The Golden Ass

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Features

April 2002

Berkeley's club
charcoal works
dark night paradox
the empire strikes back
reading on the john
Edgar Allan Poe
the temperature of haeven
What is a Classic?

charcoal works

There is a simple and effective remedy against common diarrhea: activated charcoal. Try finding this in America! The people here haven't even heard of it, but the shelves are bending under 5 to 50 dollar drugs produced by the big pharmaceutical corporations. Charcoal is what it says on the package. Finely pulverized charcoal pressed to tablets. You get black fingers when you touch it. It is neither an herbal remedy, nor homeopathic. It doesn't cure cancer or AIDS.

All it does is reliably stop the runs if food doesn't agree with you. European G.P.s are in a habit to routinely prescribe activated charcoal, but of course it is also readily available without prescription. Charcoal works. It is inexpensive, and has absolutely no side effects. So why is it so hard to get here? The only reason I could think of is, that it is inexpensive, and has absolutely no side effects. Charcoal works - except for corporate big business. Who would buy stocks on charcoal?

Something here, doesn't add up. The connection between stock trading and gambling is easy to see - the connection between stock holding and casting votes at the poll is perhaps not so obvious but not fundamentally different. It stands to reason that the democracy of individual egotism should be kept on a subordinate level. The voter at the poll, the gambler at the roulette table, and the stockholder, they all play what they see as the most profitable short term favorite.

But somewhere along the line we pass a demarcation point beyond which it is not enough to know the needs and wants of a specific group. A universal perspective is required - if the runs give you the time. Yes you guessed it, I am a chauvinist Limey and diehard empirialist who goes with Kipling's idea of good government: A small cadre of professional administrators and the administrated minding their own business. It should benefit both sides:

I mean who wants to waste time on politics? If you are the type of person capable of getting yourself made President, then anyway you should on no account be allowed to the job. The Roman Republic fell for exactly that reason. Our era struggles to find its bearings, and I to control my diarrhea: simple, effectively and without side-effects. Perspective and democracy are almost a contradiction in terms. Empires have lasted because they could look further than the next election.

Building for centuries can never be a ready political commodity. It requires a sense of identity that transcends the life of the individual. Religion doesn't really help. What is needed is not the eternity for the dead, nor praying for the day of judgment, but enduring security and stability for the life before death. It is called a future. However, it has to make sense, and not just for the architects, to build for generations. And it seems, nobody finds any sense in charcoal.

Perhaps it is not such good idea after all, to leave the professionals alone with minding what is essentially our business, since they use it merely as an excuse to advance their own interest. Examples to the contrary are hard to come by. So in the end who would seriously want to break the spirit of motivated voters who volunteer to administer to their own needs? Egoism and greed really work. It has changed history and civilization beyond recognition. It still doesn't get me charcoal.

Maybe education would help, but how can it, if the curriculum is overseen by the same people who are most in need of reforming their interests and who have only their own prejudice to go by? It certainly is a good thing that insurances can turn a profit for the stock holder and still fulfill their functions. Activated charcoal doesn't turn big profits. Anti-diarrhea drugs with steroids and contra indications do. But charcoal has no side effects. Charcoal works.

reading Poe

A critic is not supposed to be the reader's surrogate reader. To my students, I made it very clear that I consider psychoanalysis and spirituality binges a lazy cop out, to avoid the slog of hard facts. Instead of psycho babble and sniffing the coprolites of the "primal" beast I would require to establish the tradition and then to point out the successive improvements and deviations by each individual author and how this had been integrated into the specifics of his style.

For instance the "doppelganger" is a common leitmotif of the period - probably introduced by E.T.A. Hoffmann, picked up in various forms and disguises by Colleridge, Arnim, Tieck, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Poe, Hugo, Balzac, Melville, Maupassant, Stevenson. I would expect my students to do some genuine research on the subject; follow the motif through literature, and actually read the original texts and comment on crucial cross references.

On the other hand, that Poe and E.T.A. Hoffmann had been drawn to the subject because of their alcoholism is not a fact of literature. It is of interest only for shrinks. So are speculations, that Poe never physically consummated his marriage. I still remember an academic paper that presented evidence for Poe's frequent visits of brothels during his marriage. Of course nobody knows what the good ladies did for him. Maybe they just tickled his toes with peacock feathers.

It has been said, that Poe's neurosis was a response to the physical aspects of intimacy, which we see reflected in Poe's homespun pseudo-gnosticism. Might very well be. But given the hygienic practices of the period and the way how diseases were passed on in the cathouse (I found the paper in a medical journal) there might be a simpler reason for Poe's restraint towards his wife. Apart from her young age and frail physique, he probably didn't want to expose her.

Anyway: Tell me something about the story, not that the postman wept when he left the house. When I hear "spirituality" I reach for my fly swatter. I knew someone who took my course for creative writing, because for him it came cheaper than a therapist. I kicked him out. A work of art is not, and is not even supposed to be, a window to the "artist's soul" - whatever that means. Literature would be pointless, if all we are supposed to do, is second-guessing the author, instead of reading his story.

This is the "Craft of the Fugue," this is music. Zola once said:

"art is nature seen through a temperament."

Since we are not looking "at" the artist but "through" his temperament on "Nature," the work gains in status and objectivity. Poe has never been my favorite author. But that is actually such a shame. Within his own narrow limitations, Poe is a good writer. "The House of Usher" is an incomparable masterpiece of morbidity. But Poe, the great Edgar Allen Poe, was not above plagiarism.

His artistically most gratifying piece had been lifted from an obscure pulp writer. Poe recognized in Clauren's product the potential for a great story. But what makes it really interesting is how this translates in terms of story telling, style, choice of vocabulary, shifts in structure, recurrence of motifs, the echoes and mirrors, all the little thrills that cause the neck-hair to rise. Clauren (1771-1854) was a hopeless hack, but he created the story, to which the later Poe lent the essential ingredient - his words.

Poe's example has moved great talents to include him in their artistic pedigree. Poe grew up in a period, where the leading authors had adopted E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Serapiontic principle." Like Saint Serapion a writer is to be a "visionary," i.e. to envision the scene he is creating. But Poe had his creative failures, his gravest being this baseless method of taking some abstract moral idea, let it grow legs and hope this miscreant will come across as a real person. Obviously it doesn't.

Poe created an artificial world of musty stage props and populated it with puppets strung up to a boozy heaven of Gnostic demons. To me that is almost the same as saying that Poe was a poor writer. It is the inevitable result of a perspective focusing on the hogwash (great ideas) instead on vision and style. I really don't care for Count Tolstoy's collapsible soap box and opinions on everything and nothing, but it gives me an infinite delight that he got Anna Karenina's hairdo right.

Tolstoy's characters breathe, sweat, hope, laugh, speak nonsense, eat, procreate and die. If there is a god he must look like Tolstoy, and his company is probably as unbearable as Tolstoy's had been for his wife. The only question of real interest here is, did Poe's metaphysical hobbies make him a better writer? Did William Blake become a better poet because of his Svendenborgian believes? Did Gogol's obsession with orthodoxy help him finishing "Dead Souls?"

Did Tolstoy, after he became a Tolstoian, write another "Peace & War?" Did it improve Dostoyevsky's novels for their author to be reborn? I don't know about Poe and Blake, but for the others the religious infringement was catastrophic. Poe's esthetic economy prevented his metaphysical obsessions to overwhelm the tight knit structures of his creations. Even "Arthur Gorden Pym" contains elements and effects which some greater novelist, if he is a lesser writer, can't even remotely hope to achieve.

Clauren, H.
(Carl Heun), born 3/20/1771 at Dobrilugk, Brandenburg, died 8/2/1854 in Berlin. The nom de plume H. Clauren is an anagram. 1791: bar exam in Leipzig, 1800: commissioner, 1801-10 steward of a big estate and associated editor for the literary magazine Jenaer "Allg. Literatur-Zeitung". Pulp fiction writer of considerable popularity. Works: "Mimili" (1815), "Der Kirchhof in Schwytz" (1819), "Elsie von Solothurn" (1820) and uncounted short stories and novellas. Clauren was much criticized and satirized by contemporary critics and writers like Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854) and Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827).

What is a Classic?

I.
Regardless how anybody defines a classic, for most people it simply belongs to the group of books, we are expected to read at school. In 587 BC, rural Juda's last King was deported to Babylon, the capital of the world, the largest city of her time, together with his courtiers, the aristocratic land owners, a handful of literati and every scribe and artisan, altogether a crowd that would barely fill a modern school-yard. Judaism was on the brink of extinction.

But the exiles transformed themselves into freewheeling cosmopolitans and educated city-dwellers. The tradition of the roaming shepherd Abraham was restyled; he became an urban emigrant (Gen. 11:28ff). The Hebrew tribes had lost their statehood, but the Jews recovered with a novelty: a Jewish national identity. It was accomplished with two innovations: the synagogue, perhaps the first institution for a public education on record, and, to have something to teach, a canon of classic texts.

Most of the Old Testament is a product of this period. The situation was far from clear. There was no guarantee of a return. It is not difficult to identify from the texts the split into different political factions among the exiles. Exodus and Deuteronomy provided blueprints to regain statehood by means of religious reform and return to the the fundamentals. (Compare Ex. 32:25ff and Nu. 25:1-8 with Nehemiah 13:23 and Ezra 9:2,3; 10:3,9ff to see the references.)

However the exile author who created the rousing memoir of Joshua's campaign preferred not to put his trust in divine diplomacy alone. Some groups obviously looked for options of a more warlike character. In 538 BC. the Edict of Cyrus ended the uncertainty. But not every exile returned. For many of the brightest minds, exile and synagogue became permanent institutions. So the catastrophic events of 70 and 135 AD did no longer threaten the survival of Judaism.

The exiled Jews' identity drew its inspiration no longer from the shrine, but from the canon of classic texts. In 90 AD the Synod of the rabbis in Pella gave the Old Testament its final shape. By the slimmest of margins they voted the five "Magillot" into the canon: the Book Esther, the Song of Solomon, the Book of Ruth, Ecclesiastes, the Lamentations of Jeremiah. I regret that I lack the learning and knowledge to name in gratitude each and every rabbi whose vote has added this redeeming touch to the Bible.

II.
In 384 Saint Jerome gloated over the death and arrival in hell of the Roman senator and speaker of the House, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (310-384 AD). The new cult of apocalyptic fanatics who called themselves Christians, had become a state religion. The only institution capable to put up organized resistance was the Roman senate. Things didn't go well. Symmachus (340-405 AD), the other leader of pagan opposition was a poor judge of character. He appointed a young talented man from Africa as professor of rhetorics in Milan.

The young man turned his back on his benefactor and became a "saint" and "doctor of the church." He was the first to call for coercive conversion - "cogite intrare." And St.Augustine, didn't stop here; he also called for punishing heresy and the persecution of other beliefs. In the camp of the persecuted, Praetextatus and his colleagues fought their cause in two directions. The first was an attempt at syncretism combined with loving curatorship over each and every local cult in the empire.

Though assisted by his wife Fabia Aconia Paulina and by colleagues and friends like Symmachus, Virius Nicomachus Flavianus and the linguist Servius, it was a heartbreaking and costly struggle to restore statues and temples, and revive local shrines and mystery cults. Praetextatus personally served as priest in eight different cults. In his distinguished career in the civil service, and with considerable risk to his person, Praetextatus didn't shrink from inquests into the desecration of pagan temples by Christians.

Macrobius has put into the mouth of Praetextatus a declaration "that all the heavenly deities actually are manifestations of the Sun" (Macr., Sat. I, 17:2). But this kind of Neo-Platonic syncretism, eventually failed to add political leverage to the fragmented spectrum of pagan religions in the empire. The battle for the soul of the age had to be fought on a second front: education. In 430, Macrobius published his "Saturnalia," a series of debates and dialogues modelled on Plato's "Symposion."

The first day is located in Praetextatus' library. Macrobius' book gives us a comprehensive debate on religion, language, grammar, oratory, the history of literature und the etymology of names, even nutrition and medicine. It is meant to cover a complete curriculum for the well rounded gentleman. Praetextatus is shown to plead for the humane treatment of slaves (Macr., "Sat." I, 11:2-50). Again a canon of classic texts provides the base for this humanist program of education.

But in the end, all this determined effort could not stop the demise of paganism, but the pagan canon of classics - Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Livy, Cicero - is still with us. The senatorial project made it possible that these texts came down to us relatively intact. It also created the model for authors of a later period in most European literatures. The classics became equivalent with humanitarianism wherever and whenever the secular intelligentsia found a chance to escape its religious prison-warden.

The monastic scriptoria did much to abet the success of the project. Even in the thick skulls of saints and fanatics there dawned a realization, that if you end classic learning in favor of hymn chanting, then it will mean the end of learning. Not that this would have worried these people, but unfortunately - or rather fortunately - the prophesy according to Mark 9:1 had turned out, not to be relied upon. There was no guarantee that at dinner the world would come to an end.

III.
We are writing the year 2002. Literacy in the U.S. is wide spread, though not as wide as in Sweden, Singapore or Japan. Learning compares even less favorable. But that seems not really a problem, except for the fact, that even this nation can't afford to have resources of talent lying fallow. Well, this is exactly the problem! The present brand of democratic individualism in this country lacks a perspective of obligation, not to nebulous future generations, but to a vision of a universal cultural self-definition.

The "American Way of Life" came from an attitude based on an act of rejecting previous notions of cultural definition. In the present climate there seems to prevail a sentiment that "neighborhoods" and local dialects are supposed to fill the void. A consequence of this baloney is the fact, that these days a classic seems to be the book only professors speak about, so that the rest of us can kick back and continue reading "The Specialty of the House" by Stanley Ellin (1916-1986).

Collecting "classics" in a canon must be a symptom for crisis management. Jorge Luis Borges too went through a phase of (Argentinian) parochialism but eventually settled for what the speakers of his language hold in common, instead of stressing the provincialisms. As far as I am concerned, "local flavors" belong on the food channel. As things are, you still have to show me even one single book that could stand as a symbol of a larger cultural identity that transcends my individualism. This obviously has gone overboard.

Despite of jihads and enough firework in our arsenals to blow up the planet, no real intellectual crisis is in sight. So a classic is the book nobody reads, even at school. Shakespeare's "Macbeth" may still be inescapable, but Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" is gladly skipped. Perhaps one or the other teacher continues to torture the boys in his class with Jane Austen as a punishment, but these days, that's as far as a teacher trusts his own capacity to civilize the horde of adolescent savages in his classroom.

The rest is digested from digests. Nobody reads originals anymore. It is a fact of life: most of the real good books are out of print (including Stanley Ellin's murder mysteries.) Pirate publishers like Everyman saw the opportunity and in 1906 created their lists of "immortal" classics. Series like "Modern Library" followed suit - for the same reason: no royalties to pay. But, to use the favorite phrase of our politicians, "make no mistake:" One day the need for a new canon of classics will occur, and it will cost us dearly.

Olbers' paradox

Johannes Kepler (15711630) calculated that according to Mosaic chronology the Universe had originated on Sunday April 27th at 11.00 am. 3877 BC, local central European time. The Emperor's personal astrologer had every reason to present himself with an orthodox air: he was entangled in a heartrending struggle with the inquisition in his hometown. His own mother had been indicted. Defending a "witch" was a risky business. Eventually Kepler saved his mother from the stake, but not from thumbscrews, Spanish boots and a good stretch on the rake.

Of course, even without thumbscrews, there is logically nothing wrong with the idea that the Universe could have originated 6000 years ago, or even yesterday. I could have been created this very moment, sitting at my keyboard, with this half finished article on my screen, with a real 83 year old mother and false memories of a deceased father and planted memories of my childhood and the dirty dishes of a never eaten dinner in a just created kitchen sink.

It would mean the Universe sprang into being in a highly developed state, with light still in transit from already extinguished stars and archeologists unearthing fake artifacts and geological deposits of decayed isotopes whose half-life is spanning billions of years. Fossils, galaxies, history, the entire Universe in the creationist's scenario it is just the hoax of a cosmic jester. However Kepler, himself a creationist, made a lasting contribution to science: he laid the foundation for Newton's law of gravitation.

Based on data he had inherited from Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), Kepler calculated the true trajectory of Mars. In 1610 he wrote the first SF novel - "Conversation with the Starry Messenger" the story of a travel to the planets in a space-going bathyscaph propelled by gravitational shielding, which in the story is as easy as closing a window. In his novel Kepler picked up on a problem, first addressed by Thomas Digges in 1576. (Modern textbooks give the credit to Heinrich Olbers (in 1826) - I have not a clue why.)

It seemed obvious to Kepler that in an infinite Universe with an infinite number of stars, every line of sight will end upon the surface of a star. "So why," Kepler reasoned, "is the sky dark at night, if not because the world is temporal and finite as laid out in the Bible?" However when Isaac Newton published his Laws of Gravity he not only had created an unbelievably powerful tool to explain and predict the planetary motions, he also created an embarrassment for Biblical creationism.

Because to make Newton's calculations work we have to go by the premise of an infinite and homogeneous Universe (to prevent the Universe from collapsing on itself). This is the root for what has become known as "Deism." The eternal regularity of constants and laws in Newton's infinite and eternal universe leave for God barely enough room to fire the starting shot. Then things take care of themselves. So for the next 300 years it became a scientific priority to solve Kepler's paradox.

Since the visible sky is 180,000 times larger than the Sun's disk, starlight should be 180,000 times more intense than sunlight. But in 1901 Lord Kelvin published a paper "On Ether and Gravitational Matter through Infinite Space" which answers the question. He showed that the galaxy contained insufficient stars to cover the night sky. Even the stars filling an infinite Universe would still fail to cover the sky, because every star's lifetime is limited by it's available energy resources.

Lord Kelvin made the crucial step of defining distances to stars in terms of velocity and travel time of light. In 1676 Ole Roemer had shown the speed of light to be finite, so it seems astounding that no-one had thought of this before. When we look out into space we also look back in time to the darkness between distant stars, the darkness that existed before the birth of a luminous body. So in answer to the question where all the starlight has gone, Kelvin replies it hasn't reached us yet.

Modern estimates of the background distance give a value of 10 to the power of 23 light years, meaning that to see a star along every line of sight it must have been shining for at least 10 to the power of 23 years, but the lifetime of a sun-like star is only 10 to the power of 10 years. The available void is always far in excess of the number of light sources at any given time. Unfortunately Kelvin's paper received little attention and was roundly ignored until it's rediscovery by Edward Harrison in 1985.

It is true, when we look at the sky, we see stars so distant in space and time, that they actually have already ceased to exist, while we still receive their light. This doesn't change the overall picture, it only means a shift in time. We could think of the Universe as a heat-sink. The average of all radiation available barely reaches 3° Kelvin. Besides modern cosmology depicts an expanding Universe. So every energy surplus is "leaking out" at a steady rate.

The writer E.A. Poe is sometimes credited with having anticipated Lord Kelvin's solution. Poe says: "Were the succession of stars endless, then the background of the sky would present us an uniform luminosity, The only mode, therefore, ... we could comprehend the voids which our telescopes find in innumerable directions, would be by supposing the distance of the invisible background so immense that no ray from it has yet been able to reach us at all (Eureka, section 7).

But then he continues: "this may be so, who shall venture to deny? I maintain, simply, that we have not even the shadow of a reason for believing that it is so. No astronomical fallacy is more untenable, and none has been more pertinaciously adhered to, than that of the absolute illimitation of the Universe of Stars ... observation assures us that there is ... a positive limit - or, at the very least, affords us no basis for thinking otherwise." I fail to see a difference to Kepler's position.

are you a member in Berkeley's club?

I.
George Berkeley (1685-1753) is remembered for his position on the question whether a falling tree actually makes any noise if there is no ear around to hear it. For him it was a wonderful proof for the existence of God, because of the premise that nothing can exist without a mind beholding it. So when Dr. Johnson kicked a rock, saying "I refute him thus," he did so before a witness, which diminishes somewhat the refutation. And I am also not sure, whether brash John Ruskin really answers it when he says:

"... to get rid of all the ambiguities and troublesome words at once, be it observed that the word 'blue' does not mean the 'sensation' caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the 'power' of producing that sensation: and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not left a man on the face of the earth. Precisely in the same way gunpowder has a power of exploding.

It will not explode if you put no match to it. But it has always the power of exploding, and is therefore called an explosive compound, which it very positively and assuredly is, whatever philosophy may say to the contrary" (Ruskin 'Of The Pathetic Fallacy'). However one can always ask back, "how do we know for sure, if nobody is there actually to observe it?" I think we see the true nature of Berkeley's contention: it is a paradox, like Zeno's "Achilles and the Turtle."

And like Achilles' failure to catch the turtle it has nothing to do with reality. But in 1927 a certain Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) pointed out that there "is no way of accurately pinpointing the exact position of a sub-atomic particle, unless you are willing to be quite uncertain about the particle's momentum. Also, there is no way to pinpoint the particle's exact momentum unless you are willing to be quite uncertain about it's position. To measure both accurately at the same time is impossible."

Heisenberg continues: "The uncertainty in a simultaneous measurement of momentum and position is always greater by a constant approximately equal to Planck's constant h." In plain English: Every observation on an object smaller than an atom, superimposes on it's inertia. Does this mean, we are too ham-fisted to handle delicate items? Or what is it we are dealing with? The equations describe waves, but the objects controlled by these waves are particles point particles.

A wave doesn't directly determine the exact position of a particle, only the probability that the particle will be in a given place along the wave's curve. Mathematically we compensate for this uncertainty by summing up the histories of hundreds of identical experiments. But in a given particular experiment, a particle's exact position is impossible to know in advance. This led, in Copenhagen, Niels Bohr (1885-1962) to suggest that our instruments actually participate in creating the phenomenon under scrutiny.

II.
It all began with the double slit experiment. A beam of electrons passes through two closely placed slits. Each electron makes a flash when it hits a fluorescent screen. The pattern of flashes is exactly predictable a circular pattern that is just the same as the interference pattern created when waves pass through two narrow openings. Where the wave crests coincide the electrons are more likely to land; where they don't coincide, electrons are less likely to go.

However there is no way of either predicting where the individual electron will go or even to know through which slit it had passed. Each electron collides with the screen at a single spot, yet their overall distribution is a wave-like pattern across the entire screen. But how can that be? How can an electron or photon "decide" where exactly to go? In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics the standard answer is, that it has no position, it is like a fussy cloud spread out over a volume of space.

Only when measurement is taken does the "wave function collapse" and the particle materializes at a single point as a result of the observation. Berkeley would have loved this. Based on this kind of "reasoning" Eugen Wigner and John Wheeler wrote that the universe could not exist, unless there was a human being to observe it. I think this deserves at least an honorary membership in Berkeley's club. Yet some physicists found this kind of reasoning preposterous. Especially Albert Einstein.

Together with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen he devised another of his famous thought experiments the EPR paradox. It is possible, he argued, to obtain a pair of particles, say electrons, in a so-called singlet state where their respective spins - one "up," one "down" - produce a total spin of "zero." Let us suppose these particles move widely apart in opposite directions, after which the spin of the particle to the left is measured and found to be in the "up" state.

Since the two spins cancel out each other, the particle to the right must have "down" spin. In classical physics that would pose no problem: one would conclude that from the time of separation the right particle always had "down" spin. However according to the Copenhagen interpretation, the spin of the particle to the left has no definitive value until it is measured. The measurement then must instantly affect the other particle and collapse its wave function into the opposite, or "down" state.

Einstein concluded: "This bizarre situation demands action-at-a-distance or communication faster than light, neither of which is acceptable." Einstein had made his point. But in 1964 John S. Bell proposed his non-locality theorem (based on correlated photons in which the polarization of the light is detected instead of spin, but the principle is the same.) Einstein's ridicule was accepted as a serious proposition. It would mean instant interaction regardless of distance, even to the other end of the Universe.

To escape the "impasse," Dr. Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), proposed in 1957 his "many worlds interpretation." In the two-slit experiment, the wave function would actually split into all possibilities, instead just collapsing into one. Instead of acts of measurement there just exist correlations between different states. For Everett, the idea of "collapsing" a wave-function was simply an expression of our inability to interact with the total picture of quantum reality. But Everett's scenario has extraordinary consequences:

Like a world designed by Borges, everything that logically can happen does happen. There are worlds in which we never die. The evolution of life in the Universe, no matter how improbable, it must occur. Each of us will continue to exist for as long as there is space and time, for even if we die in this world there is another where we not, ad infinitum. In fact the evolution of consciousness is only inevitable in this interpretation of quantum mechanics that does not require it in order to create quantum reality.

Everett's "relative-state metatheory" so far is the only doctrine on offer which requires no non-local interactions: Bell's theorem does not apply. But then the continuous bifurcation into more and more worlds can hardly be called a local phenomenon. It is a vision that seems to beg for some form of cosmic birth control.

the empire strikes back

The aspect of quantum mechanics which annoyed Einstein most, was later laid down as Bell's "non-locality theorem." And in 1982, Alain Aspect set into practice what Podolsky-Rosen had merely suggested in order to ridicule the idea and the empire struck back, with a vengeance. As prescribed by Bell, the experiment polarized identically a pair of photons and then emitted it into opposite directions from a single light source. Each photon passed through a polarized filter whose angle was rapidly varied.

Using quantum mechanics one can predict the probability that each photon will pass through a filter tilted at a given angle. But according to the same theory, the probability of one photon passing through depends on how both filters are tilted. Aspect made sure that the filters were sufficiently apart, and that their orientation was varied quickly enough, so that no signal from one end could reach the other in time to affect the second measurement, even if the signal travelled at light velocity.

In fact, Aspect changed the photon's spin - the polarization angle - every ten billionth of a second, and in the meantime made measurements on the particle's partner on the other end, when they were separated by four times the distance that light could travel in the time interval since the initial spin was altered. Yet the results were just as predicted by quantum mechanics. The experiment left no doubt that at least some interactions do not diminish with distance.

In other words they can be instantaneous, and link up locations without crossing physical space-time. For now the meaning of all this is still a moot point. Could it actually indicate the existence of an even more fundamental reality, which is un-mediated and appears to under-pin the temporal fabric of our Universe? Everett would interpret the experiment as a bifurcation of two possible states of the same quantum reality. In his explanation the two photons never really separate.

Either way, this Universe is big enough that we all can have our doppelganger, or rather, with slight variations, hundreds and thousands of them, even an infinite number, living their little lives on some god-forsaken little planet which almost looks like Earth, and revolves around a sordid little sun in some galaxy far far away. There is no way in the world that there ever could be a physical encounter with my twins. But who knows, it may not be necessary, there might be other ways of making contact.

reading on the john

Sometimes I try to imagine how people in the past had whiled away their time in that certain place where all of us sacrifice to the great cycle of being. Despite the fact that proper plumbing hadn't been around before 1887, the water closet has a long history. It reaches way back to Roman and Hellenistic times. King Henry VIII had a spectacular loo: a communal seating area in several rows, grandstanding high up over a valley and with a stunning view into pastures and hillsides.

The spaces between the seats were open, it was an early unisex loo: one could start a flirt, play cards, or read the poems by Sir Thomas Whyatt. The droppings fell into a system of running water that filled subterranean septic cisterns where the lesser run found some job security in cleaning up the aristocratic slush. I am not sure how many people at Henry's court could actually read. But back in antique Ephesus many could. In the public loos, they used to face each other in a four seat arrangement.

The conversations in ancient loos are not beyond conjecture - we do have graffiti. Somebody might even have read to the others. Back then, everybody used to read aloud, and often on the walk. Personally I don't envy the slave who would read to his master from a 60 lbs scroll, but the well heeled idler of course would hold in his hand an elegant little scroll, like a marshal's baton; just to show status, like today some people flash their cell phones. Does papyrus make good toilet paper? I have no idea.

Silent reading is a comparably late innovation - we know the inventor, according to St. Augustine it was Ambrose of Milan. He was the first to turn the pages in perfect silence, and without moving his lips, in a kind of inner prayer. We write the year 380 AD. A codex still had a forbidding weight and was too expensive to be brought to the loo to assist some more intense meditation, but then the loo itself was no longer a place of comfortable conviviality. In fact plumbing got out of fashion - we enter the Dark Ages.

As for so many things, the printing press brought the big change. Medieval grandees who could afford it, had tiny hand painted breviaries, neatly illuminated with miniatures and worth an entire farm a piece. Today we admire them under glass in our museums, the odors have dissipated long ago. But with print, came cheaper editions, and with cheaper editions came more demand. The loos however were still far from spectacular - French aristocrats shat behind the floor-long portieres onto Verseilles' parquet.

Obviously, the court architect of Louis XIV, in his infinite wisdom had decided against plumbing and septic tanks, presumably because it could have upset the symmetry of the flower-beds in his Majesty's "deer-park." So the royal bowels relieved themselves into a 'pot de chambre' which could be locked out of sight into a cabinet - after the royal physicians had had a good sniff. Sniffing feces was still the preferred method of diagnosis in the medical profession.

It was an idyll of almost biblical cosiness. "And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee" (Deut. 23:13). Of course gentlemen packed rapiers, not a shovel. At often frequented spots in Louis' palace the parquet started rotting and had to be replaced. Even the little Dauphine didn't wear pants till he was twelve, and for laughs peed in high arcs at the courtiers.

If you could afford a valet he would wait behind you to perfume and powder your royal rectum. Those were smelly times. But everybody who could read carried with him a book for the occasion, and not necessarily for a wipe. A bibliophile better remembers the original use of those small formatted editions, printed in a tiny typeface and sometimes crudely illustrating their lewd little stories of literally butt-naked couples who flagellated each others buttocks with thorny rose flowers.

I must confess, I too am fond of the small format. I wish all my books would be of the size and quality of the old Oxford Classics from the pre-paperback age. They are just lovely and the most mobile book ever invented. It fits almost every breast pocket or back pocket at your jeans. And when Nature calls, you make yourself comfortable, forget the smells and noises, and just read away - sheer bliss. Nothing can touch you, no commercial breaks, no stupid muzac, just quiet meditation.

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