Science – Page 15 – Nourish-n-Cherish

The Man Who Deciphered the Heavens

I wonder often how humanity figured out things like the Earth revolving around the sun while rotating on its tilted axis every 24 hours. Questions such as our place in the Cosmos, and our understanding of it have wracked humanity for centuries. Religions sought to answer some of these questions through myths and erroneous theories. One man though, was instrumental in moving us from a geo-centric to a helio-centric model.

How one man figured out the vastness of the Universe by contemplating the night skies with his naked eye and working diligently to find the accompanying Mathematical proof is a story well worth reminding ourselves of again.

Nicholas Copernicus was born on Feb 19th 1473, and he died in May, 1543. He was born during the times when the pseudoscience of Astrology and the science of Astronomy were regarded as one and the same. Even then, in his letters, he seems to have warned humanity against believing the astrological predictions based on appearance of comets, and planets, since there was no proof linking our own futures and the astrological happenings in the heavens.

Little is known about the man who revolutionized our understanding of the Cosmos. Copernicus was the Healing Physician for the Bishop, and the Canon (an administrator) for the Catholic Church. His private passion, though, was understanding the Cosmos and our place in it. It is poetic to imagine the man standing and observing the night skies for decades almost every night in Torun somewhere in modern day Poland, figuring out what the Ptolemic system got right, understanding Pythagorean Mathematics, scouring books of scientific interest when he had little access to them. Where they were gaps in the current understanding he fearlessly questioned never resting till he came up with a satisfactory explanation and the Mathematics required to support his own hypothesis. Copernicus expanded his initial calculations through rigorous observations all done with the naked eye. (Galileo’s ’spyglass’ as he called his early telescopes would not be available till 1610.)

Copernicus-Boissard — By Theodor de Bry – Uni Mannheim Mateo (Mannheimer Texte Online); Source [1]; Image:[2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2976063

Though he confided his findings to a few close friends, he was worried about the backlash from the Catholic Church. After all, religion put Earth at the center of the universe, and mythology made the sun ride his chariot to give us life everyday. It would have been dangerous to go all out and refute all theories at once. Man’s place in the Universe would suddenly not just become less grandiose, but downright humbling. We are small specks who happened to evolve into intelligent life on a tiny planet revolving around the sun? The very idea was scary.

1920px-Bartolomeu_Velho_1568 — *Figure of the heavenly bodies* — An illustration of the Ptolemaic geocentric system by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho, 1568 (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

Finally, his friends, most persistent among them, mathematician, Georg Joachim Rheticus, convinced him to publish his volumes after checking and double checking the validity of the Mathematics accompanying his proofs. Slowly leading up to the theory of Earth being one of the planets revolving around the Sun, De revolutionizes orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) was published by a house in Nuremberg in modern day Germany.

De_Revolutionibus_ms_p9v — By Nicolaus Copernicus – Commons file De_Revolutionibus_manuscript_p9b.jpg, Public Domain, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58001466

Copernicus died almost as soon as his book was printed, and the book would have languished in the corners never to be read, had Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei not taken it up again. In many ways, what Copernicus feared would happen to him happened to Kepler and Galileo. They bore the brunt of the Christian Church for overturning their understanding of the world and our importance in it. But the book paved the way for further scientific research.

From Newton’s Theory of Relativity to our current forays into Space with telescopes sending us newer images of galaxies far far away, to the detection of gravitational waves, we are now in a constant state of wonder and on the cusp to more wondrous advances, all thanks to one man. One man, who believed that he could unearth the truth if he stuck with the problem, one man whose friends kept him honest and took the time to support and understand his work.

Books:

A More Perfect Heaven – How Copernicus Revolutionized the Cosmos – By Dava Sobel
The Book that Nobody Read – Chasing the Revolutions of Nicholas Copernicus – By Owen Gingrich
De revolutionizes orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) _ by Nicholas Copernicus

The Dream Weavers Web

It had been a few years since we had taken the magical pill. When the daughter was younger, she was enamored with Disney movies, was obsessed with unicorns and mermaids (the mermaids still hold sway), but the general euphoria with Disney has come down somewhat, or so we thought. It turns out, magic may be dormant, but thankfully not absent. When those Mickey ears came on, so did the smiles, the magic, the ridiculous mixed with the plausible, the tales with long tails, the myths and legends, everything came bubbling up in one hot cauldron full of fun and adventure.

I must say I was thrilled too. The day to day living tends to routinely pound magic out of us unless we make a concerted effort to keep it. The schools manage to do so for the children. There are Dr Seuss weeks, there are Read-a-thons, crazy hair days and crazed sock days to keep it all intact. But as the business of earning a living and adult hood takes on, there is a brush working in the background to make us more even keel, more predictable and less whimsical.

Reading children’s books keeps it for us in some ways.

I had expected to have a good time at Disneyland. I manage to put my whimsies on with a delight, and get the children going too. So far so good. But there are serendipitous surprises lurking even in the most magical of places. The Disney World in Florida was even better than I had expected. There was Animal Kingdom, in which I expected plastic hippos and lions made to scale. Consider my surprise then when we went on the Kilimanjaro safari to be taken into the hinterlands with animals in relatively free reign. It is marvelous to see a bloat of hippos, a tower of giraffes, a something of warthogs, and a blush of pelicans roaming freely. When a white horned rhino waddled across our path, we simply waited for it to move quietly. Even the children, though looking awed, did not utter a sound. There is majesty in nature.

One of the best surprises for me was the onus on conservation of our beautiful planet for the years to come. There were green houses showing us the marvels and possibilities of vertical farming. It was apparent to those of us floating in the boats by the lazy river taking us through these green houses, that many of us had never seen plants of many vegetables and fruits before. One excited child pointed to an eggplant plant, and squealed – “Look the eggplants are hanging from them!” I could see it was a beautiful revelation for the child who had simply assumed you picked it up in the grocery aisles of the supermarket, while making a passionate case for a Hot Wheels toy car at the billing counter.

Saturated with the magic of life on this beautiful planet, we spent a day amidst the shots to space. Kennedy Space Center. The past merged with the magic of fairy-tales, the present beautifully thrumming with possibilities for conservation and conversation, and the future hits among the stars. Looking for possible planets for us to expand into.

It is marvelous to see we are on the cusp of a decade that holds so much promise. For among the young I saw in the parks, there will be quite a few starting their careers in the coming decade.

The whole time, I was absorbing the atmosphere around me, little words were forming themselves into sentences. I was making my journey on the river of time and I was grateful for so many things. Some good sentences disappeared because I had not written them down, but I didn’t fret. It is often like this – playing with the words to relive my experiences.

Imagine how I felt then, when I read Ursula Le Guin’s essay on Writing. I felt the sage author’s words like balm, and nodded along. Writers are creators, but unlike potters and weavers, our products are less tangible. Our dreams are webs weaved in the magical recesses of the brain, and not all of it worth reading or sharing.

“Writing is a risky business. No guarantees. You have to take the chance. I’m happy to take it. I love taking it. So, my stuff gets misread, misunderstood, misinterpreted, – so what? If its the real stuff, it will survive almost any other abuse other than being ignored, disappeared, not read.”

When I read this piece in the essay though, I was grateful. I have written 800 posts over the past 14 years, and I would never have done that if not for the encouragement I have received from my dear friends and readers. It is magical. Encouragement like Love, is so fuzzy a thing to try to describe. For both the forces have the power to gently nurture, nudge, and poise for acceptance.

Thank you for all of that. Let the magical dreams weave on in the coming decade as well. Happy New Year and Happy New Decade – May the River of Time course on gently.

The Gingko Trees 🌳

“Did you know about the Gingko trees?” I said, knowing fully well the reaction it would elicit from the daughter.

“Oh Please! There is no need to tell everyone you meet about the Gingko trees you know?” she said.

“But there is! Maybe I will write about it.” I said. The gingko trees have given me no end of pleasure , and I must say, a certain amount of anticipation tinged with a spot of trepidation, during the past few months. The one interesting fact I know about them has been beaten to mythical status and back like the shedding and revival of the seasons.

“Are you seriously telling me that you haven’t written about the blasted Gingko trees yet?” the daughter’s voice was tinged with laughter and embarrassment. The conversation was happening in front of her friends after all.

If you really want to embarrass your teenage child, please take them for a walk explaining obscure horticultural facts along the way. Touch the leaves of the Gingko trees, tell them the scientific name is Gingko Biloba, take them back to the time when the dinosaurs roamed feeding off these very leaves and the time travel is bound to work wonders on them.

Only the teenager most proud of their parents is bound to glow like the dew drops glistening on a Gingko tree at the first rays of the sun. Mine looked like a cross between a beetroot and a maple 🍁 . I stood there poetically exclaiming that the beautiful Gingko trees had shed their golden tresses after all; happy that the interesting fact had been borne out truly by the sturdy trees.

Months before, as the colors of the leaves changed from olive green to golden yellow, I had told her about the fact that Gingko trees shed their leaves all at once.

“Don’t they all?!” she said being clever, but I had my answer ready.

“No they don’t as the crunch parties we have all of October and November show you. But the Gingko trees in the vicinity all shed together on one day in November apparently.” I said. “It is like the day of the party, and they somehow decide the day between themselves. Nature’s signals are truly quixotic!”

“Did you also know that Gingko trees have been around from the days of the dinosaurs?”
“And how do you know that?” the family asked looking at me curiously, as if my age was finally becoming clear to them. I did not like where this was going, and hastily assured them that paleontologists seemed to have found fossils and put their necks on the line with that fact.

Ever since, throughout November, we watched the Gingko trees with fascination, and self with a tinge of dread, for I had bored the family stiff with tales of the Gingko tree ever since I read the essay by Oliver Sacks in the book, Everything in its Place. He wrote of his learnings from the Horticultural Society of which he was a part, and he had said quite categorically that the Gingko trees party was one day in mid November.

gingko

Mid November came and went, and the yellow leaves swung their tresses proudly as the cold winds coursed through them. Rains lashed at them, and they swished them some more. Haughty Princesses they’d make, I thought to myself.

Thanksgiving came and went, and the family was now baring their fasts at me. “After all those months with the blasted gingko tree, if they don’t shed, you’ve had it Mother dear!” they said. I said that November in New York probably meant December in California, but I also prayed a little. You see, I had made a bit of a pest of myself over the past few months, and I knew it. Oh the horror if they didn’t!

December came, and I went out of the state for a couple of weeks. I cannot say that the Gingko trees were in my thoughts for very long during this time. Year end work-travels don’t give time to think of Gingko trees.

I came back, and I had come for the walk with the girls, when the Gingko trees swam into my thoughts again. Luckily for me, Oliver Sacks, was an astute man. Though, I don’t know whether they had all shed their leaves on the same day, when I saw them, all the Gingko trees in the vicinity, young and old, were bare. Their leaves lay in a heap around their trunks, and I looked vindicated. Thank you Oliver Sacks and Thank you Gingko Trees! I said privately heaving a sigh of relief.

I told the girls about the whole thing: the pest I’d made of myself, and how the solid trees had helped me after all, and they laughed heartily. “I told you my mom is a nature kook! ” said the daughter, but there was laughter there – I seemed to have redeemed myself in front of her friends.

I am not sure when I will be willingly invited next: I’d better get going on some Spring facts to dazzle the lot.

everything_place

Book: Everything in its Place

By: Oliver Sacks

Essay: The Night of the Gingko

Charming Blooming Murmurations

It was a lovely morning before the rains set in. The hillsides definitely looked like they could do with some rain. The parched Earth still looked beautiful in the early rays of the sun. We saw a hawk at such close quarters eyeing a trip of rabbits down below that I felt a surge of its power course through the hills.

We were out on a hike and the son was ebullient. The morning air had lifted his spirits, and he was happily talking of this and that and taking us up steep hillsides.

On we went, through troughs and peaks, listening for the sounds of animals, birds and inhaling the fresh air. On top of one of the peaks, we stopped to catch a breath. I mock held my hips and said “Oh have a heart and give your old mother a break!” He guffawed and pointed out the next steep hill with gusto. I smiled, and held a finger to my lips – it was as we were standing there atop a hill overlooking a bay that we heard the murmur above. A susurration of starlings flying this way and that, forming and reforming beautiful circles in the sky.

A group of starlings are aptly called a Murmuration of Starlings.

I don’t know how often we have stood close enough to hear a whole flock of birds wings flock together – if you haven’t, it is truly magical.

A few days later, we were heading to Monterey Bay Aquarium? After tucking into their mac-n-cheese, which is apparently the best, we meandered our way through the place. Marine biology, research, conversation of species and all the noble things follow a splendid Mac N Cheese. The clouds were out gamboling in the blue skies. They had reason to. They had been grey and full of themselves for the past few days, They had made terrible whooshing noises as the rains thundered through the Bay Area. Having taken their load off though, they looked lovely in the skies.

“Hey amma! Do you see that one? Just the top of it looks like a dog!”
“Whoops! Now it is changing shapes to become a shark!”

Watching a billow of clouds is always a magical experience.

Later that day in Monterey Bay Aquarium, Nature showed us beautiful species of fish that could collectively shoal and swarm forming beautiful shapes as they swam in large numbers together.

Clip from Wiki:
During the sardine run, as many as 18,000 dolphins, behaving like sheepdogs, herd the sardines into bait balls, or corral them in shallow water. Once rounded up, the dolphins and other predators take turns ploughing through the bait balls, gorging on the fish as they sweep through. Seabirds also attack them from above, flocks of gannets, cormorants, terns and gulls.

A bloom of jellyfish is enough to fill one’s heart with joy for hours – floating seemingly aimlessly, their pulsing, electrifying bursts are nothing but therapeutic.

A Charm of Goldfinches by Matt Sewell is a marvelous book outlining why we have the collective nouns that we do. Why do a Trip of Rabbits thrill us? Why are Charms of Goldfinches so charming?

With beautiful illustrations, it is a charming book indeed.

charm_goldfinches

I remembered a game we played on a car trip some time ago. It had to do with the one big super power we could wish for. While there were things like Lightning Blasters, I think the one that took everyone’s fancy that day was Shape Shifters.

We are so corporeal in our bodies that we rarely of even think of things we can shift into. But this kind of species shifting shapes at will collectively and in a coordinated manner is not just fascinating, it is mesmerizing.

Watching clans of humans though, not so much!

Tick-Tock Tick-Tock

“October 29th, 1969 is the day the internet was born did you know that?” said the husband. I have seen pups don that look when out and about in sunny meadows with a new bone to boot.

“Google icon huh?!”

I suppose life has taught him to take in his leaping enthusiasm with our barely noticeable uh-huh with equanimity. “Hey! Let’s try again. Today is the birthday of the internet!”

“No….just fun fact. Oct 29th, 1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. And then in 1974, the first protocol for communicating over the Internet was conceptualized. T-C-P – tada! Finally, in November 1977, the internet was functional as the ARPANET for the Defense.

“It wasn’t until the late 1980’s and 1990’s even that the internet was functional the way we know it!”, he said awe dripping from him. “I suppose in a way we were the perfect generation to see the wave take off.”

“So you guys are as old as the internet?! Oh my gosh – that is so old!” quipped the little fellow, mentally slotting us with the dinosaurs. “How did you guys live without the internet? ” , said he puzzled. He has taken to asking Google Home all sorts of things during the day:

“Okay Google – what is the atomic number of Boron?”
“Okay Google -what is the time right now?”
“Okay Google – tell me a Halloween joke.”

“Well – we lived quite well I suppose.” said I, throwing in a bit of philosophy about the simple life needing few things other than sustenance for the body and the mind. “We did not need the internet to entertain ourselves. We played outside, made forts out of mud, ran around, and had fun all the same. No battles on that game of yours – Clash Royale is it?! We battled it out with sticks and stones.” I said, and the more I talked about our lives pre-internet, the more I realized that humanity had truly passed a technological milestone. It was like the power of electricity – it changed our lives forever, and though life is possible without electricity, it has become so much harder to sustain without it. Looking at the children born after the age of the internet, I realized that connectivity is much the same for these children.

“You want to know what I did with the Internet today?” asked the teenage daughter.

“I’ll show you!” she said in her effusive tones. There was then a rather jerky video of her popping into her mobile phone’s camera from various angles – one upside down and by the sounds of it rather clumsily, for we heard a dull thud followed by an “oww”.

“Not my best video – but how about this one? ” She then went on to show us another jumpy jerky video with some sort of a meme thrown in for good measure. I groaned.

“What is this?! Does anyone even see stuff like this? Tick tock is it?” I looked appallingly at her, and said, “Oh goodness child! You don’t tell me you actually posted this!”

I feel it is worth noting here that the App is called TikTok, not Tick-Tock as I thought up until a minute ago when I went looking for the wikipedia entry – sigh! I am as old as the Internet I suppose!

“For your information Amma, tons of people see this stuff. It is original see? This is the one that is going viral now. Already 30,000 likes and 100,000 views.”, she said, proud of herself.

My jaws dropped. “For this?!”

“Supportive. Mother. Supportive – remember?”

“But I’ve seen plenty of videos – even your own that are much better than this – even the one you showed us before where you banged yourself on the floor by the sound of that dull thud had a comical quality to it. ” I said, and she laughed hard, agreeing wholeheartedly.

“Fame doesn’t need merit Mother.”

“Fame is a fickle friend Harry!” said I in a brilliant imitation of Professor Lockhardt from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

“Fame is as fame does!” said she, and we all laughed.

“Just goes to prove that all our inventions and resources take on a life of their own, and that is what will keep us busy as a race I suppose.” I said.

“All the brilliant protocols developed and conceptualized for dumb Tick-Tocks like this to go viral. What is the world coming to?” said the husband.

“What a tangled web we weave when we choose to connect?” I said paraphrasing not Shakespeare as it turns out, but William Scott in the poem Marmion, and looking around proudly for acknowledgement. Completely lost on the group of course. I sighed and continued – there are times when you explain your jokes and times you don’t. Not when something viral is competing for attention.

“Poor appa! Let’s throw him a bone and listen to him about the philosophy of the internet dears. ” said I, and we listened to him as he explained – his own fascination overtaking him, about how the internet developed and (d)evolved into what it is today.

Here is an interesting video with all the leading websites over time.

The Magic of Story-Telling

“Stop being a Jellyfish!” said the husband.
“I knew you were going to say that – you are such an open book yourself!” said I.

We both giggled like children at our own pathetic joke. T’was the time for hulking men with or without mustaches and serious women to quack like ducks, twirl like fairies, flex those non-existent abs, and find that little teeny bit of whimsy that adulthood so expertly hides away beneath the layers. Halloween was here.

1dc1cf17-3133-4989-93a7-08bcd65b2be5

T’is the time people astound you with their imagination. Who doesn’t like having 3 spidermen knocking on your door all at once? Or to see the twin toddlers dressed as Nemo & Dory? The super-heroes and ninjas cowering behind their larger siblings in Vampire clothing, or the witches cackling hard?

There is something so uniquely beautiful about Halloween – the one festival where we can display our idiosyncrasies with grace, be accepted for whatever we are. You want to be a skeleton? That should be fine. Here is some candy for you. Really, buddy? You want to go out in the world in that costume? Well, if this appeals to you, then I suppose you deserve some candy anyway!

How many times in our lives do we get that kind of universal approval?

The husband and I were very proud of our last minute Halloween costumes: an open book & a jellyfish.

The little fairy lights I had taped into place made the jellyfish glow, and I received many compliments – I must say I glowed all evening with the praise, though I did credit the Internet with it.

When people asked me where I got the inspiration from, I replied truthfully that I have always wondered what it must be like to live under the sea, and they invariably laughed at my answer.

But it’s true. Every trip to the aquarium rekindles the magic of another world – right here with us. Reading Gerald Durrell’s essay about scuba diving is enthralling.

I have often wondered how we would have adapted if we had evolved under the ocean. Would we have figured out the laws and physics of the Universe to the extent we have, or would the medium have made little difference in understanding. The Octopus’s evolution to have more neurons than us is truly astounding.

Quanta Magazine: What shape is the universe? Closed or Flat?

It is why I like reading about the intelligence of dolphins and whales: the fact that they have epics the sounds bits of which are roughly the equivalent of our Iliad is amazing. Quote from Carl Sagan’s essay on Whale song:

If the songs of the humpback whale are enunciated as a tonal language, the total information content, the number of bits of information in such songs, is some 10 to the power of 6 bits, about the same as the information content of the Iliad or the Odyssey.

What must their epics say? For all our anthropological worldview, I wonder whether humans figure in them at all. That will be a fine thing to hear – a Dr Dolittle who finally translates a Whale Epic, only to find their world far richer than our own.

I recently re-read the Voyages of Dr Dolittle by Hugh Lofting. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed visualizing myself sailing the seas with his motley group – either by skimming along like a porpoise, or better yet by getting a place inside the giant snail’s back as it sailed along smoothly churning the ocean as it went.

Swimming with Dolphins

We are all children of stories. We need epics and tales of fantasy. Our very own imaginations need an outlet, and Halloween gives us just that. I know my enthusiasm rubs off on the children as they go about planning their costumes. While I am out with a big smile on my face, a number of people give me an indulgent smile as if to say “Aren’t you a bit old for this?”

Mary Oliver gently reminds me to react with this nugget of wisdom:

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”

― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

Privately, I am happy that our inner child never really leaves us.

Authors:

Running like Elephants

“Guys! Let’s hurry up a little. I like how we are dawdling, but the school bell waits for no ships to sail across the seas! ” I said. There had been a mild spattering of rain across the dry summer season. A few snails had popped out to enjoy the moist, and the son and his friends were looking at them as they chatted and made their way to school. Rain drops on the late summer roses and oleander flowers made the scene a rather endearing one.

img_3991-effects

The response from the children was predictable – they ran, and I ran shouting like a charioteer pulling the reins on the excited steeds, “Slow down! No running here – oncoming traffic!”
“But you asked us to hurry up!”
“Yes – run like Elephants!” I said.

I had told the children earlier about the Elephant’s gait, and they exchanged glances and started laughing. The snail they were studying looked startled and showed a leap of speed as it made its way back to the comfort of the garden bed.

Is this walking? *giggle*
Is this running? *giggle giggle*
Is this fast walking? * giggle giggle giputly duggle*
Is this slow running? *giggle puddle chuckle duffle*

I smiled slowly. “Pretend you are Elephants teaching Snails to run.”

elephant_snail

I suppose that was a wrong metaphor altogether. By the time we arrived in the school, not only were we out of breath with the laughing, but we were also fashionably disconcerted. The legs seem to not remember how to walk straight or run properly, and were caught in this limbo of the Elephant’s Gait.

Later that week, I was sitting in the garden and watching the world go about its true business of living. I watched a hummingbird’s fast-paced wing movements up in the trees. A few butterflies were flitting hither and tither. A skein of geese were flying overhead in that beautiful v-shaped formation. Closer to the ground, a few snails were marking their slow way across the courtyard.

This combination of sitting in a garden, and watching life flit by had me take a hundred pictures with my phone. Pictures that may or may not be seen and appreciated again. I could capture the slow motion video of the humming bird whizzing up above or the butterflies in my midst. I could use time-lapse videos to capture the slow moving snails and a dozen pictures to capture the beautiful movement of the caterpillars.

As I sat there musing on the ease with which we capture movement these days, I could not help comparing and contrasting humanity’s struggle to capture that. I remember yawning in the Art galleries after seeing the n-th painting of a horse or the x-th statue of a horse drawn chariot.

But as I sat there that afternoon, I wondered whether I had appreciated them enough. After all, at the time of their making, studying movement was not all easy. One had to have an almost eidetic memory to understand the muscles and the way they moved.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s work is appreciated because of the lengths he went to study the anatomy of the creatures in his works. 300 years ago, movement must have been particularly hard to study.

In Oliver Sacks’ essay on Elephant Gaits in the book, Everything in its Place, he writes about the problem of studying movement.

everything_place

More than a century ago, Etienne-Jules Marey had made a pioneering investigation of elephant gaits. Of course, he did not use video analysis then, but still photography. I quote: “Marey’s lifelong fascination with movement started with the internal movements and processes of the body. He had been a pioneer here, inventing pulse meters, blood pressure graphings and heart tracings – ingenious precursors to the mechanical instruments used in Medicine even today. ”

Later, he moved onto the animal movements and analysis.
“For animal analysis he used pressure gauges, rubber tubes, and graphic recordings to measure the movements and positions of limbs. From these recordings, he rotated in a zoetrope, reconstructing in slow motion the movements of the horse.”

Muybridge, a contemporary of Marey, however, a peripatetic artist as Sacks describes him used 24 cameras along a track where the shutter would be tripped by the horses themselves as they galloped past to capture the movements of the horse as they raced.

When a similar technique was used to analyze the fast movement of elephants, it was found that they neither walked nor ran, but rather a combination known as fast walking.

I remember a long ago conversation with a friend who was training for a marathon on the more recent study of leopards running, and how he had changed his running technique to take a few tips from the world’s fastest runner.

As we watch the world around us, I wish different creatures could teach us some of their marvelous techniques. The dragonfly and the humming bird for flight; mallards and coots for water locomotion. Doesn’t Biomimicry as a field of study sound more fascinating than ever before? I positively yearn to be Dr John Dolittle at times!

Books/Articles to be read/referenced in this post:

Everything in its Place – Oliver Sacks
Picturing Time – Marta Braun
River of Shadows: Rebecca Solnit
Voyages of Dr Dolittle – Hugh Lofting
Elephant’s Gait.
Leonardo Da Vinci – Gates Notes

Music & Gardens

It is always a delight to pick up a set of essays written by prolific writers who are also curious intellectuals. These authors make me feel like I am reading the perspective of polymaths, and that in itself makes for a wondrous experience. The latest book that had me thinking and reading about things I had not thought about for a long time was the book, Everything In Its Place by Oliver Sacks.

Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE FRCP (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and author. He believed that the brain is the “most incredible thing in the universe.”^[1]

He reminds us in broad strokes of his pen, the number of areas in which we can be curious. He reminds us about the vast capabilities of the human brain, even while reflecting on this particular author’s exceptional one. Reading about the brains many failings and flaws is both fascinating and eye-opening. (Oliver Sacks was a Neurologist who specialized in many neurological disorders, and writes from a place of curiosity and compassion for his patients).

His description of Tourette’s syndrome, for instance, certainly makes me think less critically of people I encounter on the public transit who have the need to shock the whole compartment with their absurd, rude and obnoxious statements, every few minutes. Sufferers of Tourette’s syndrome often find themselves cursing and shouting loudly, without being to help themselves. The shocked attention they gather seems to be the reward for their impulses.

He writes about a certain individual who exhibited severe symptoms in Vietnam and would make shocking exclamations in Vietnamese every now and then. But when he moved to the United States, his Tourette’s calmed down because people did not react as much as he thought they would in a country where his language was not understood.

I can now learn to see the person different from their symptoms, and for that I am grateful.

How can I not be fascinated as I read his sure voice confess that as a neurologist the only therapies he knows to work surely are Music & Gardens? I read his meditations on Why We Need Gardens and the words Biophilia and Hortophilia leap out and grab my attention. Nature is my soother, has always been my favorite soother, and it is refreshing to hear his perspective on the effect of nature.

img_3991-effects

“Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in us. Biophilia, the love of nature and living things, is an essential part of the human condition. Hortophilia, the desire to interact with, manage, and tend nature is also deeply instilled in us. The role that nature plays in health and healing becomes even more critical for people working long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods without access to green spaces, for children in city schools…..

The effects if nature’s qualities on health are only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological, I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the brains physiology, and perhaps even its structure.”

As he says in one essay, his patients even in advanced states of dementia always look forward to an hour outside amidst nature, and not one of them has ever planted a sapling upside down when given a sapling. It is almost as if we intuitively know what to do and our learnings from time may fall away from us, but our affinity to nature will not.

In fact, he writes of one of his close friends, Lowell, who suffered from Tourette’s syndrome, that while hiking in the deserts of Arizona, his ticks and urges almost completely disappeared.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/05/27/oliver-sacks-gardens/ : Oliver Sacks

In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens

Ants in a Cosmic Universe

The children peered into the list of ideas I had for my blog while on the whirlwind trip to the other side of the world. Predictably, some of my better ideas drew a smirk from the teenager. When pried she rattled her laugh and said, “Maybe add an article or two on lame titles? Really! What is all this with the Ants and the Cosmic Universe? Who writes stuff like that?”

“I do!” I said. “I was pretty happy that morning when I got up early and went a-walking through the woods by the resort. There were jackfruit trees, pepper wines and uh, many other trees.”

I threw my mind back happily to that early morning saunter in the Western Ghats. How beautifully the little creatures had turned my haughty look skywards to ground wards and then back again? The saunter of humility it turned out to be.

The best part of the walk was the fauna that was up with the sun ready to greet a new day. There I was sleepy still, but happy that I had not wasted this glorious morning in bed. I had to do a double take when I saw dry leaves croaking and leaping about. Was I dreaming that I was up and walking while snuggling up cozily in bed? It has happened before. (When one wakes up and finds that that early morning jog by the lake never actually happened except in one’s dreams, it is disappointing.) It turns out these were clever frogs who had mastered the art of camouflage. They were the ones who attracted my attention ground-ward.

Till then, my spirits and outlook were sky bound – admiring the suns rays filtering through the tree tops, looking for butterflies, and the clouds flitting lazily. The clouds had opened up a few minutes earlier, drenched the hills, and then having done their job, decided to flit and laze for a while.

The teeming life on a tropical forest floor is endlessly entertaining. The temperatures were not too high yet, and many creatures had decided to get their spot of exercise, fresh air and Vitamin D before it became too much Vit D. The ants were bustling. Really, if ever we need motivation on a dull day, look no further than the role ants play in this cosmic universe.

They bustle, they plan, execute and deliver, they seem goal-oriented even when walking off with your bread crumb two hundred times their own weight from under your nose. Hundreds of them, in apparent harmony, with a shared vision of some kind, and an indomitable spirit.

This remarkable combination of spirited vision and lack of personal ambition is a balm to souls who mire themselves in the human world. Humans value competition as the means to make us better, but in the grand scale of the cosmic universe, wasn’t shared vision a loftier goal? I suppose Leaders try to cry themselves hoarse with speeches dripping with this sort of guff, but their own personal ambition thwarts the message somehow.

Everyone must spend a day every now and then in the forest re-aligning our spirits, and learning a thing or two from every single organism.

I said something like this to the children, only not as coherently and got another eye-roll as a response. I tried another angle.

star_trails — Star Trails of the Milky Way Galaxy

Imagine these ants come out at night, and probably admire the stars. The beautiful canopy that changes. That was us isn’t it? Even as recently as a few hundred years ago, even while territorial battles were being fought, we admired the changing skies and built myths around it. “The myths you guys seem to enjoy so much!” I said.

“Remember, I came back from the walk and pulled all you children out for a walk through the woods? To see the beautiful forest in its glory?”

“Yes! We remember! There were no cosmic universes – just Appa giving his flora and fauna tour. He didn’t even know the names, just making up some stuff, and pointing to the dry leaves and saying – Imagine these as frogs.”

“Well, by the time you guys came, the frogs had gone back into their burrows or wherever? I don’t know – where do frogs live? ” Soon, we were discussing the abodes of frogs and I told them, “But you saw so many more butterflies!”
coorg-COLLAGE

“So, Butterflies in a Cosmic Universe?”

“Or, moths in a cosmic universe more like. The butterflies go to bed. Where do you think butterflies live? Their cocoons must long be gone.”

I decided to let things rest. We are in a Cosmic Universe. We must live and let live and you know, share.

Magical Garbage Collection

I plonked myself in bed one night and stretched the tired frame. The feeling of the muscles relaxing against the mattress is a welcome one. The thighs and calf muscles let out a small moan of gratitude at being allowed to rest. How lovely it would be if I could just sleep for another 12-14 hours? I knew the alarm had different plans for me though.

It had been another long day in a series of long days. The relentless nature of the days, and the things that were occupying them had me feeling somewhat jaded.

Annie Dillard whispered her wisdom “How we occupy our days in how we occupy our lives.”

I really need something to rekindle the magic of life, I said to myself, and then remembered that a task lay ahead of me that had little to no magical appeal. I had forgotten that it was the night to put out the garbage cans for collection the next day. My muscles screamed in protest as I got up to take care of the unsavory task.

I tried to silence the sound track of the amount of garbage we generate and push out just for this moment the heart -rending images of the garbage floating in our oceans that I had seen in the National Geographic magazine. I tramped from garbage can to garbage can in the various rooms in the house stumping listlessly and loudly. The sounds of my footsteps loudly registering my exhaustion and irritation at the same time.

I dragged the cans out to the curb. A cool breeze gently caressed my tired frame. I stopped at the end of the curb, and lifted my eyes. I stood there caught in the moment of transformation. There was Jupiter shining down brightly near the Scorpio constellation in the summer sky. I veered my eyesight to the right and there was Little Dipper. It had been a long time since I glanced up at the night sky. The advent of summer meant that by the time the stars twinkled down gently at us at night, I was too tuckered out to exert myself to gaze longingly at the planets and the stars. ✨

I stood there for sometime. A few neighbors had stepped out on similar errands looking equally spent, and we had a curbside-garbage-can chat. I showed them Jupiter and the constellations I recognized. Really! How such a simple thing can invigorate us all is amazing. Soon, we were whipping out the Skyview app and looking for constellations and stars, familiar and unfamiliar.

It was then I saw the artificial satellite orbit the Earth – shooting much faster than the remaining stars, steadily moving across the night sky, like a little star out for a run. In a matter of minutes, we were talking about the kind of data the orbiting satellites send us. No surer reminder of the Pale Blue Dot than an orbiting satellite is there?

I traipsed back to bed after this welcome interlude of the magic of the skies. Who knew? Garbage collection could turn magical after all.

To quote Herman Hesse, “My advice to the person suffering from lack of time and from apathy is this: Seek out each day as many as possible of the small joys.”

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: