by Paul Braterman

Part 1 of this series, “Atoms Old and New: Atoms in Antiquity” can be read here.

The transition to modern thinking

“It seems probable to me, that God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles… even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God Himself made one in the first creation.” So wrote Sir Isaac Newton in his 1704 work, Opticks. Apart from the reference to God, there is nothing here that Democritus would have disagreed with. There is, however, very little that the present-day scientist would fully accept. In this and later posts, I discuss how atoms reemerged as fundamental particles, only to be exposed, in their turn, as less than fundamental.

The scientific revolution and the revival of corpuscular theory – 1543–1687

In 1543, on his death-bed, Nicholas Copernicus received a copy of the first edition of his book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies, in which he argued that the Sun, not the Earth, was thecentre of what we now call the Solar System. In 1687, Isaac Newton published his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, commonly known as the “Principia”. With hindsight, we can identify the period between these events as a watershed in the way that educated people in the West thought about the world, and number the political revolutions in America and France, and the economic revolutions in agriculture and industry, among its consequences.

Before this scientific revolution, European thinking about nature still followed that of Aristotle. The Earth lay at the centre of the Universe. Objects on Earth moved according to their nature; light bodies, for instance, containe, air or fire in their makeup, and these had a natural tendency to rise. Earth was corrupt and changeable, while the heavens were perfect and immutable, and the heavenly bodies rode around the centre on spheres within spheres because the sphere was the most perfect shape. By its end, Earth was one of several planets moving round the Sun in elliptical orbits, the movements of objects were the result of forces acting on them, the laws of Nature were the same in the heavens as they were on Earth, and all objects tended to move in straight lines unless some force deflected them from this path. The Universe ran, quite literally, like clockwork. This mechanical world-view was to last in its essentials until the early 20th century, and still remains, for better or worse, what many non-scientists think of as the “scientific” viewpoint.

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by Katrin Trüstedt

A dominating figure in the contemporary imagination is the strong, authentic man breaking the rules of some institution in which he is playing a key role. Many acclaimed TV series of the last decade feature not only “difficult men,” but also those men – such as Jack Bauer, Don Draper, or Dr. House – who are pitted against an institution that they are leading in some way. Despite their differences, these shows exhibit a certain nostalgia for an original mind behind the institutional procedures. This nostalgia is itself not such a new sentiment. Older forms and narratives have influenced the current perceived opposition between system, administration, and procedure on the one hand, and a free (if difficult) spirit outside of it on the other. (In The Kindgom and the Glory Giorgio Agamben has traced the model back to the first centuries of Christian theology). There is much actual need for change in political institutions, as well as for real political discourse despite and beyond them. But in today's political imagination, those needs seem to manifest themselves mainly in terms of an opposition between an inscrutable institution (like the bureaucratic apparatus of the European Union) and some ‘real character' as its alternative and as its potential future source. The need for such a character, however, is created by the institution itself.

No other show seems to capture the schizophrenic dynamic between an apparatus and its leader quite as well as The West Wing. The show mainly features the behind-the-scenes life of politics and reflects its apparatus and machinery, its procedures and mechanisms, not only on the level of ‘content,' but also in the makeup of the show itself: the famous walk and talk in the literalized corridors of power, the dialogues switching between different topics (as befits the specific medium of television with its program switching possibilities). Everything is procedure in action, and every piece and every person is part of the procedure and influenced by it – be it regarding the internal political negotiations of the government itself or the exchange with the ‘outside world.'

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by Elise Hempel

I just got back from a quick trip to Chicago, where I attended the funeral of a childhood friend's mother, who died in her sleep at the age of 93, survived by her husband of 65 years. I have many memories of my friend's yellow ranch-style house on a quiet side street in suburban Chicago – the neat, clean living room where their Wurlitzer organ stood, the large picture window that faced the cemetery, the basement with its foosball table and stacks of board games we'd play, my friend's bedroom she had once been so excited to make over herself, painting a big purple psychedelic design across her wall. But I have very few memories of interactions with my friend's parents; somehow they always seemed separate from us – her mother putting out a plate of cookies, perhaps, then heading off to sew, her father reading the paper or watching a ballgame in the den, leaving us to do whatever we wanted. My main memory of her parents, I suppose, is that they were both always neatly dressed (skirt, slacks), both always kind and nice, and both always cheerful – two people who fit together well, a combined aura of goodness and stability over the house, over my friend's childhood.

And that was the aura over the visitation and funeral service this past Wednesday and Thursday, with the TV-sized electronic picture frame and its continuous loop of photos, as well as all of the traditionally framed photos around the room – photos of family vacations in Michigan, of my friend's parents in a wedding party together before they were married, of my friend's mother in 1951, posing in her own wedding dress she had sewn herself, complete with satin buttons. For those who don't believe in auras, there was the tangible presence of my friend's 90-year-old father – stooped and small now, more white-haired than when I'd last seen him decades ago – who steadfastly sat in the first pew before the open casket festooned with yellow flowers, unbudging from that final view of his wife. It was impossible to leave the visitation and service without dwelling on their partnership, on the idea of a marriage lasting 65 years.

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Thirteen Ways of looking at Kashmir (if you can see)

1
Perjured eye
Perjured I

2
Hindustan ka atoot angst Kashmir
Pakistan key jugular vain Kashmir

3
Purani Kahani
#JesuisWani

4
Mujahideen
Summer of 2016

5
The vale of Kashmir
The wail of Kashmir

6
The right to bear arms
The right to bare arms

7
#MannKiBaat
Insaneyaat

8
The art of crewel embroidery
The heart of cruel embroidery

9
Days of Vishnu
Nights of Curfew

10
Kashmiri Pundits praying
Kashmiri Pundits preying

11
AFSPA
Reason for “Halla-Gulla”

12
Chahe lathi maro/ Azadi
Chahe jail bhejo/ Azadi
Chahe goli maro/ Azadi

13
Haramzaadi ka Matlab Kya?
Jumhooriyah Jumhooriyah

by Rafiq Kathwari, whose new collection, In Another Country, is available here.

by Max Sirak

Everything I believe about love I learned from an animated fox when I was seven. Needless to say, it hasn't really gone well for me since. It turns out, Disney movies from the 70s aren't the best teachers. At least, not when we're speaking about the intricacies of love, romance, and human relations in the non-animated world we all happen to inhabit. Thankfully, it only took me 28 years to learn this.

For whatever reason, the 1973 version of Robin Hood influenced me greatly. In fact, it's the only Disney feature I own. It's the cartoon tale of an oft-cross-dressing fox and his best friend (a bear) as they take down an usurping tyrant (a lion) with mommy issues. There's a lot of singing. And, for some reason, neither the fox nor the bear ever seem interested in eating their rabbit or mice friends.

There's a lot about the film I love. The charming roguish hero who bucks the system and goes his own way speaks to my heart. The emphasis on giving to the less fortunate is a nice sentiment. The truth that wealth and legal power do not for virtue make should be a part of our cultural narrative. Just like the idea that being poor isn't a crime. These are all good messages.

It's the love story that kills me. Maid Marian and Robin Hood. The only two foxes in an anthropomorphic, musical world full of mammals (with a couple of reptiles and birds scattered about). They were born – not only to be together – but to be married. A perfectly matching pair. Soul Mates. True Love. And, at one point, both wistfully daydream about being with the other – Maid Marian, high aloft in her tower, gazing out a window with her chin in her paws, and Robin Hood, pleasantly distracted, absently burning dinner. “Ah, young love,” we hear repeated over and over by Friar Tuck and Lady Cluck.

Before the fated archery contest, Robin Hood says to his pal, Little John, “Faint hearts never win fair ladies.” And, after he wins both the contest and his vixen, we hear lines like, “I can't live without you,” “I love you more than life itself,” and, “Life is brief but when its gone love goes on and on,” are sung or said.

Sure, it's sweet and innocent, right? No. It's destructive and toxic.

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by Christopher Bacas

(Here are “Midnight in Moscow”, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.)

Backstage, old friends were stopping by, bringing hugs, booze and sweets. In an embossed box tied with ribbon, a Kievski (Kiev-style) cake rested on a gold foil base: stacks of merengue ovals held with mortar of the richest, densest buttercream imaginable. One small piece made my teeth ache and fell brick-heavy into my belly. If I could prevent vertigo by opening my eyes, maybe I was immune from diabetic coma, as well.

All conversations stayed in Russian. Through the cacophony, Drum Doctor began to mention the names of American musicians. It seemed he was throwing out names with possible Russian connections. Equating nationality and ethnicity with instrumental skill is a fool's errand, but I offered great composers Vernon Duke (Dukelsky) and Irving Berlin (Balein). He wanted players, though. I added Stan Getz. Drum Doctor looked shocked.

“Jewish family from Kiev” I said.

He waved his hand majestically.

“Aaaaah. Special category!”

I looked around. Pianist never flinched. Another day at the office for him.

Each musical genre collects myths; of origin, personality, prowess and transcendence.They are passed around, misconstrued by dilettantes, written down, challenged by academics, reversed and re-reversed. Phylogeny can't explain greatness nor its' relation to place. Tales about Russian musicians include feats of flawless execution and prodigious memory; gifts nurtured by colossal workhorses while epic snowstorms raged outside their practice rooms. During the Cold War, Soviets paraded one phenomenon after another. Gilels said “wait until you hear Richter”, and he was right. Heifetz and Horowitz got out before Milstein, while Kogan and Oistrakh stayed, the latter teaching Kremer. I wouldn't appreciate how overwhelming their approach was until I heard others play the same notes. Connecting tone and articulation to written music in the moment is a thespian feat. We are what we play, an act that places anyone, sufficiently aware, in the eye of that howling storm.

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by Hari Balasubramanian

Of the 7097 languages in the world, twenty-three (including the usual suspects: Mandarin, English, Spanish, various forms of Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Portuguese) are spoken by half of the world's population. Hundreds of languages have only a handful of speakers and are disappearing quickly; one language dies every four months. Some parts of the world (dark green regions in the map) are linguistically far more diverse than others. Papua New Guinea, Cameroon, and India have hundreds of languages while in Japan, Iceland, Norway, and Cuba a single language dominates.

Why are languages distributed this way and why such large variations in diversity? These are hard questions to answer and I won't be dealing with them in this column. So many factors – conquest, empire, globalization, migration, trade necessities, privileged access that comes with adopting a dominant language, religion, administrative convenience, geography, the kind of neighbors one has – have had a role to play in determining the course of language history. Each region has its own story and it would be too hard to get into the details.

I also won't be discussing the merits and demerits of linguistic diversity. Personally, having grown up with five mutually unintelligible Indian languages, I am biased towards diversity – each language encapsulates a unique way of looking at the world and it seems (at least theoretically) that a multiplicity of worldviews is a good thing, worth preserving. But I am sure there are opposing arguments.

Instead, I'll restrict my focus to the following questions. How can the linguistic diversity of a particular region or country be numerically quantified? How do different parts of the world compare? How to account for the fact that languages may be related to one another, that individuals may speak multiple languages?

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by Holly A. Case

German soldiers invading Belgium, August 1914

It was from Isabel Hull that I learned what tu quoque means, and how important it is to know. Hull is a professor of German history at Cornell, where I have also taught. Once I invited her to a class to talk about the British blockade of Germany during the First World War. She explained how the Germans had made war by invading neutral Belgium in 1914, knowing full well they were breaking international law. The title of her latest book, A Scrap of Paper (2014), alludes to the phrase that the German chancellor used to describe the international agreement governing Belgium's neutrality: it meant that little to him.

Hull described to my class the blockade's origins, what the Germans had thought and done, what the British were thinking, how they reached the decision to initiate the blockade, and what its likely impact was. But one concept stood out and remained a topic for discussion for the rest of the semester, even finding its way onto the final exam: it was the Latin phrase tu quoque. A literal translation of the phrase is “you also.” Tu quoque is a rhetorical strategy whereby, instead of arguing directly against the claim of your opponent, you challenge their right to make an argument by charging them with hypocrisy. For example: the British government asserts that Germany violated international law by invading neutral Belgium and persecuting its inhabitants. The German government retorts that the British government itself is in breach of international law for having subsequently initiated a naval blockade against Germany, cutting off not only its supply of raw materials, but also (potentially) food to civilians.

The tu quoque is as old as the hills. Cicero used it to win a case in the trial of the exile Ligarius: “You are accusing one who has a case, as I say, better than your own.” The Nazis were especially adept at deploying it. In 1942, the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels confided to his diary: “The question of Jewish persecution in Europe is being given top news priority by the English and the Americans…We won't even discuss this theme publicly, but instead I gave orders to start an atrocity campaign against the English on their treatment of Colonials.” There have been countless examples of tu quoque since. The Soviets countered American claims of human rights abuses with the phrase “And you are lynching negroes,” which has its own entry on Wikipedia. Some Turkish scholars have used tu quoque to argue against claims that the Ottoman Empire instigated a genocide against the Armenians in 1915: “No nation is innocent. [T]hough the West has always accused the rest of the world of not being civilized enough, no other nations can be compared with the Germans, French, or Americans if we are talking about racism, fascism, and genocide.”

In logic, the tu quoque is considered a fallacy, because it does not actually controvert the original statement. If anything, it confirms the moral valence of wrongdoing, declaring: Yes, I have done wrong, but so have you.

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I Hold Things Up

As a carpenter I learned, before you can leverage things apart
you have to find purchase. You have to have a place where a pry-bar
can be slipped in or driven with a hammer to separate.
That being done, whether by violent or pursuasive means,
when two factions have been split
they're easier to manipulate.

These are also political techniques.
They apply as well to sweaty things.
They dictate the tone and conditions of our species' life.
They reach into souls and wrench them.
Though pneumatic they're not ephemeral.
They're tough and mean as muscle.

As a carpenter I also learned
If you set a post upon a solid pier
and brace it well it will never
tilt in glory

it will simply know
I'm here to serve
I hold things up,
end of story.
.

by Jim Culleny
8/25/46
.

by Libby Bishop

Amid the latest privacy kerfuffle in which WhatsApp agreed to sell users' data to its parent Facebook, an article published by Jackman and Kanerva in the Washington and Lee Law Review Online that describes new procedures for research review at Facebook could be deemed inconsequential, or at best, ironic. Even readers familiar with the outcry over Facebook's “emotion contagion” experiment might conclude, with boyd (2015), that Institutional Review Boards are not the solution (IRBs are committees that assess the ethics of federally funded research in the U.S.), and move on to the next item in their newsfeed. That would be a mistake, for there is more at stake here. First, Facebook has over 1.6 billion users, all of whom are potentially its research subjects and thus, would be affected by these procedures. Second, the authors hope the principles they present will “inform other companies” (Microsoft has also recently formed a review group https://vimeo.com/134004122.) Most important, however, this new system at Facebook provokes urgent questions about the role of review systems in achieving ethical research.

The Facebook contagion experiment

In 2010, researchers at Facebook and Cornell University published research that provided evidence that online social networks can transmit large-scale emotional contagion (Kramer, et al., 2014). The experiment demonstrated that reducing positive inputs to users' feeds resulted in users posting fewer positive, and more negative posts, and when negative inputs were reduced, the pattern was reversed: there were more positive and fewer negative posts. Kramer et al. emphasised the meaning of their findings: emotional contagion had been shown to occur without face-to-face and non-verbal cues. The change was small but statistically significant. Moreover, the authors pointed out that small changes can have “large aggregated consequences” (the sample size was 689,003) in part because of connections between emotions and off-line behaviour in areas such as health.

The import of the findings was swamped by the ensuing public outcry about the methodology, in particular, the manipulation of users' feeds, and hence emotions, without their consent. But a key question that emerged was the issue of research review: had the project been subjected to any formal ethical review, and if not, why not? Editors of the journal where the article had been published wrote an Expression of Editorial (Verma, 2014) stating that Cornell had confirmed that the research did not fall under the purview of their Human Research Protection Program because the experiment had been done at Facebook and not Cornell. Furthermore, because the research was not federally funded, it was not required to go through an IRB (boyd, 2015).

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by Richard King

When Lionel Jospin, the Socialist Party candidate for the 2002 French Presidential election, unexpectedly finished in third place in the initial round of voting – behind the Gaullist conservative Jacques Chirac (first) and the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen (second) – progressive and leftwing voters in France were presented with a stark choice: should they support Chirac in the run-off or should they abstain from voting at all and risk a (still unlikely) victory for the Front National. Characterising the decision as a choice between ‘cholera and plague', most progressives took the first option, often demonstrating their unhappiness by turning up to vote in rubber gloves and nose-pegs. One group of activists even set up a symbolic shower in a Paris square and invited Chirac voters to pass through it after voting.

Fourteen years later, the conflict between political pragmatism and political principle is as relevant as it ever was. With rightwing demagogues on the march in Europe (Le Pen's superior genes go marching on in the shape of his youngest daughter, Marine), a situation may soon arise where progressive voters have to choose between, say, a Jobbik or a Danish People's Party on the one hand and some milquetoast neoliberal or smooth-talking Tory on the other. In the UK, Labour Party members are warned that a vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the upcoming leadership election is sure to mean another Conservative government; vote for the more electable (i.e. centrist) candidate, they are told, lest the Tories have their evil way. And then of course there's Hillary and The Donald – a cholera-or-plague choice if ever there was one. Having run Clinton close in the primaries and set out an agenda for change far to the left of the Democratic candidate, the Sandernistas are faced with a dilemma. Should they sink their differences with the Clintonoids? Or should they stay pure and risk a Trump win?

Thus the lesser evil calculus – the proposition that one must choose the candidate most likely to win who will do the least harm – continues to exert its pull. ‘Vote for me,' says the ‘cholera' candidate, ‘not because I have good policies but because I'm not the other guy, and the other guy, well, just look at him! You wouldn't want that on your conscience, now would you?' The pitch is as old as politics itself and a constant source of frustration to those who see the need for more than just piecemeal change. It is an appeal to fear, and a brake on real progress. ‘Don't waste your vote on a principle,' say the cholerites; ‘Don't risk a bout of plague.'

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by Sue Hubbard

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Mirror —Sylvia Plath

Like many good ideas it is deceptively simple. The artist Mark Wallinger has installed a large mirror across the ceiling of Sigmund Freud's iconic study in Maresfield Gardens. The effect is dramatic. Immediately the space is doubled, turned inside out so that top and bottom, reflection and reality all become blurred. What is real suddenly seems like an illusion. Everything is destabilised – the famous couch, the archaeological figurines and artefacts arranged on Freud's desk, the leather books and densely patterned Turkish rugs. It is disorientating. Are we looking at an actual object or its doppelganger? With its heavy red velvet curtains and oriental drapes the room surrounds us like a womb and the couch, with its comfortable Persian cushions, and Freud's chair at the head where he would have sat out of sight of his analysand, invites us to lie down and rehearse our infantile fantasies and dreams. As we look up we catch sight of our own small, isolated reflection peering into this complex double space.

The mirror has been used throughout art history as a metaphor for both revelation and philosophical conundrum. Some of the oldest drawings found on temple walls and papyrus scrolls depict images of Egyptian Neters gazing into hand-held Mirrors. In Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, one of the world's most enigmatic paintings, the artist melds the fabric of reality and the illusion of identity in a game of mirrors. While in his Rokey Venus, the goddess of Love, the most beautiful of all the goddesses, is shown lying languidly on a bed, as her son Cupid holds up a mirror – in an act that is at once both narcissistic and Oedipal. As Venus looks both at herself and the viewer the borders between self and other disintegrate.

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by Mara Naselli

In the spring of 1917, Alfred Kreymborg brought Marianne Moore to a baseball game. In his autobiography, he recalls how they stood on the crowded elevated on the way to the Polo Grounds, holding the straps as the train lurched. Moore held forth on technical matters of poetics, undisturbed. Kreymborg, the editor of Others, strongly supported Moore’s work and held her in “absolute admiration.” He was not alone. In the early years of Moore’s career, when she circulated among the art and literary avant guard of New York, men and women alike were enthralled. Artists asked to make her portrait. Scofield Thayer fell in love with her. Even Ezra Pound sent her pages of erotically charged prose, which she ignored. Moore was intelligent, striking, and famously felicitous in her speech. “We’re a pair of tongue-tied tyros by comparison,” said William Carlos Williams.

“Never having found her at a loss on any topic whatsoever,” Kreymborg writes, “I wanted to give myself the pleasure at least once of hearing her stumped about something.” Surely baseball was out of her reach. When Moore praised the first strike, Kreymborg asked if she knew who was pitching.

“‘I’ve never seen him before,’ she admitted, ‘but I take it it must be Mr. Mathewson.’”

“I could only gasp,” Kreymborg writes.

Actually, it wasn’t Christy Mathewson on the mound that day, but Moore had read Pitching in a Pinch and knew enough to thwart Kreymborg’s sporting attempt to find the limits of her knowledge. How difficult it is to put a smart woman in her place.

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by Humera Afridi

“The pity of partition was not that instead of one country there were now two—independent India and independent Pakistan—but the fact that “human beings in both countries were slaves, slaves of bigotry… slaves of religious passions, slaves of animal instincts and barbarity.” —Ayesha Jalal, The Pity of Partition. Manto's Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide.

On a recent—I feel the urge to insert ‘historic'—trip to India—any trip to India, after all, is momentous for a person born in Pakistan, it may well be her last, given the vagaries of the visa-granting authorities—I spent the greater part of my 11 days communing with those who'd passed into the after-life. I sat cross-legged outside marble screen walls whispering supplications at the tombs of Sufi saints in Delhi, while the ancient, beautiful city crumbled all around me. Within the murmuring walls and environs of the shrines, encapsulated in the passionate verses of the qawwals singing in the courtyards, the spirit of the past was palpable and boundaries between realms of time diaphanous.

Poet, mystic, and daughter of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jehan, Jahanara Begum, whose tomb lies across the courtyard from Hazrat Nizamuddin Awliya's own tomb, whispered past me one evening. Dressed in a long muslin gown fragrant with perfumed ittar, she stepped directly into the sanctum sanctorum, unhindered and seemingly oblivious to the present-day ban against women entering the doors of the saint's shrine, to rest a garland of crimson roses, threaded with her own hands, on the blessed saint's tomb. Time collapsed, a myriad histories intersected. In the heightened atmosphere created by a feeling of belonging on this exilic land, fact and imagination co-mingled to manifest new truths.

Not just at the tombs, but also in the clogged lanes of Old Delhi—Shahjahanabad as it was known before the British Raj—with my feet sunk in the sodden ground of the monsoon-humid now, dodging the tyranny of oncoming scooters and rickshaws, I found myself seeking out the palimpsest-like layers of the city's past. The pungent aromas of the marketplace and the stabbing sight of a crippled dog rooted me in the present but I walked wraith-like into history. Unfinished, amorphous stories—familial and historical—propelled me on with urgency. Time is of the essence, they whispered, yearning to be resolved.

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by Maniza Naqvi

I invite you to tell me why I am wrong. I wrote a similar post on facebook and now want to engage you here in this debate. So tell me am I wrong and why.

The issue about the hijab, burka and now burkini is not simply about its presence on the beach or in public institutions and spaces including schools, or about the presence of Islam in public spaces in Europe or about freedom of choice there. The issue is about the hijab, burka and burkini becoming the symbol of Islam and all that there is about Islam.

A garment now defines Islam. A cloth, has become Islam. The issue is that modesty and virtue have been reduced to the abundance or lack of abundance of a garment. And that indeed is a shame.

It isn't that the space for hijabs and niqabs is threatened to be reduced. It is Islam that is being reduced. Reduced to a piece of cloth. And who is responsible for this?

Those responsible for doing so are Muslim women who wear it. Indeed it is about misogyny and patriarchy. Those who promote it are women. And they are predominantly articulating themselves to the West. They are reducing themselves, reducing the air around them, the light, the conversation, and they are reducing the faith that they profess to belong to by this reductionist action.

They have reduced Islam to a piece of cloth. There were two American Muslim women who participated in the Olympics and won medals. NBC and the media only played up and focused on one. Yup, the one wearing the hijab. Regularly, those women invited to speak about Muslims or Islam or represent Muslims are wearing hijabs. Those appointed and recruited to police and surveil and provide security duties are in hijab. Why?

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