Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1404022103040.572@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Physics
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 21:05:31 -0400 (EDT)
Physics http://www.alansondheim.org/sig6.jpg signal masts on Citadel Hill The history of physics is endless in depth and breadth, as are verification procedures and legitimations of hypotheses. Here I'm interested in the phenomenology of physics, in particular what occurs before a turn towards the subatomic and quantum mechanics. I've been reading Natural Philosophy for General Readers and Young People, translated and edited from Ganot's Cours Elementaire de physique by E. Atkinson, 8th edition, 1896; this is one of numerous similar books that form the basis for both popular and university texts. The experiments described, in particular those associated with electrical phenomena, tend to operate on the level of the anecdotal, much as early psychology emphasized the patient's narrative, through Freud and beyond. Fundamental principles are rarely described, although they appear as frames; thus there are sections on various aspects of Morse's telegraph, but only a mention of Maxwell. Experiments might include a vibrating wire and Faraday's wheel; engineering and physics are entangled, and demonstration replaces the mathematical basis of electromagnetic elements. Even with a limited mathematical apparatus, it's clear that the text must operate on the level of the everyday; atomic and molecular models are described, but the former seem to possess little if any structure. The everyday asserts itself continually; experiments with batteries and various forms of capacitors involve the hand touching one or another wire, grounding the structure, or applying current. Out of a book of 730 pages, atoms are mentioned only on pp. 4 and 8; the rest occurs on the level of the aural or visible. In other words, the physics described here is body-centric, much as language, in Lakoff and Lakoff, functions; the world may not appear anthropocentric, but remains subtlely so. The idea of a basic alienness to the world remains distant, and the troubling of the ether, for example, is replaced by the curiosity. I should note this position is also that of the religious fundamentalist, for whom the alien threatens to shatter everything. The experiments described are but one step from the parlor game or presentation, and indeed in earlier texts there are examples of young ladies connected by wire, or the electrocution of a dog by means of Leyden jars coupled together. Further, all these phenomena in general are seen, not as instances of principles, but as peculiarities that indeed connect to the wonder of the world. Today, when every- thing is simultaneously up for question and taken for granted, when a malaise manifests itself in relation to the 'latest and greatest,' it's difficult to realize that the nineteenth century was, among other things, the last century of marvels, which retain something of the mythic imagination. Doesn't the signal mast itself operate among these worlds? On one hand, it presents flags and flag-codes, which operate in the register of the visible; on the other, it carries wireless antennas already portending a new and uncomfortable era. It's of interest that Halifax announces every noon hour with the firing of a cannon, which simultaneously asserts nineteenth-century temporality, and a tourist destination; everyone gathers around for the precipitous event!