the notebooks of D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

Image based on the plant photography of Karl Blossfeldt

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, quoted in Ruth D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, The Scholar-Naturalist (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), p . 175—

You choose some subject or other which takes your fancy, you buy a notebook and label it with the title of your theme; and you keep jotting down therein whatsoever bears upon your subject, as it comes your way, in all your reading, observation and reflection. I have had many such notebooks and some I have soon grown tired of but others have lasted and served me well ... Your subject opens out wonderfully as time goes on, it tempts you into byways, it carries you far afield; if you play the game aright it never comes to an end. It grows in interest continually, for things are interesting only in so far as they relate themselves to other things; only then can you put two and two together, and see them make four or even five, and hear them tell stories about each other. Such is science itself and such is all the knowledge that interests mankind.

The Problems of Poets as Poets

Digital montage © Roy R. Behrens (2015)

William H. Gass, "The Soul Inside the Sentence" in Habitations of the Word (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), p. 119—

People call themselves poets and painters, and seek help for their failures, as I might come to a psychiatrist to discover the causes of my vaulter's block or to find out why I can't get anywhere in nuclear physics. Indeed, regularly people push through the turnstiles of the critic's day who feel very strongly the need to pass as poets, to be called "creative," to fit into a certain niche, acquire an identity the way one acquires plants there's no time to tend or goldfish that can't be kept alive, and their problems are important and interesting and genuine enough; but they are not the problems of poets as poets, any more than the child who tiptoes to school on the tops of fences has the steelworker's nerves or nervousness or rightly deserves his wage.

 

Russian Space Program | Austin Montelius

Timeline © Austin Montelius (2014)

Above Proposal for an infographic timeline about the Russian space program, designed by Austin Montelius, undergraduate graphic design student at the University of Northern Iowa, in a course called Graphic Design 2, as taught by Roy R. Behrens.

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Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation. NY: Macmillan, 1964—

…Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky.…The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is biased by the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period, as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet.

Collections Poster | Travis Tjelmeland

Poster © Travis Tjelmeland, UNI graphic design student (2014)

Flower shop owner, quoted in Abraham Pais, Einstein Lived Here. NY: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 26—

When he [Albert Einstein] would pay his bill [at a flower shop in Princeton NJ] with his check I would save them. I thought the autograph was worth more than the check. When I had accumulated quite a few, Dr. Einstein telephoned and asked if I would cash the checks, so he could balance his check book.

He also offered to provide us with as many of his autographs as I wished.

Versluis | Behrens Cicada Montage

Cicada Digital Collage (2012) © David Versluis & Roy R. Behrens

Above In an earlier post, I talked about a series of digital collages (or montages) in which graphic designer David Versluis and I collaborated (exchanging files by email) during a period of several weeks in the winter of 2011-2012. I can't remember how many works were in the series (probably ten). Each work progressed through stages. Often, an earlier stage might be just as compelling as a later one. I think this is the final stage of one of my favorites. It began when David emailed me a scan of a cicada from his Iowa insect collection.

•••

From R.V. Jones, “The theory of practical joking—its relevance to physics,” in R.L. Weber, compiler, A Random Walk in Science. London: Institute of Physics, 1973, pp. 10-11—

[American physicist] R.W. Wood is said to have spent some time in a flat in Paris where he discovered that the lady in the flat below kept a tortoise in a window pen. Wood fashioned a collecting device from a broom-handle,and bought a supply of tortoises of dispersed sizes. While the lady was out shopping, Wood replaced her tortoise by one slightly larger. He repeated this operation each day until the growth of the tortoise became so obvious to its owner that she consulted Wood who, having first played a subsidiary joke by sending her to consult a professor at the Sorbonne whom he considered to be devoid of humor, advised her to write the press. When the tortoise had grown to such a size that several pressmen were taking a daily interest, Wood then reversed the process, and in a week or so the tortoise mysteriously contracted to its original dimensions.

•••

From Roy Paul Nelson, The Cartoonist. Eugene OR: Seven Gables Press, 1994, pp. 57-58—

Combining frequent spraying with baby talk, Margaret [a co-worker at a newspaper] worked hard to keep a bevy of plants alive in her work area. She paid special attention to a demagnetized cactus plant she kept next to her computer. This prompted a newsroom prank.

A.L. (Al) Blackerby’s wife ran the Cacti City store in New Camden. With her cooperation, Al and I sneaked back to the office each Friday night to substitute a slightly larger cactus for the one Margaret had grown used to that week. As someone with an art background, I drew the job of finding a cactus that matched the shape of the one to be replaced. The intervention of the weekend helped mask any inconsistencies. The growth change was just enough to catch her attention each Monday. She even wrote a feature, “Computer Nearness Spurs Cactus Growth,” about the phenomenon.

Then, of course, we reversed the process, making the plant grow smaller each week. Eventually we made the changes so dramatic and erratic that she couldn’t help but catch on. She traced the prank to Al and me, and, for a time, she wouldn’t speak to either of us.

One day, after we became friends again, she came to me to ask if I would teach her to drive. It was something I didn’t particularly want to do.

"What about your husband?" I asked.

"Oh, he already knows how."

Norbert Wiener Warning System

Above A portrait photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt of Norbert Wiener in his MIT classroom, first published in Life magazine in 1956.

•••

Recently I have been reading about the tortured life of the founder of cybernetics, MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), in Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Dark Hero of the Information Age (New York: Basic Books, 2005). A famous child prodigy referred to in news reports as "the most remarkable boy in the world" (he knew the alphabet at eighteen months, began reading at three, and could recite in Greek and Latin at age five), he made momentous discoveries in his later life (the authors describe him as "the father of the information age") but he paid an agonizing price in social maladjustment and neurosis. In this biography, the authors recount the reactions of some of his colleagues to the adult Professor Wiener—

Wiener walked tirelessly around Tech [MIT] during those eventful years, and his unannounced drop-ins evoked a mixed response from his colleagues. [One of them] Jerome Wiesner…remembered Wiener's "daily visits around the Institute from office to office and his conversation that always began with 'How's it going?' He never waited for the answer before sailing into his latest idea."…

[Some people dreaded his visits.] One group of engineers resented Wiener's intrusions and devised an extreme countermeasure they called their "Wiener Early Warning System." [Steve J.] Heims reported that "they would contrive to place a man where he could see Wiener coming. He would alert the others, who would then scatter in all directions, even hiding in the men's room." Fagi Levinson knew of one colleague who hid under his desk when he saw Wiener coming.…"

I suspect that Wiener as a child prodigy was the inspiration for the encounter with the "boy genius" and his parents in Woody Allen's film Radio Days.

Grasshopper Lecture | Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz statue at Stanford University, as toppled by the San Francisco earthquake in 1906

Louis Agassiz, in Lane Cooper, ed., Louis Agassiz as a Teacher: Illustrative Extracts on His Method of Instruction. Ithaca NY: Comstock Publishing, 1945, p. 82—

In 1847 I gave an address at Newton, Massachusetts, before a Teachers' Institute conducted by Horace Mann. My subject was grasshoppers. I passed around a large jar of these insects, and made every teacher take one and hold it while I was speaking. If any one dropped the insect, I stopped till he picked it up. This was at that time a great innovation, and excited much laughter and derision. There can be no true progress in the teaching of natural science until such methods become general.

Water Over the Dame

Anon, The Olio [1796] as quoted in Louis Kronenberger, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. New York: Viking, 1972, p. 238—

One day Lady Onslow, being desirious of knowing the most remarkable planets and constellations, requested Mr. Harvest, on a fine starlight night, to point them out to her, which he undertook to do; but in the midst of his lecture, having occasion to make water, thought that need not interrupt it, and accordingly directing that operation with one hand, went on in his explanation, pointing out the constellations with the other.

Shotgun Seminars at Princeton

From Freeman Dyson, Infinite in all Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988)— 

At our institute in Princeton we sometimes organize meetings which are announced as Shotgun Seminars. A Shotgun Seminar is a talk given by an Institute member to a volunteer audience. The subject of the talk is announced a week in advance, but the name of the speaker is not. Before the talk begins, the names of all people in the room are written on scraps of paper, the scraps of paper are put into a box, the box is ceremoniously shaken and one name is picked out at random. The name picked out is the name of the speaker. The unbreakable rule of the seminar is that nobody whose name is not in the box may listen to the talk. This rule ensures that everybody does the necessary homework. The audience is ready to argue and contradict whenever the speaker flounders. Anybody who has not given serious thought to the subject of the seminar had better not come.

James Watson: Avoid Dumb People

Dust jacket of Mastery, designed by Bill Stanton

From an interview with Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist James D. Watson (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) in Joan Evelyn Ames, Mastery: Interviews with Thirty Remarkable People (Portland OR: Rudra Press, 1997), p. 69—

My chief piece of advice to a young person is go to a place where people are bright. That is, avoid dumb people—those people who can't give anything to you—and turn to people who are brighter than yourself.

Metamorphic Tortoises

R.V. Jones, describing a practical joke by American physicist Robert W. Wood, in "The Theory of Practical Joking—Its Relevance to Physics" in The Bulletin of the Institute of Physics (June 1957), p. 193—

R.W. Wood is said to have spent some time in a flat in Paris where he discovered that the lady in the flat below kept a tortoise in a window pen. Wood fashioned a collecting device from a broom handle, and bought a supply of tortoises of dispersed sizes. While the lady was out shopping, Wood replaced her tortoise by one slightly larger. He repeated this operation each day until the growth of the tortoise became so obvious to its owner that she consulted Wood who, having first played a subsidiary joke by sending her to consult a Professor at the Sorbonne whom he considered to be devoid of humor, advised her to write the press. When the tortoise had grown to such a size that several pressmen were taking a daily interest, Wood then reversed the process, and in a week or so the tortoise mysteriously contracted to its original dimensions.

Scientific Brainstorming

Scottish biologist, mathematician and scholar D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (author of On Growth and Form) as quoted by his daughter in Ruth D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, The Scholar-Naturalist. London: Oxford University Press, 1958, p. 175—

You choose some subject or other which takes your fancy, you buy a notebook and label it with the title of your theme; and you keep jotting down therein whatsoever bears upon your subject, as it comes your way, in all your reading, observation and reflection. I have had many such notebooks and some I have soon grown tired of but others have lasted and served me well… Your subject opens up wonderfully as time goes on, it tempts you into byways, it carries you far afield; if you play the game aright it never comes to an end. It grows in interest continually, for things are interesting only in so far as they relate themselves to other things; only then can you put two and two together, and see them make four or even five, and hear them tell stories about each other. Such is science itself and such is all the knowledge that interests mankind.

Ballast Reviews | In Search of Memory

In Search of Memory. A film by Petra Seeger. 95 mins. DVD, Color, 2008. Available from Icarus Films.

This is a forceful, well-made film about Eric Kandel, an Austrian-born Jewish-American psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize winner who is primarily known for his work on the physiology of memory. More…