Dark Matter and Modernism

Much of my research intersects with issues around modernism. When I get into discussions with people about what I do, I am often asked what modernism is. Answer: I don't really know. In fact, I have sometimes been surprised by the people who have asked me--since I was about to ask them what they thought modernism might be. I suspect, that if modernism is anything, then it is this poem "The Second Coming" by W.B. Yeats:

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

(1919)



That line in the first stanza "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold" is archetypical of all things modern. I just saw a NOVA program about dark matter. It explained how when a central body is not strong enough gravitationally, the objects around it are able to fly away. This, I think is central motive (if you will excuse the pun) around which modernism rotates: that the things we would like to trust in life --governments, God, our parents-- often aren't strong enough to provide stability in a world that transforms itself too quickly for us to adapt. Certainly this is how Yeats must have felt when faced with the one-two punch of the first World War and the Spanish flu epidemic when so many lost their lives.

The poem makes clear christian references, yet the god of his second coming seems to be an amalgamation of greek and egyptian mythology. Nothing is as it ought to be, nothing makes sense. The poem leaves me empty of everything but respect and awe for Yeat's imagery. Even for those who haven't lost their religion like Yeats or maybe REM,I think this poem creates images that ring true for most people. The ever-widening gyre of the falcon or the beast slouching toward Jerusalem--both connote the increasing uncertainty that we all have to confront if we are to make it.

The second question, of course, is always what is post-modernism? Answer: the center cannot hold, but I am ok with that.

(Picture is The Widening Gyre, by Emily Tellez)

Space is really big

Yesterday I passed 11,000 miles on my bicycle since I began keeping track in September of 2002.

I awoke this morning to the news that science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday at his home in Sri Lanka.

These two events are related.

That isn't to say I killed Clarke with my bike or anything like that, but his death this morning got me to thinking about the things I am trying to say in this blog entry. Clarke, of course, is the author of 2001: a Space Odyssey, the Rama series, and many other science fiction novels. Many of you may know that I am a huge space junkie. In my spare time and in my wasted time I like to visit space-related sites such as this one, or check up on the mars rovers here, or see cool space pics here. I am fascinated by space and the possibility of space travel--not in the Star Trek or Star Wars hyperspace sort of way--but in real, pragmatic ways of getting off this rock. I really hope that I live to see astronauts set foot on Mars. This was they kind of stories Arthur C. Clarke told. So I was sad when I heard about Clarke's death. I know he was 90 years old, so his demise is hardly unexpected, but I will miss his style. His books seldom featured complex or compelling characters, but the ideas were fantastic.

One of the things that interests me about space is that it is so big. I have another (dead) sci-fi author to thank for teaching me this: Douglas Adams. He once wrote in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. " The profoundness of this statement is obscured even as it is emphasized by the humorous tone in which it is presented. Back to the bike.



I love my bike. It looks like this:



and I have had it since the spring of 2004. When I passed 11,000 miles yesterday, I was rather proud of myself. I know that real bikers travel much much further each year, but I have been averaging about 2000 miles each year commuting to and from the university. My son, always the one to keep my head from getting too big, said with a great deal of enthusiasm, "Dad, I can't wait till you hit a million miles."

Now I have to point out that my 11000 miles puts me nearly half way around the world from where I am now (somewhere in the outback of Australia, I believe), but because space is so incredibly big, I might as well be in my own back yard. So, at my average of 2000 miles a year, it will take me 50 more years to reach 100,000 miles, which is the point at which my bicycle odometer turns over. My wife thinks this is a reasonable goal. To reach my son's goal of 1,000,000 miles, I will have to ride 2000 miles a year for the next 500 years. Now, at its closest, Mars is approximately 34 million miles away. Which means that to get to Mars, our closest neighbor (not counting the moon, which is gravitationally tied to us), it will take me another 17,000 years--at the rate I am currently riding. This assumes that Mars will again be at its closest approach with us at that time.

Just to put things into perspective.