knows if Einstein was actually wrong about God not playing dice? I think it was Max Born who later came up with a completely mechanistic (ie. not probabilistic) version of quantum mechanics, completely compatible with the Bohr-Schrodinger version, albeit requiring so-called non-local hidden variables.
What is truly remarkable about Einstein is the huge range of his early work in physics, and the extent to which he came up with things nobody had thought of before. Bose-Einstein condensation, just achieved now at the end of the century, was mainly Einstein's work, though he generously gave Bose credit. The "bosons" of particle physics derive from Bose-Einstein statistics. Einstein's formulas show up in light absorption and emission, not just the photo-electric effect: check out the theory of the laser for instance. There's an Einstein formula for the specific heat of solids that explains high-temperature behavior very well, and still describes simply and well the low-temperature behavior of "optical phonons" in solids. The many refinements to get the rest of the picture correct are really just generalizations of what Einstein did first.
What we know him for is his work in relativity, but his impact on physics was far, far greater. A truly remarkable man.
Energy: time to change the picture.
For the sake of all those who want to actually read about these concepts at a level thats understandable to someone with any schooling, see my favorite books page and pick up Schrodinger's Kittens or Why quantum physics is strange, but not as strange as you think.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)