a history of knowledge - scaruffi.com · –gustav kirchhoff (1845): laws for the distribution of...

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A History of Knowledge

Oldest Knowledge

What the Sumerians knew

What the Babylonians knew

What the Hittites knew

What the Persians knew

What the Egyptians knew

What the Indians knew

What the Chinese knew

What the Greeks knew

What the Phoenicians knew

What the Romans knew

What the Barbarians knew

What the Jews knew

What the Christians knew

Tang & Sung China

What the Japanese knew

What the Muslims knew

The Middle Ages

Ming & Manchu China

The Renaissance

The Industrial Age

The Victorian Age

The Modern World

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What the Victorian Age knew

Philosophy

Piero Scaruffi

Copyright 2018

http://www.scaruffi.com/know

Revised by Chris Hastings in 2013

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What the Victorian Age knew • Paris

– Belle Epoque (40 years of peace 1871-1914)

– Cafes (middle-class) replace salons (aristocracy)

– Montmartre

• Cafe-concert (Moulin de la Galette)

• Dance halls (Moulin Rouge)

• Brothels

• Students

– 1881: the Chat Noir cabaret opens in Paris

– 1889: Moulin Rouge

– 1894: the first strip-tease show

– Chansonniers

– Convergence of sex, art and politics

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• Paris

– Impressionism

• Prodromes: Corot, Manet's "Olympia" (1865)

• Claude Monet: "Impression: Sunrise" (1872)

– Symbolism

• Prodromes: Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" (1857)

• Arthur Rimbaud: "Le Bateau Ivre" (1871)

• Paul Verlaine: "Romances sans Paroles" (1874)

• Stephane Mallarme`: "L'apres-midi d'un Faune" (1876)

• Vincent van Gogh: "Sunflowers" (1888)

• Paul Gauguin: "Vision after the Sermon" (1888)

– Fauvism: Henri Matisse (1905)

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• Paris

– Cubism

• Pablo Picasso: "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" (1907)

– Futurism

• Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's "Futurist Manifesto" (1909)

– Dadaism

• Tristan Tzara (“Dada”) performs at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich (1916)

• Anarchic

– Surrealism

• Andre Breton's "Surrealist Manifesto" (1924)

• Sigmund Freud' influence: the unconscious, dreams

• Automatism

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• Berlin/ Physics

– Germany had only one world-class university (Gottingen) until 1810

– 1810: Founding of the University of Berlin

– Wilhelm von Humboldt’s school reforms: teachers must have a university degree, priority to research, doctorate

– Specialist academic literature separate from general readership

– Scientific renaissance in Germany

– Hermann Helmholtz

– Rudolph Clausius

– Max Planck

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• Berlin/ Physics

– In 1909 Max Planck delivers a lecture in German at

Columbia Univ: every physicist in the world was

expected to understand German

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What the Victorian Age knew • Berlin/ Electricity

– 1847: Werner Siemens founds a company to exploit the telegraph

– 1866: Siemens develops the first practical dynamo

– 1873: Zénobe Gramme discovers how to use a dynamo as a direct current motor (Belgium)

– 1879: Siemens demonstrates the first electric railway

– 1880: Siemens builds the first electric elevator

– 1881: Siemens demonstrates the first electric tram system

– 1887: Emil Rathenau founds the Allgemeine Elektrizitats Gesellschaft (AEG), specializing in electrical engineering, whereas Siemens specializes in communication and information

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• Berlin/ Electricity

– 1888: Nikola Tesla invents the alternating-current

motor (USA)

– 1890: AEG develops the AC motor and generator (first

power plants) and alternating current makes it easy to

transmit electricity over long distances

– 1897: Karl Ferdinand Braun builds the first

oscilloscope and invents the cathode-ray tube

– 1910s: Greatest center of electrical production in the

world (“Elektropolis”)

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• Germany

– 1910: Berlin third largest city in Europe

– 1910: 60% of Germans live in cities

– 1875: Germany’s industrial output surpasses France’s

– 1900: Germany’s industrial output surpasses Britain’s

– 1870: Britain has 32% of the world's industrial production

– 1910: The USA has 35.3% of the world's industial production, Germany has 15.9% and Britain 14.7%

– 1912: The “Kongo”, the largest battleship in the world

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• Germany

– Preeminence of German universities

– Physics, Chemistry and Geology regarded as equal

to humanities

– The industrial research lab: Siemens, AEG, Bayer

– Chemistry and engineering spawn a boom in dyes,

pharmaceuticals and electrical devices

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• Germany – 1827: Georg Ohm's electrical laws

– 1845: Gustav Kirchhoff's electrical laws

– 1847: Hermann Helmholtz's conservation of energy

– 1850: Rudolf Clausius discovers entropy

– 1866: Werner Siemens' dynamo

– 1875-83: Robert Koch isolates the cause of anthrax, tuberculosis and

cholera

– 1876: Ferdinand Braun discovers semiconductors

– 1886: Karl Benz's gasoline-powered car

– 1890: AEG's alternate-current motor

– 1897: Felix Hoffman's aspirin

– 1897: Karl Braun's oscilloscope

– 1900: Ferdinand von Zeppelin's dirigible

– 1900: Max Planck's Quantum Theory

– 1905: Albert Einstein's Relativity

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What the Victorian Age knew • Berlin/ Expressionism

– Prodromes: Victor von Falk's best-selling gore novel "The Executioner of Berlin"

– Berlin's megalopolis: population grew from 1.9 million in 1890 to 3 million in 1910

– 1918: Dada exported to Berlin

– 1919: the Bauhaus opens in Weimar

– 1919: "Das Kabinett von Dr Caligari" brings expressionism to cinema

– 1924: Neue Sachlichkeit

– 1925: Erwin Piscator produces "Trotz Alledem", a multi-stage multi-media event

– 1926: Walter Gropius opens the new Bauhaus in Dessau

– 1927: Bertold Brecht writes the manifesto of the "epic theatre"

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• Berlin/ Great Depression

– 1929: unemployment in Germany is 1 million



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• Vienna

– Music: Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler

– Painting: Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele

– Fiction: Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Musil

– Medicine: Sigmund Freud

– Physics: Ludwig Boltzmann, Ernst Mach

– Philosophy: Edmund Husserl

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• Alexandria

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Democracy

• USA: 1865

• France: 1875

• Britain: 1918

• but not for women

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Second industrial revolution

• Bessemer converter for mass-producing steel (1856)

• Edwin Drake drills oil in Pennsylvania (1858)

• First practical dynamo (1866)

• Thomas Edison’s first power plant (1882)

• Almarian Decker’s alternate-current power plant (1893)

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Second industrial revolution

• Steel replaces iron

• Electricity replaces steam

• Machines replace humans

• Scientific laboratories at the service of industry

• Global business based on fast transportation and

communication

• Imperialism

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Second industrial revolution/ The power plant

• Water wheels and steam engines did not allow for long-distance power distribution (they needed to be near the factory that used them)

• Electricity can be distributed over long distances

• The electrical power plant produces energy for multiple factories

• The factory does not need to take care of its own power production anymore

• Electricity allows factories to be located far from the production of energy

• Electricity enables the assembly line

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• The electrical power plant produces energy for the entire city

• Energy production becomes centralized the way food production became centralized 5000 years earlier

• Power plants cause the price of electricity to fall

• Cheap and plentiful energy

• Democratization of electricity (homes can afford the energy that only factories used to have)

• Birth of “utility” companies that charge a fee for energy

• The same companies start selling electrical appliances to homes

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• Cheap and ubiquitous electricity enables the shift from

public entertainment (theater, cinema, amusement park) to

private entertainment (radio, phonograph and later

television)

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• Second industrial revolution/ Lighting

– Traditional methods: whale oil, candles, Etruscan lamps

and gas lamps

– Electric lighting:

• Healthy (no fumes)

• Cheap

• Controllable

• Less flammable

– Tungsten filament (1904)

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The Great Monopolies of the USA

• Scientific organization of the corporation leads to economies of scale that change the world more than wars do

• Privately held monopolies pledge commitment to the public good

• Corporate titans reinvent capitalism as a quasi-divine mission to reform the world via technology, the monopoly as an agent of good for the whole society

– Theodore Vail (AT&T, 1885-1919)

– Henry Ford (Ford, 1899-1945)

– John Rockefeller (Standard Oil Company, 1862-1897)

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The Great Monopolies of the USA

• Goal: to create the industrial equivalent of the British Empire, that brings "civilization" to the entire world.

• Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is destructive, competition leads to waste not efficiency:

– "The public as a whole has never benefited by destructive competition" (Theodore Vail)

– "There can be no greater absurdity and no greater disservice to humanity in general than to insist that all men are equal" (Henry Ford)

• The government’s reaction: the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), prosecution of Standard Oil (1909)

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Physics

• 1842: Julius Mayer discovers that heat can be converted into work (before Joule)

• 1843: James Joule establishes the equivalence of work and heat (energy can be transformed)

• 1847: Helmholtz popularizes Mayer’s and Joule’s proofs of the conservation of energy: electric, magnetic, heat and light energy are equivalent to mechanical work

• 1850: Rudolf Clausius discovers entropy

• 1851: Hippolyte Fizeau measures the speed of light

• 1859: Le Verrier discovers that the perihelion of the planet Mercury advances by 38" per century more than Newton’s equations predict

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Physics

• 1859: Gaston Plante invents the lead-acid cell, the first

rechargeable battery

• 1863: Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table of elements (56

known elements and a law for discovering the next ones)

• 1864: James Clerk-Maxwell formulates the laws of

electricity and magnetism

• 1867: Georges Leclanché invents the zinc-manganese

battery (forerunner of the alkaline battery)

• 1868: William Huggins discovers that galaxies are

receding

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Physics

• 1876: Ferdinand Braun discovers semiconductors

• 1886: Heinrich Hertz discovers that radio waves can be broadcast and received

• 1892: Hendrik Lorentz outlines the theory of the electron (the atom is not elementary but is made of smaller units that are electrical in nature)

• 1895: Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen discovers the X rays, light rays that are invisible to the human eye

• 1896: Antoine Henri Becquerel observes the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei (discovery of radioactivity)

• 1897: Joseph-John Thompson discovers that electricity is due to the flow of tiny negatively charged particles (discovery of the electron)

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Physics

• 1898: Pierre Curie and Marie Curie isolate the radioactive elements polonium and radium (and coin the word “radioactivity”)

• William "Lord Kelvin" Thompson (1900): there are two small clouds on Physics

– The speed of light is the same in all directions, i.e. no experiment reveals the existence of the ether (Michelson-Morley, 1887)

– Decrease in energy emitted at short wavelengths by a "black" body (a body that does not reflect light)

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Physics

• 1900: Max Planck discovers that atoms can emit

energy only in discrete amounts (first explanation of

why chemical substances are made of discrete units,

the elements)

• 1902: Ernest Rutherford discovers the radioactive

decay law (the that every radioactive isotope has a

specific “half life”)

• 1903: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's "The Exploration of

Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices"

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Physics

• 1905: Albert Einstein explains the photoelectric effect as being the result of light being made of “photons”, their energy being proportional to frequency

• 1905: Albert Einstein explains Brownian motion, and proves the existence of John Dalton’s atoms

• 1905: Albert Einstein publishes "Special Theory of Relativity"

• 1910: Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity

• 1911: Ernest Rutherford discovers that the atom is made of a nucleus and orbiting electrons (a mini-solar system)

• 1913: Robert Millikan measures the charge of the electron

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• Electricity

– Hans Christian Oersted (1819): a magnetic field surrounds a current-carrying wire

– AndreMarie Ampere (1820): electromagnetic reaction (two parallel conductors carrying currents traveling in the same direction attract each other; if traveling in opposite directions, repel each other)

– Georg Ohm (1827): the relationship among voltage, current, and resistance V=R*I

– Michael Faraday (1831): electromagnetic induction

– Michael Faraday (1830s): dynamo (that converts mechanical energy into electrical energy), electric motor, electric generator

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• Electricity

– Samuel Morse sends the first message in the USA by telegraph (1844)

– Gustav Kirchhoff (1845): laws for the distribution of current in electric circuits (e.g., the sum of the currents into a given node equals the sum of the currents out of that node)

– William Weber (1855): the ratio between the electrodynamic and electrostatic units of charge is the same number as the speed of light

– Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (1862) coins the term "black body radiation”

– Thomas Edison (1879) invents the light bulb with carbon filaments, replacing the old expensive inefficient electric lamps

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• Electricity

– Valdemar Poulsen (1898) invents the

telegraphone

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• Electricity: power generation

– 1832: Benoit Fourneyron invents the turbine water wheel (50 horsepower)

– 1849: James Francis (Lowell, USA) improves the water turbine

– 1879: Lester Pelton (Gold Country, California) improves the impulse water turbine

– Water turbines replace waterwheels to harness waterpower

– Water turbines generate electricity

– The world's first hydroelectric power plant uses water turbines (Niagara Falls, 1886)

– Steam turbines (propelled by fossil fuels) generate electricity (Charles Parsons, 1885, Newcastle)

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– Electricity is a form of energy that is easily stored and

transmitted

– Electricity creates new industrial sectors

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(From Electropaedia)

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Biology

• Louis Pasteur (1865): diseases are caused by germs

• Robert Koch (1875): isolates the cause of anthrax

• Robert Koch (1882): discovers the tuberculosis bacillus

• Robert Koch (1883): discovers the cholera bacillus

• Jaime Ferran’s cholera vaccine (1885)

• Paul Ehrlich (1909): syphilis (de facto discovers the principles of antibiotics and the immune system)

• Enabler: a new generation of German microscopes (Carl Zeiss’ microscopes of the 1870s, the 1906 ultramicroscope of Richard Zsigmondy)

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Chemistry

• 1825: Michael Faraday identifies benzene - birth of organic chemistry

• 1842: Crawford Long demonstrates that ether can be used as an anesthetic

• 1847: Ascanio Sobrero invents nitroglycerin

• 1848: Charles Mansfield isolates benzene from coal tar (Britain)

• Industrial chemicals multiply, mostly derived from benzene (dyes, soap, mothballs…)

• 1855: Alexander Parkes invents celluloid (Britain)

• 1856: William Perkin, still a teenager, accidentally invents the first synthetic dye, mauve (Britain)

• 1860s: Chemistry becomes a popular subject to study in universities

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Chemistry

• 1897: Felix Hoffman discovers acetylsalicylic acid (introduced by Bayer in the form of water-soluble tablets as “aspirin”)

• 1898: Bayer introduces commercially a drug made from opium, diacetylmorphine, under the name "heroin"

• 1901: Frederick Kipping names “silicones” (Britain)

• 1908: Jacques Brandenberger invents cellophane (Switzerland)

• 1909: Sahachiro Hata and Paul Ehrlich discover arsphenamine, the first scientific treatment for syphilis (marketed by Hoechst as Salvarsan)

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Chemistry/ Germany

• 1870s: the German chemical industry pioneers the industrial research lab

• 1890: Germany‘s chemical industry focuses on synthetic products (including gasoline) based on coal

• 1900: the German chemical industry (BASF, Bayer, Hoechst) dominates the world market for synthetic dyes (90% of the world supply of dyestuffs in 1913)

• 1913: Fritz Haber's and Carl Bosch's process for the manufacture of ammonia

• 1925: the German chemical industry consolidated in IG-Farben, which remains the world's largest chemical company until World War II

• 1939: German scientists have won 15 of the 30 Nobel Prizes awarded in Chemistry

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Organic chemistry/ Agricultural revolution

• Justus von Liebig’s nitrogen-based fertilizers (19th c): plants feed on nitrogen and ammonia is a source of nitrogen (plants get their food from the atmosphere and one can add it directly to the soil to increase production)

• 1913: Fritz Haber's and Carl Bosch's process for the manufacture of ammonia (at BASF), kept secret until World War II

• IG-Farben is the world's largest chemical company until World War II

• After World War II: Ammonia replaces depleted nitrogen in the soil with nitrogen from the air

• Ammonia becomes the #1 fertilizer in the world

• Food production has no limit

• Ammonia drives population explosion

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Private Life

Board games of the 1880s

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Moving panoramas: before cinema and before virtual

reality

John Banvard: moving panorama of 1848

Albert Smith’s panorama of the Mont Blanc, showed

more than 2000 times (1852-58)

Moses Gompertz and the Poole brothers’ Myriorama

(1890s)

Banvard’s panorama

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• 1838: Charles Wheatstone invents the stereoscope

• 1851: David Brewster demonstrates his stereoscopes at the Great Exhibition of 1851

• 1850: Frederick Langenheim’s stereopticon

• 1862: Oliver Holmes starts selling stereoscopes

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• 1900: cineorama at the Paris World Exhibition (ten films projected simultaneously to form a 360 degree image)

• 1922: Laurens Hammond’s teleview for projecting stereoscopic films

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• Furniture

– Michael Thonet (1796, Austria) : elegant,

lightweight and comfortable furniture

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Beauty – 1840: Guerlain introduces the first lipstick

– 1846: David Hough invents a hoop skirt supported by a dome-shaped crinoline

– 1852: The first public bathhouse opens in New York

– 1856: W.S. Thompson invents the steel-frame cage crinoline

– 1869: Steam molding enables stiffer corsets

– 1872: The bustle becomes more popular than the crinoline

– 1875: Charles Michel uses electrolysis for removal of facial hair

– 1875: The long-waisted corset is introduced

– 1888: Mum introduces the first deodorant

– 1889: Teresa Dean publishes "How to be Beautiful"

– 1890: Charles Gibson's illustrations of the "Gibson Girl" promote the S-shaped tall and slender woman as fashionable, and therefore the swan-bill corset

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Beauty – 1892: The fashion magazine Vogue debuts

– 1892: Burroughs Wellcombe introduces the first vanishing cream, "Hazeline Snow"

– 1894: Paul Unna discovers the relationship between sun exposure and skin aging,

– 1896: Colgate introduces toothpaste in tubes

– 1903: Helena Rubinstein begins selling her Valaze anti-aging cream

– 1907: Pond begins to sell a day beauty cream and a night beauty cream

– 1907: Australian swimmer Annette Kellerman is arrested on a Boston beach for wearing a one-piece swimsuit

– 1907: Eugene Schueller (founder of L'Oreal) invents the first synthetic hair dye

– 1909: Diaghilev's ballets in Paris popularizes mascara

– 1910: Paul Poiret introduces his girdle

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Beauty – 1911: Oskar Troplowitz's Beiersdorf introduces the Nivea anti-

aging cream, the first stable water-in-oil emulsifier

– 1912: Suzanne Noel performs the first "face-lift" cosmetic surgery

– 1912: Coco Chanel proclaims that women should dress for themselves and not only for men

– 1914: Mary Phelps-Jacobs files the first patent for a bra

– 1914: Cutex introduces liquid nail polish

– 1915: A portable lipstick container is marketed by Scovill

– 1915: Gillette introduces the Milady razor for women to remove underarm hair

– 1915: Elizabeth Arden introduces the Ardena Skin Tonic lotion and the Venetian Cream Amoretta beauty cream

– 1917: Maybelline mascara makes mascara affordable for everybody

– 1918: By the end of World War I the popularity of the corset has dramatically declined, replaced by the girdle

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• Transportation

– 1830: The world’s first commercial railroad opens (George Stephenson’s Liverpool-Manchester)

– 1840s: Boom of railways in Britain

– 1857: Steamships take only 9 days to cross the Atlantic (1857)

– 1866: Robert Whitehead invents the torpedo

– 1869: The Union and Central Pacific railroads create the first transcontinental railroad (USA)

– 1869: The Suez canal (impassable by sail boats) boosts sales of steamboats

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• Transportation

– 1876: Nikolaus Otto’s four-cycle internal combustion

engine

– 1879: The first steel steamboat crosses the Atlantic

– 1882: Britain invades Egypt and takes control of Suez

– 1914: The USA inaugurates the Panama Canal

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• Transportation

Steamship routes

Transcontinental

railway

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• Transportation

– Between 1830 and 1920 more than 60 million Europeans emigrate to the Americas

– Emigrants help colonize the Americas

– Emigrants reduce unemployment in Europe

– The Suez Canal links Britain and India

– Steamships and railroads allow Britain to unite the entire Indian subcontinent

– Steamships allow Britain to link India and China (e.g. opium)

– The British navy (steam + steel + torpedo) is virtually invincible

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What the Victorian Age knew • Transportation

– 1885: Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach invent the motorcycle

– 1885: John Kemp Starley’s bicycle

– 1886: Karl Benz builds a gasoline-powered car

– 1888: The Orient Express train connects Paris and Istanbul

– 1888: John Dunlop’s pneumatic tire

– 1890: The first electrical subway (London)

– 1892: Britain tonnage and seatrade exceeds the rest of the world together

– 1900: Ferdinand von Zeppelin builds the first rigid dirigible

– 1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first airplane

– 1913: Henry Ford installs the first assembly line

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• Transportation/ car

– The car inherits technology invented for the bicycle (steel tubes, differential gearing, chain drive)

– Initially a French-dominated industry (garage, chaffeur, chassis, automobile) because of a good network of “paved” roads and a poor railway network

– Gasoline, electric and steam vehicles compete (the electric engine is silent, clean and it is smell-free; the steam engine has a lot of power and doesn’t require the transmission)

– The car is a toy for wealthy sportsmen

– Michigan is the center for carriage and wagon manufacturing thanks to its forests

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• Transportation/ car

– Gasoline-power cars win because of

• Charles Kittering’s electric starter (1912) that makes car easy to operate by women

• Boom of oil

– Consequences

• The assembly line (soon applied to farm machinery too)

• The rubber industry moves to Ohio

• Gas stations

• Repair shops

• Highways (also boosted by WWI)

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What the Victorian Age knew Transportation

Benz’s car of 1886 (a

carriage without horses)

The USA’s first commercial

automobile (Duryea, 1893)

Henry Ford’s first automobile (1896)

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What the Victorian age knew • Transportation

– The Railway

• Conductors, drivers, engine fireman

• Railway stations

• Signalmen

• Maintenance crews

• Telegraph

• Engineers

Coal locomotive of 1893 ("Engine

999" for the "Empire State Express")

that reached 181 km/h

(Museum of Science, Chicago)

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What the Victorian age knew

• Transportation

– The streetcar

Horse streetcar of 1870


Conestoga wagon (Museum of Science, Chicago)

Stagecoach


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What the Victorian age knew • Transportation

– The Airplane

• 1903: Wilbur and Orville Wright fly the first airplane

• 1909: Louis Bleriot crosses the English Channel in a

monoplane

• 1914: Robert Goddard invents the liquid-fuel rocket

• 1915: German zeppelins bomb Britain (first air raid)

• 1915-18: France builds 67987 planes, Britain 58144,

Germany 48537, Italy 20000 and the USA 15,000 Wright brothers, 1903 Germany’s Fokker combat aircraft (1918)

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• Transportation

– The Aerospace Industry

• 1909: The Wright Brothers found their own company in New York (but with a factory in Ohio)

• 1909: Glenn Curtiss and Augustus Herring found in New York state the Herring-Curtiss Company (later Curtiss Aeroplane Company)

• 1912: Glenn Martin founds Martin in the Los Angeles area

• 1915: The USA establishes the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA)

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• Transportation

– The Aerospace Industry

• 1916, the Wright Company merges with Glenn Martin's company to form the Wright-Martin Aircraft Corporation (later Wright Aeronautical)

• During WWI most airplane engines are built by the car industry

• 1918: The Curtiss Aeroplane Company has become the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world

• 1929: Curtiss is absorbed into Curtiss-Wright

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Telegraph

• Second major revolution in information technology after the printing press

• The virtual movement of information replaces the physical movement of people

• Transportation and communication get decoupled

• 1846: First commercial telegraph line (Philadelphia-New York, but the telegram has to be physically carried across the Hudson river by ferry)

• 1852: First transnational telegram (Paris to Berlin)

• 1866: Cyrus Field’s transatlantic telegraph cable

65


Speed

• Airplanes, trains, steamships and cars transport

people faster than ever

• Telegraph, telephone and radio transmit

messages faster than ever

• Electricity transmits power faster than ever

66


Electronics

• Albert Michelson (1879): the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 meters per second

• Hendrik Lorentz (1892): the atom is not elementary but is made of smaller units that are electrical in nature (theory of the electron)

• Robert von Lieben (1906): creates the first triode amplifier by adding a third electrode to the diode (birth of electronics)

• Ernest Rutherford (1911): the atom is made of a nucleus and orbiting electrons (a mini-solar system)

• Robert Millikan (1913): the charge of the electron

67


Electronics

• Mystery: why the electrons don’t fall into the

nucleus of the atom (as required by Maxwell’s

equations)?

• Mystery: why the “black body radiation” is not

infinite?

• Mystery: why the speed of light is the same for all

directions of motion?

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Appliances

1886: Josephine Cochrane invents the dishwasher

1902: Willis Carrier invents the air conditioner

1908: Hurley Machine introduces the first washing

machine

1946: Percy Spencer invents the microwave oven

69


Appliances

1911: General Electric introduces the first commercial refrigerator

1913: Fred Wolf builds an electric refrigerator for the home, the Domestic Electric Refrigerator or Domelre

1914: Nathaniel Wales founds Electro-Automatic Refrigerating Company (later Kelvinator) in Detroit to produce electric refrigerators for the home

1916: Alfred Mellowes founds the Guardian Frigerator Company (later Frigidaire) in Indiana to produce the self-contained refrigerator

70


Sport

1824: first sporting journal (Pierce Egan, London)

Hunting

Boxing

1896: the French philanthropist Pierre DeCoubertin revives the Olympic Games

1903: the first Tour de France of cycling

1930: the first World Cup of football is held in Uruguay

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Media

Thomas Edison and his phonograph (1877, Bettmann archive)

Thomas Edison holding

a record (cylinder)

72


Media

1861: Johann Reis invents the telephone

1876: Alexander Bell demonstrates his telephone

1877: Thomas Edison invents the phonograph

1888: the first consumer camera is introduced by Kodak

1892: popular music becomes big business

1895: the Lumiere brothers invent cinema

1898: Valdemar Poulsen demonstrates magnetic recording

73


• Telephone

Bell on the phone

The first telephone directory (1878)

74


Media

1901: Guglielmo Marconi conducts the first

transatlantic radio transmission

1906: The vacuum tube (Robert von Lieben

1906) enables long-distance phone lines

and radio transmissions

75


Media

Queen Victoria (1854)

Photograph by Roger Fenton

Public telephone, 1909

In 1908 people in the USA mailed 677,777,798 postcards out of a population of

88,700,000 (the postcard had been invented only in 1900)

76


Photography: first photographed wars

Crimean War (1853 – 56)

“American” Civil War (1861 – 65)

Roger Fenton: Crimean war

Timothy O’Sulliva: A Harvest

of Death, Gettysburg

77


Photography:

Gaspard-Félix Tournachon "Nadar"

(1820, France)

1855: photographic studio in Paris

1858: the aerial photographer (on

a balloon)

1870 (during the German Siege of

Paris): the world's first air-mail

service

1874: the first exhibition of the

Impressionists takes place at his

studio

78


Photography:

Félix Nadar (1820, France)

79


Telephone

Telephones 1900s

First commercial telephone, 1877

(Bell installs the world’s first

commercial telephone service)

80


Media

(Stanford Archive of Recordings)

81


Media

Grammophone:

– The appearance reveals the workings

– The design reveals the engineering

• A round piece of vynil encodes the sound

• A handle makes the platter turn

• A needle picks up undulations in the grooves

• A horn amplifies the sound

Camera:

– The design hides the engineering

– “You press the button, We do the rest”

82


The radio

– Initially used just to bring people together (one to

one communication)

– Radio creates a virtual community that is

geographically distributed

– Later used for one-to-many communications (e.g.,

news)

– Later used for control and propaganda

– The same evolutionary path of writing: from the

personal sphere to the public sphere

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• Radio Marconi, 1896

First commercial radio, 1920

84


• Video Marconi, 1896

85


• Thanks to trains, cars and airplanes, the

individual can quickly travel anywhere

• Thanks to the radio and the telephone, the

individual can simultaneously be anywhere

86


• Newspaper

– 1835: James Bennett’s New York Herald

– 1851: Henry Raymond founds the New York Daily Times

– 1878: Joseph Pulitzer creates the St. Louis Post

– 1883: Joseph Pulitzer takes over the New York World

– 1887: William Randolph Hearst takes control of his father's San Francisco Examiner

– 1889: Pulitzer sends reporter Elizabeth Cochrane, disguised under the name Nellie Bly, around the world in less than 80 days

– 1895: Hearst purchases the New York Journal

– 1903: Alfred Harmsworth creates the first "tabloid" newspaper, the Daily Mirror, in London

87


Office

1868: Christopher Latham Sholes invents the first practical typewriter

1879: James Ritty invents the cash register

1881: David Gestetner invents the stencil duplicator, the first office machine to duplicate documents

1885: William Burroughs develops an adding machine

1890: Herman Hollerith builds an electrical tabulating device (Hollerith’s company acquired by IBM in 1911)

Burroughs' calculator (1897)

(Museum of Science, London)

88


Office

Hans Egli’s Millionaire Calculator (1899)

(Computer History Museum, Mountain View)

Herman Hollerith’s Census Machine (1899)

(Computer History Museum, Mountain View)

89


• The Invention

– Invention of the concept of invention and of the

figure of the inventor

90


• The Press

– Luis Senarens’ imaginary inventions of imaginary

inventor Frank Reade

(1887)

(1892)

91


• Sensationalist pulp

– The penny dreadfuls

– Serialized novels about psychokillers ("The Man Eater of Scotland" about Sawney Beane, 1825;

– "The String of Pearls" about Sweeney Todd, 1846)

– Marie Tussard's was museum (1833)

– Weekly tabloids specializing in murders and executions (Illustrated Police News, 1864)

– Public executions are a popular attraction for both the aristocracy and the masses

92


Consumerism

1872: First mail order catalog (Aaron Montgomery

Ward)

1886: Kodak camera

1888: Chewing gum

1892: Coca Cola

1893: First shopping center (Cleveland)

1897: First movies to advertise products

1901: King Camp Gillette invents the razor

1917: 40% of American households have a telephone

1920: eight million Americans own a car

93


Customs

Gentleman/lady not by birth but by good manners

The dandy (modeled after Bryan “Beau” Brummell of

the 1800s)

94


Jean-Marc Côté paints how the world will be in the year

2000 (1900-10)

95



2000 (1900-10)

96



2000 (1900-10)

97



2000 (1900-10)

98



2000 (1900-10)

99



2000 (1900-10)

100



2000 (1900-10)

101



2000 (1900-10)

102



2000 (1900-10)

103



2000 (1900-10)

104


Ideas

– Evolution (Darwin, Mendel, Bergson, Spencer)

– Physics (Thermodynamics, Electromagnetism, Relativity)

– Logic (Frege, Peano, Cantor, Peirce, Saussure)

– Pragmatism (Peirce, James)

– Nietzsche

– Psychology (Wundt, James, Freud, Thorndike, Jung)

– Phenomenology (Husserl)

– World War I

105


• Herbert Spencer (1855)

– Programme of a System of Synthetic Philosophy

(1862)

• Attempt at a synthesis of human knowledge

• Evolution is a universal law

– Concentration

– Differentiation

– Determination

– Disintegration

106



– Capitalism rewards the fittest company

– "Survival of the fittest"

– Human progress (wealth, power) results from

the triumph of more advanced individuals,

organizations, societies and cultures over their

inferior competitors

107



– Formation of order is a pervasive feature of the

universe

– The universe evolves towards a more and more

complex state

– Living matter originates from a common state,

then it evolves into different kinds

– Kant’s a-priori knowledge is determined by

evolution

108


• Herbert Spencer

– Ethics: “Social Static” (1851) or the “Conditions

Essential to Human Happiness”

109


• Alexis Tocqueville (1856)

– USA and Russia will become the superpowers of

the future

– Majority rule can be as oppressive as a

totalitarian regime

110


• Evolution of the Earth/ Part V

– Alfred-Russell Wallace: “On the Tendency of

Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original

Type” (1858)

– Charles Darwin: “The Origin of Species” (1859)

111



• Darwinism

– Evolution is the result of inherited differences

that occur between one generation and the next

– All living beings are the descendants of a simple

primeval form of life

– The diversity of life and extinct species are

explained by evolution

– Materialism

112

What the Industrial Age knew • Evolution of the Earth/ Part V

• Confirmation of Darwinism

– Hermann von Meyer: fossil of a bird-reptile, “Archaeopteryx” (1861)

– Boucher de Perthes: axe of ancient humans (1838)

– Hominid skull from Neander Tal (1856)

– Alfred Russel Wallace: “The Geographical Distribution of Animals” (1876)

– Pithecanthropus Erectus discovered in Java (1891)

113

What the Industrial Age knew


• Confirmation of Darwinism

– Humans are part of the process of extinction

– Humans are not too different from other

living beings

114



• Critique of Darwinism

– The fossil record does not offer firm

evidence for human evolution

115




– St George Mivart:

• Natural selection cannot possibly account

for the incipient stages of useful organs

when they are still useless (“The Genesis

of Species”, 1871)

• Life evolved because of a (divinely-

imparted) predisposition to evolve in the

way it evolved

116




– Moritz Wagner: geographic isolation is the cause of new species (1875)

– Lord Kelvin: the Earth can only be 100 million years old

– Asa Gray: Darwin could not explain where variation comes from because it comes from God (1876)

– Darwin himself: what are the causes of variation and of inheritance of variations?

117




– Francis Galton

• Traits and habits acquired by parents

during their lifetime cannot be inherited by

their offspring at birth (anti-Lamarck)

• Invented biometrics to study inheritance:

statistical methods to study continuous

traits (anti-Mendelian)

118




– Edward Cope (1867)

• Consciousness is the guiding force of

evolution

• Divine consciousness spreads to all living

beings

• Species design themselves

119




– Theodor Eimer (“Organic Evolution”, 1890)

• Orthogenesis: variation is not random but is purposeful, selection is pointless as the species progresses due to internal forces controlling variation

– Richard Owen

• Emphasis on differences not on similarities: absence of intermediate forms between species (elephant-like species with shorter trunk)

120



– Lord Kelvin (1868)

• Refutation of the steady-state theory: the

Earth must cool down because there is no

constant supply of new energy

• But also refutation of Darwin’s age of the

Earth (the Earth must be no older than 100

million years)

121

What the Victorian Age knew • Social/Ethical theories based on the theory of

evolution

– Herbert Spencer (1860): “survival of the fittest”

– Thomas Huxley (1863): human behavior is determined by evolution

– Francis Galton (1869): greatness is derived from this hereditary genius

– T.H. Green: Prolegomena to Ethics (1883)

– Samuel Alexander: Moral Order and Progress (1889)

– Social Darwinism: application of Darwin's theory to human societies

122


• Materialist theories inspired by the theory of evolution

– Ernst Haeckel (1866)

• Genealogy of living beings:

– inorganic matter evolved into “monera” (still inorganic but equipped with the basic properties of life)

» that evolved into single-celled organisms

» that evolved into multi-cellular organisms

» that evolved into invertebrates

» that evolved into fish

» that evolved into amphibians

» that evolved into reptiles

» that evolved into mammals

123


• Materialist theories inspired by the theory of

evolution


• Hypothesis of the “Pithecanthropus”:

intermediate between ape and humans

124




• Lamarck’s inheritance of acquired characteristics is more relevant than Darwin’s natural selection

• Biogenetic law: “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” (an embryo’s growth recapitulates the evolution of the animal from the common primordial ancestor to differentiated complex species)

• Mind and matter are aspects of the same substance (monism)

125

What the

Victorian

Age knew – Ernst Haeckel (1899)

126




• Only matter exists, driven by mechanical laws

• No difference between living and nonliving matter

• Mind is a product of evolution as much as the body

• Radical materialism ("naturalism")

• Evolutionary thought applied to history of races

• "Politics is applied biology"

127



– Wilhelm Dilthey

• Founds the sciences of society and of history

• There is no absolute truth, just consensus that

changes over time ("historicism")

128


• Abolition of slavery in the USA (1861)

• Abolition of serfdom in Russia (1861)

129


• Neurology

– 1861: Paul Broca resurrects the theory of

cortical localization of function

– 1873: Camillo Golgi's "On the Structure of the

Brain Grey Matter"

– 1891: Santiago Ramon y Cajal discovers the

fundamental unit of brain processing, the

neuron

130


• Neurology

– 1903: Alfred Binet's "intelligent quotient" (IQ)

test

– 1906: Charles Sherrington argues that the

cerebral cortex is the center of integration for

cognitive life

– 1911: Edward Thorndike's connectionism (the

mind is a network of connections and learning

occurs when elements are connected)

131


• George Perkins Marsh (1864)

– “Men and Nature”: first environmentalist book

132


• Hippolyte Taine (1865)

– Artistic milieu

133


• Wilhelm-Max Wundt (1874)

– Experimental psychology

134


• Thermodynamics

– 1824: Robert Brown (a botanist) discovers that microscopic particles in water exhibit an irregular and perpetual motion (“Brownian motion”) even if no force is exerted on them (this is duet to the chaotic motion of water molecules)

– James Joule (1849): equivalence of work and heat (energy can be transformed)

– William “Kelvin” Thompson (1851): physics is the science of energy, not of force

– Energy is always conserved, heat is not

135


• Thermodynamics

– Classical Physics: the world as a static and reversible system that undergoes no evolution, whose information is constant in time

– Classical physics is the science of being

– Thermodynamics describes an evolving world in which irreversible processes occurs

– Thermodynamics is the science of becoming

– The science of being and the science of becoming describe dual aspects of nature

– Entropy and irreversibility

136


• Thermodynamics

– A macroscopic system in equilibrium is described by

global properties (temperature, pressure, volume)

– Global properties are due to the the motion of its

particles (e.g., temperature is the average kinetic

energy of the molecules of a system)

– A macrostate can be realized by different

microstates

137


• Thermodynamics

– The transition from one state of equilibrium to another is governed by the laws of Thermodynamics:

• 0. Systems that are in equilibrium with each other share the same temperature

• 1. Heat is a form of energy, that abides by the law of conservation of energy. If heat is added to a system, this must result in either an increase in energy or some work.

• 2. An isolated system will inevitably move towards a state of equilibrium.

• 3. Absolute zero temperature can never be reached

138


• Thermodynamics

– Rudolf “Clausius” Gottlieb’s entropy (1850): any

transformation of energy has an energetic cost

– Natural processes generate entropy

– Heat flows spontaneously from hot to cold bodies,

but the opposite never occurs

139


• Thermodynamics

– The second law of thermodynamics : entropy (of

an isolated system) can never decrease

– Some processes are not symmetric in time

– Change cannot always be bi-directional

– We cannot always replay the history of the

universe backwards

– Some things are irreversible

140


• Ludwig Boltzmann (1877)

– Background: most scientists (until Einstein’s 1905

paper on Brownian motion) do not believe in atoms

– Boltzmann: a gas is a collection of many particles

141



– How the properties of atoms determine the properties of matter

– Solution: probabilities

– A statistical description of a system can be made in terms of the distribution f(r,v,t)

• number of molecules= f(space range, velocity range, time range)

– Statistical Mechanics: statistical description of ensembles of discrete molecules (spheres) obeying classical mechanics and subject to perfectly elastic collisions)

142



– Relationship between Mechanics (which is

reversible in time) and Thermodynamics (which

is irreversible)

– Thermodynamics is both a science of stability

(the conservation of energy) and of decay (the

law of entropy)

143



– Many different microscopic states of a system result in the same macroscopic state

– The entropy of a macrostate is the logarithm of the number of its microstates

– S = K * Log(W)

– Entropy = the number of molecular degrees of freedom

– Entropy is a probability function

– A system tends to drift towards the most probable state, which happens to be a state of higher entropy

144



– Entropy is a measure of disorder in a system

– Entropy can also be interpreted as a measure of

randomness

– Closed systems tend to drift from order to

randomness

– Our world is due to a brief random fluctuation of

an otherwise unchanging universe in equilibrium

145



– Boltzmann's eternal doom: the universe must

evolve in the direction of higher and higher

entropy

– The universe is proceeding towards the state of

maximum entropy

146



– First theory that assumes “chunks of energy”

(although Boltzmann believed it was merely a

methodological device)

– Thermodynamics, recast in terms of order and

chaos/randomness, can now be applied to other

domains beyond heat engines

147


• Thermodynamics

– Joule: heat can be transformed in work and viceversa

– Heat is a form of chaotic molecular motion

– Energy of regular work can be transformed into chaotic molecular motion (and manifests itself as heat); and viceversa

– Statistical regularities emerge at the macroscopic level even if the microscopic level if chaotic

– Chaotic fluctuations create deterministic laws for large aggregates

148


• James Maxwell (1873)

– E = Electric field

– p = charge density

– i = electric current

– B = Magnetic field

– E0= permittivity

– J = current density

– u0 = permeability

– c = speed of light

149



– How the electrical and magnetic fields propagate,

given the distribution of electrical charges and

currents

150

What the Victorian Age knew • James Maxwell (1873)

– Newton's laws of motion apply to inertial frames and those laws are the same for all inertial frames.

– But an electric phenomenon in one inertial frame is a magnetic phenomenon in another

– Maxwell's equations showed that the electromagnetic phenomenon "oscillates" like a wave and all such waves travel at 300 thousand kms/hour (in the vacuum).

– Light is one particular electromagnetic wave

– The interaction between distant bodies does not happen instantaneously as Newton thought but is mediated by a "field".

151



– Electricity and magnetism are the same

phenomenon

– Electric bodies radiate invisible waves of energy

through space (fields)

– The number of coordinates needed to define a

wave is infinite

– Mathematical relation between electric and

magnetic fields (field equations)

152



– The equations that predict the values of electric

and magnetic fields from a distribution of charges

reveal the existence of electromagnetic waves

– The speed of electromagnetic waves is exactly the

speed of light

– Light is an electromagnetic wave

153



– The electric field and electric charge density are

related

– The magnetic field lines must be closed loops

(there are no magnetic monopoles)

– The electric force is created by changes in the

magnetic field

– The magnetic force is created by changes in the

electric field

154



– Electric and magnetic fields behave like

mechanical stresses in a solid medium

– A solid medium must exist and pervade the whole

universe (the “ether”) just like ocean waves

propagate in water and sound waves in air

– The electromagnetic field is caused by the

vibrations of an ether

– Light waves are waves in such a medium

155



– The story of “c”

• The ratio between electrostatic and

electrodynamic units of charge: a constant c

with the dimension of a speed

• c is exactly the speed of light in a vacuum

• Maxwell’s conclusion: light must be an

electromagnetic wave

• But in what medium does it propagate?

156



– Newton: the world is made of (localized) bodies and bodies

interact via forces

– Maxwell: the world also contains (distributed) fields; fields

and bodies interact; fields change depending on their

velocity (an electric charge in motion generates a magnetic

field; a magnet in motion generates an electric field)

– Electric and magnetic fields determine how body behave, but

bodies generate the fields, i.e. fields and bodies co-

determine each other

– Light consists of waves in the electromagnetic field

– Electromagnetic waves spread in the all-pervading “ether”

157


• Franz Brentano (1874):

– The mental and the physical are different

substances

– Intentionality (esse intentionale, directedness)

– Causal relationship between phenomena

158


• Rudolf Lotze (1874):

– Arithmetic propositions are not synthetic a-

priori, but simple analytic judgements: they

can be demonstrated without any recourse to

intuition

159


• Georg Cantor (1879)

– Set Theory: emancipates Mathematics from its

traditional domain (numbers)

– Transfinite numbers

– Zeno's Paradoxes: “if space is infinitely

divisible in finite points, then…”

160


• Georg Cantor (1879)

– Previous solutions to Zeno's Paradoxes

• Hume: space and time are composed of

indivisible units having magnitude

• Kant: contradictions are immanent in our

conceptions of space and time, so space

and time are not real

• Hegel: all reasoning leads to contradictions

which can only be reconciled in a higher

unity

161

What the Victorian Age knew • Georg Cantor (1879)

– Cantor’s solution to Zeno's Paradoxes

• A one-dimensional line is not a sum of an infinite number of infinitely small points, but a set-theoretic union of an infinite number of unit-sets of zero-dimensional points

• What Zeno proved is a general property of space...

• There is no point next to any other point: between any two points there is always an infinite number of points

• The non-denumerable infinity of points in space and of events in time is much larger than the merely denumerable infinity of integers.

• An infinite series of numbers can have a finite sum

162


• The industrialization of printing

– New York newspapers offer a rich reward for

mechanizing the composition process (1880)

– Ottmar Mergenthaler (German clockmaker):

the linotype machine to compose type in

Baltimore (1887), i.e. the first "keyboard"

163


• The industrialization of printing

– Louis Prang (German printer in Boston):

mass-market color lithography (adverts,

Christmas cards, artistic cards to collect in

“scrap” albums, etc)

The Christmas card in 1873

164


• The invention of childhood

– Industrial revolution: children work in factories (instead of farms)

– 1763: Prussia introduces a compulsory system of education

– 1779: Johann Oberlin and Louise Scheppler found a kindergarten in Strassbourg (France)

– Automation and wealth reduce the need for child labor

– Mid 19th century: kindergarten and orphanages spread in Germany and England

– Infant Life Protection Act (Britain, 1872)

– Second half of the 19th century: Mandatory education for children in USA, France, Britain

165


• The invention of childhood

– Kate Greenaway (Britain): “Under the

Window: Pictures & Rhymes for Children”

(1879)

166


• Etienne-Jules Marey

– 1864: Cardiographic devices

– 1869: an artificial insect

– 1871: Artificial heart

– “La Machine Animale” (1873)

– 1882: Chronophotography

– “Le Vol des Oiseaux“ (1890)

– “Le Mouvement” (1894)

– 1901: aerodynamic wind tunnel

Photography to

represent movement

(chronophotography):

167


• Etienne-Jules Marey Geometric Chronophotograph of

the Man in the Black Suit (1883)

168


• Gottlob Frege (1884)

– Lotze’s theory: arithmetic propositions can be

demonstrated without any recourse to intuition

– Removing intuition from arithmetic requires

replacing natural language with logic (Boole’s

program)

– Quantifiers and variables allow for “predicate

calculus”

– Mathematics becomes a branch of Logic

(Cantor’s program)

169



– ”Sense” (intension) vs "reference” (extension):

"the star of the morning" and "the star of the

evening" (same extension/refernt, but

different intensions/senses)

– Propositions of Logic can only have one of two

referents, true or false, but many senses

– Logic as an objective (not subjective)

discipline

– Search for purely objective realm, for absolute

truth

170



– Cardinal numbers constructed by a purely

logical method (not relying on intuition: Kant

was wrong)

171


• Giuseppe Peano (1889)

– Axiomatization of natural numbers:

1. Zero is a natural number.

2. Zero is not the successor of any natural number.

3. Every natural number has a successor, which is a natural number.

4. If the successor of natural number a is equal to the successor of natural number b, then a and b are equal.

5. Suppose (induction axiom):

(i) zero has a property P;

(ii) if every natural number less than a has the property P then a also has the property P.

Then every natural number has the property P.

172


• Charles Peirce (1883)

– An object is defined by the effects of its use: a definition that works well is a good definition ("pragmatism")

– An object “is” its behavior

– The meaning of a concept lies in its practical effects on our daily lives: if two ideas have the same practical effects on us, they have the same meaning

– The meaning of a concept is a function of the relations among many concepts: a concept refers to an object only through the mediation of other concepts

173



– Truth is usefulness and validity: something is true if it can be used and validated

– Truth is defined by consensus. Truth is not agreement with reality, it is agreement among humans (reached after a process of scientific investigation)

– Truth is “true enough”

– Truth is not eternal: it is decided by the situation

– Truth is a process, a process of self-verification

– Beliefs become fixed through experience/verification

– Beliefs lead to habits that get reinforced through experience

174



– Abduction, deduction and induction

– Abduction: the process of generating a hypothesis that would account for the facts

– The scientific method begins with abduction (a hypothesis about what actually is going on)

– Deduction draws conclusions from the hypothesis about other things that must be true if the hypothesis is true

– Experiments determine if the hypothesis holds and can be generalized from sample to population

175



– The process of habit creation is pervasive in nature

– All matter acquires habits

– Matter is mind whose “beliefs” have been fixed to the extent that they can’t be changed anymore

– Habit is what makes objects what they are

– An object is defined by the set of all its possible behaviors

– I am my habits

176



– Randomness is absence of identity

– The laws of Physics describe the habits of

matter, because what we observe is the habits

of nature (eg, heavenly bodies have the habit

of attracting each other, thus the law of

gravitation)

177



– Systems evolve because of chance, which is inherent to the universe (“tychism”)

– Habits progressively remove chance from the universe

– The universe is evolving from absolute chaos (chance and no habits) towards absolute order (all habits are fixed)

– Darwinian evolution of systems towards stronger and stronger habits

– Beliefs are a particular case of habits, that also get fixed through experience

178



– Semiotics

• Signs:

• index (a sign which bears a causal relation with its referent),

• icon (which bears a relation of similarity with its referent),

• symbol (whose relation with its referent is purely conventional)

• Eg:

– [broooom…],

–

– and “CAR”

179



– A sign consists of a signifier and a signified

– The relation between signifier and signified

(eg CAR and the car) is arbitrary

– A sign refers to an object only through the

mediation of other signs (interpretants)

180



– There is an infinite regression of interpretants from the signifier to the signified (the signified is a representation of a representation of a representation of a …. of the signifier)

– A dictionary defines a word in terms of other words, which are defined in terms of other words, which are defined in terms of…

– Knowing is semiosis (making signs)

– Semiosis is an endless process

– The universe “is” those signs

181



– Existential (“at least one/ some”) and universal

(“for every/ all”) quantifiers

182


• Josiah Royce (1885)

– There are absolute truths: denying the

existence of any absolute truth is an assertion

of an absolute truth

– Truth is due to consensus of the community,

but that consensus relies on preexisting truth,

all the way back to a universal mind (idealism)

183


• Ernst Mach (1886)

– Scientific phenomena can only be understood in terms of sensory experience

– The domain of science is the abstractions constructed by the scientist on the bases of her sensory perceptions

– Only empirical statements are valid scientific statements

– The task of the scientist is to describe the world, not to explain it

– (e.g., causality, which is a way to explain a phenomenon, should be replaced by the concept of relation, which is mere description)

184



– Absolute time and space are explanations,

not descriptions, and thus should be removed

from science

– Physics should be reformulated in terms of

the relationships of a body to other bodies

(e.g. motion relative to fixed stars) with no

reference to background space

185



– Newton’s inertia: a fundamental property of

matter

– Mach’s inertia: a local property that arises from

the global distribution of matter in the universe

– Inertia (the tendency of a body at rest to remain at

rest and of a body in motion to continue in motion

in the same direction) results from a relationship

of that object with all the rest of the matter in the

universe

186



– All motion is “relative” motion (relative to all other

masses)

– Newton: rotation produces centrifugal forces,

which are distinct from gravitational forces

– Mach: centrifugal forces are gravitational (caused

by the action of mass upon mass)

187


• Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)

– Greek tragedy exhibits two complementary

aesthetic principles: Apollonian (the plot) and

Dionysian (the chorus)

– The Apollonian plot creates the illusion that

the hero's will determines actions

– The Dionysian chorus reveals the reality that

the hero is only part of a primordial universal

design

– Apollonian: visions, physical, civilization,

individualistic

– Dionysian: intoxication, symbolic, savagery,

holistic

188



– Dionysian pessimism:

• The Dionysian insight into nature helps us understand the ultimate meaning of life, but it would destroy us if not tempered by the Apollonian illusion of order

• Dionysian pessimism: The Dionysian is key the overcoming the limits of the human condition, but we still won't be able to overcome our fate

• We can only learn to accept and love our fate

189



– Human behavior is caused by the will to power

(urge to order the course of one’s experiences)

– All living beings strive for a higher state of

their living condition to overcome their present

state’s limitations

– Will to power: an extension of Schopenhauer's

will to live

– It is a consequence of the Dionysian insight

190



– Philosophy, art and history have an infinite scope

– Science has a finite scope

– Science is interpretation/exegesis of the world

– There are no facts, only interpretations

– Truth is an illusion

– Knowledge is an illusion

– Truth and knowledge are only relative to how useful they are to our “will to power”

– The will to knowledge/truth inevitably leads to the will to power

191



– Morality is a device invented by the weak to

assert their will to power over the strong

– Christian values are a "slave morality", a

morality of the weak ones

– Christian values are obsolete (”God is dead")

– Christianity is an expression of the will the

power, but only the will to power of the weak

who are full of resentment

– The new morality is the morality of the

“uebermensch” ("superman”), who is above

the masses and is interested in solving the

problems of this world, not of the otherworld

192



– The demise of God is the most important event

in modern history (God had been the prime

mover of history for centuries)

193


• German physicist Heinrich Hertz discovers Radio

Waves (1887)

194


• Henri Bergson (1889)

– Reality is an endless flow of change of the whole

– The upward flow is life, the downward flow is

inert matter

– The universe is like a cable railway on a steep

incline, with simultaneously ascending and

descending cars

– There is an “elan vital” (vital force) that causes

life despite the opposition of inert matter

195



– In human beings Intellect and Intuition have

become separated faculties

– Intellect is life observing inert matter

– Intuition is life observing life

– Intellect is related to space (inert matter is located

in space)

– Intuition is related to time (life is located in time)

– Intellect can only understand inert matter, not life

– Intuition can grasp life

– We join (flow with) inert matter when habits take

over the intellect

196



– Intellect is simply the contemplation of inert matter

– Space appears to exist to the intellect (space is a

practical way to organize inert matter)

– The intellect divides reality into objects

– The “time” coordinate of Newtonian physics is (like

space) an artifice to represent inert matter

(Newtonian time is a form of space)

– Matter is the lowest degree of mind

197



– “Time” (not Newton’s time) appears to exist to

intuition (time is a practical way to organize life)

– Intuition does not divide reality into objects: it grasps

the flow of the universe as a whole

– Time is the sequence of conscious events

– We have a memory for habits and a memory for

events

– Time is our memory of events

198



– Dreaming is a selectionist process

– When awake, the brain selects the thoughts that

make sense

– When asleep, the brain is flooded with

uncontrolled thoughts

– The brains tries to arrange the proliferating

memory images into some kind of narrative

– The rational center of the brain "selects" bits and

pieces for the dream narrative

199


• Sex

– Paolo Mantegazza: "Gli amori degli uomini/ Sexual

Relationships of Mankind" (1885)

– Patrick Geddes: "The Evolution of Sex" (1889)

– Havelock Ellis: "Studies in the Psychology of Sex"

(1897)

– Otto Weininger: "Sex and Character" (1903)

– Iwan Bloch: "Das Sexualleben Unserer Zeit/ The

Sexual Life of our Time" (1907)

200


• Sexual Revolution

– 1863: Karl Heinrich Ulrichs defends the rights of homosexuals in Germany

– 1870: Victoria Woodhull advocates free love in her “Weekly” magazine

– 1892: Clelia Mosher's survey of 45 women in the USA proves that women can have orgasms

– 1897: "La Fronde" feminist newspaper debuts in France

– 1903: First nudist colony opens in Germany

– 1916: Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic and founds Planned Parenthood

201


• Feminist treatises

– Margaret Fuller: “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” (1843)

– John Stuart Mill: “The Subjection of Women” (1869)

– August Bebel: “Die Frau und der Sozialismus” (1883)

– Friedrich Engels: “The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State” (1884)

– Articles by Anna Kuliscioff (Italy, 1880s)

– Charlotte Perkins: “Women and Economics” (1898)

“Woman is the last thing to be civilized by man”

(Meredith,1859)

202


• Condition of Women

– Paris 1880:

• Women can walk unaccompanied in the streets

• Schooling mandatory for girls

• Universities begin to accept women

203


• Puritanism

– 1865: The “Salvation Army”

– 1873: Anthony Comstock founds the Society for

the Suppression of Vice

– 1874: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union

is founded

204


• Anarchism

– Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

– Mikhail Bakunin

– Pyotr Kropotkin

– First International (1864)

205


• Anarchic terrorism

– 1881: Assassination of czar Alexander II

– 1886: Haymarket bombing in Chicago (7 dead)

– 1893: Teatro Liceo bombing in Barcelona (22 dead)

– 1894: Assassination of French president Sadi Carnot

– 1897: Assassination of Austrian empress Elizabeth and Spanish

prime minister Antonio Canovas

– 1900: Assassination of Italian king Umberto I

– 1901: Assassination of USA president William McKinley

– 1906: Assassination attempt against Spanish king Alfonso XIII

(20 dead)

– 1920: Assassination of Spanish prime minister Eduardo Dato

– 1920: Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco

– 1936: Spanish civil war

206


• James Frazer (1890)

– Study of world myths

– Myth-making as a way of imposing order on the

universe

207


• William James (1890)

– Both matter and mind are constructed out of

experience: the same reality is both in the

mind and in the world, it is both an event of a

person’s biography and of the history of the

world

– Minds are made of experience (experienced

events)

208



– The function of mind is to help the body live in an environment

– The brain is an organ that evolved because of its usefulness for survival

– Consciousness is a sequence of conscious mental states, each state being the experience of some content

– Consciousness is not a substance, it is a process (“the stream of consciousness")

– Unitary and continuous consciousness (analogous to Newton's unitary and continuous space)

209



– Perception leads to action in the environment

(not necessarily conscious)

– The awareness of fear follows (not precedes) the

body’s physical reaction to danger

210



– The brain is organized as an associative

network, and associations are governed by a rule

of reinforcement

– Long-term and short-term memory

211



– Habits as built of stimulus-response patterns

– Beliefs are rules for action

– The function of thinking is to produce habits of

action

– Beliefs and habits are equivalent

– A belief/habit gets reinforced as it succeeds

212



– The intelligence of a human or an animal is the

outcome of the interplay of many instincts

213



– Free will exists: a combination of chance (that

creates alternative possibilities) and choice (that

selects one of them)

214


• Christian Ehrenfels (1890)

– The mind “intends” gestalt qualities

215


• Hans Driesch (1892)

– A mutilated embryo will still develop into a

fully-functioning living organism

– A “life force”, or “entelechy”, yields life

216


• Henri Poincare` (1892)

– The three-body problem cannot be solved

(1890): the class of nonlinear problems

– ”Chaos" theory: a slight change in the initial

conditions results in large-scale differences

– Eternal return: every isolated system returns

after a finite time to its initial state

– Topology

217


• Henri Poincare` (1892)

– The speed of light is the maximum speed

– Mass depends on speed

– No experiment can discriminate between a state of uniform motion and a state of rest

– The combined equations of Newton and Maxwell do not satisfy Galilean relativity but another kind of relativity

– Lorentz transformations (named by Poincare after Lorentz)

– Non-Euclidean geometries have the same logical and mathematical legitimacy as Euclidean geometry

218

What the Victorian Age knew • Hendrik Lorentz (1892)

– Unify Newton’s equations for the dynamics of

bodies and Maxwell’s equations for the

dynamics of electromagnetic waves in one set of

equations (Lorentz transformations)

– Equations of motion of a charged particle in an

electromagnetic field

– The combined Newton and Maxwell equations do

not satisfy Galileo’s relativity (equations should

be unchanged in the transition from a stationary

to a moving frame of reference)

219

What the Victorian Age knew • Hendrik Lorentz (1892)

– Transformations (1897): the equations of

electromagnetism admit a group of

transformations which enables them to have the

same form when one passes from one frame of

reference to another

– Contraction of bodies

– The contraction of bodies in the direction of

motion explains why the speed of light is the

same in every direction

220


• Hendrik Lorentz (1897)

221


• Genetics

– Gregor Mendel (1865)

• Phenotype vs genotype

• Units of transmission of traits

222


• Genetics

– August Weismann (1892)

• Microscopy applied to biology

• Heredity is about the transmission of

information

• The transmission of information from one

generation to the next one takes place via a

chemical

• Theory of mitosis (how cells divide and

reproduce)

223


• Genetics


• Darwin’s theory of heredity replaced by a theory of “germ plasma”

• Germ plasma is a mixture of the parents’ germ plasmas, which supplies information about how to construct the “soma” or structure of the body

• The plasma is located in the chromosomes

• The germ plasma is a substance that encodes information about reproduction

• The germ plasma is transmitted from one generation to another

• Each body is only a vehicle

224


• Genetics


• Distinction between germ cells (cells that

pass information to the offspring) and

somatic cells (cells that build the organism)

• Information can pass from germ line to

soma but not from soma to germ line (i.e.,

Lamarck was wrong)

225


• Genetics

– William Bateson (1894)

• “Variation is the essential phenomenon of

evolution”

• Mendelian (opposed to biometrics)

• Science of heredity (“genetics”)

226


• Genetics

– Hugo de Vries (1901)

• There are atoms of heredity (“pangenes”)

• Hereditary units for different traits are independent

• General law for the transmission of hereditary traits: rediscovery of Mendel

• Process by which new species originate, i.e. genetic discontinuities arise (“mutation”)

• Natural selection is not the driving force of evolution, mutation is

227


• Genetics

– Wilhelm Johannsen (1901)

• “Genotype”: the set of all genes of an

organism

• “Phenotype”: the set of traits of an

organism

• Organisms with the same genotype may

exhibit different phenotypes because of

environmental pressures

228


• Genetics

– Mendelians emphasize discontinuous variation

– Biometrics emphasizes continuous variation

– Udny Yule (1902): Mendel’s laws are not

incompatible with continuous variation (the

interaction of many genetic factors on the

same characteristic produces the illusion of a

continuous range of variation)

229


• Genetics

– Darwinism predicts irregular and undirected

evolution

– Lamarckism and orthogenesis predict linear

evolution

230


• Genetics

– Spontaneous generation is still the prevailing

theory on the origin of life

231


• Rudolf Steiner (1892)

– The world is an indivisible whole and the human brain divides it into parts so that it can deal with it

– There is no contradiction between spiritual and scientific knowledge: they are dual descriptions of the same world

– Truth is both an objective discovery and a subjective creation

– Understanding the world is an act of creation

– The natural world is continuously created by the spiritual world

– Anthroposophy: human consciousness, properly trained, can access the spiritual world

232


• Francis-Herbert Bradley (1893)

– Absolute idealism: the world is the product of

the mind

– The categories of science (e.g., space and

time) can be proven to be contradictory, which

proves that the world is a fiction

– The only reality has to be a unity of all things,

the absolute

233


• Emile Durkheim (1893)

– Sociology: a science of social facts

– The psychology of the individual has a

sociological dimension

– For example, suicide is a social fact

– History of societies instead of history of

individuals

– The historian becomes a sociologist working

in the past

234


• Émile Durkheim (1912)

– What all religions have in common is the concept

of sacred objects

– Religions originate from forms of totemism

– Totemism yields a collective consciousness:

– "The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to

the average members of a society forms a

determinate system with a life of its own. It can be

termed the collective or creative conscience."

– The function of religion is the cohesion of society,

achieved through the collective conscience

235


• German Sociology

– Ferdinand Tonnies: “Community and Civil

Society” (1887)

• The “natural” will produces a self among

selves, whereas the “rational” will produces

a subject that treats other selves as objects

• The organic community is held together by

history whereas “society” is held together

by interacting self-interests

236


• German Sociology

– Georg Simmel: “The Philosophy of Money”

(1900)

• The money economy is a form of

prostitution

• The money economy leads to alienation and

“the tragedy of culture”

• The money economy creates the crowd, in

which individuals don’t care about other

individuals

237


• Civil Disobedience

– Henry David Thoreau: "Civil Disobedience"

(1849)

– Lev Tolstoy: "The Kingdom of God is Within

You" (1894)

– Mahatma Gandhi: "Satyagraha" (1896)

– Martin Luther King: "I Have A Dream" (1963)

238


• Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi (1896)

– Nonviolence (ahimsa)

– Satyagraha (truth and firmness)

– Jesus + Thoreau + Tolstoy

– The West justifies crimes no less barbaric than

its enemies in the name of a divine mission to

create a better world

239

Olympics

240

Olympics Athens 1896

1. USA 11 7 2

2. Greece (GRE) 10 18 17

3. Germany (GER) 6 5 2

4. France (FRA) 5 4 2

5. Great Britain (GBR)2 3 2

Berlin 1936


2. USA 24 20 12

3. Hungary (HUN) 10 1 5

4. Italy (ITA) 8 9 5

5. Finland (FIN) 7 6 6

Rome 1960

1. USSR (URS) 43 29 31

2. USA 34 21 16

3. Italy (ITA) 13 10 13

4. Germany (EUA) 12 19 11

5. Australia (AUS) 8 8 6

Montreal 1976

1. USSR (URS) 49 41 35

2. East Germany 40 25 25

3. USA 34 35 25

4. West Germany 10 12 17

5. Japan (JPN) 9 6 10

Barcelona 1992

1. Former USSR 45 38 29

2. USA 37 34 37


4. China 16 22 16

5. Cuba (CUB) 14 6 11

Sidney 2000

1. USA 40 24 33

2. Russia 32 28 28

3. China 28 16 15

4. Australia (AUS) 16 25 17


Gold, silver, bronze medals

241


• K'ang Yu-wei (1898)

– Neo-confucianism

– The world is a One (“heaven, earth, and the

myriad things are all of one substance with

myself”)

– All things are part of the “ch’I” from which the

world emanates

– This world is a world of misery and grief

– Release from suffering is through “progress”

242


• K'ang Yu-wei (1898)

– Human history progresses from the age of

disorder to the age of order to the age of peace

– Progress to remedy suffering includes nine

obstacles to be removed (nations, races,

classes, gender bias, etc)

– Jen would then be universal love for all

creatures

– Competition is not the engine of progress, but

the biggest obstacle to true progress

243


• The subconscious

Schopenhauer’s will

Nietzsche’s covert instinct

Johann Herbart’s “Textbook of Psychology”

(1816): the mind arises from the dialogue between

conscious and unconscious processes

Pierre Janet’s “psychological analysis” (hypnosis +

automatic writing)

244


• The subconscious

Eduard von Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the

Unconscious” (1868)

The absolute subconscious permeates the

universe

The physiological subconscious is inherited

biologically by each individual

A study that mixed biology, anthropology,

linguistics, art, poetry

Max Dessoir’s “Double Ego” (1890)

245


• Prehistory of psychoanalysis

Josef Breuer’ talking cure for “Anna O” (1880)

246


• Classical world of psychology (Wilhelm-Max Wundt, 1874)

Actions have a motive

Motives are mental states, hosted in our minds and controlled by our minds

Motives express an imbalance in the mind, between desire and reality

Action is an attempt to regenerate balance by changing the reality to match our desire

Assumption: human action is rational

Dreams? (Human action, yet irrational)

Classical view of dreams

Dreams are about the future (oracles)

247


• Sigmund Freud (1900)

– The mind is divided in conscious (rational motives)

and unconscious mind (reservoir of unconscious

motives)

– There is a repertory of motives that our mind,

independent of our will, has created over the years,

and they participate daily in determining our actions

– Separation of motive and awareness

– Repulsive picture of the human soul

248


• Freud (1900)

– Libido (sexual desires)

• A child is a sexual being

• Parents repress the child’s sexuality

• The child undergoes oral, anal and phallic stages before entering the latency stage

• Boys desire sex with their mother and are afraid their father wants to castrate them

• Girls envy the penis and are attracted to their father

249


• Freud (1900)

– “ When a boy enters the phallic phase... he becomes his mother's lover. He wishes to possess her physically… and he tries to seduce her by showing her the male organ... seeks to take his father's place with her… His father now becomes a rival… whom he would like to get rid of… The boy's mother has understood quite well that his sexual excitation relates to herself... she threatens to take away from him the thing he is defying her with… she delegates its execution to the boy's father, saying that she will tell him and that he will cut the penis off…”

250


• Freud (1900)

– A dream is only apparently meaningless: it is meaningless if interpreted within the context of conscious motives.

– The dream is perfectly logical if one considers also the unconscious motives

Meaning of dreams are hidden and reflect memories of emotionally meaningful experience

“Latent content” of the subconscious yields “manifest content” of the dream

Dreams are fulfillment of infantile wishes

Dreams rely on memories and are assembled by the brain to deliver a meaning

Dreams are not prophecies but memories

Free associations are evoked during the dream

251


• Freud (1900)

– Mental life is originally unconscious. It becomes (potentially) conscious through perception (of the external world)

– The ego perceives, learns and acts (consciously)

– The super-ego is the (largely unconscious) moral conscience which originates during childhood through conflicts with the parent figures, and which is the principal instrument of repression

– The id is the repertory of unconscious memories (created by libido)

– The most unconscious memory is the “death wish”, the impulse to annihilate one’s own existence

252


• Freud (1900)

– Neurosis involves a process of denial of emotionally painful memories

– Overcoming these defenses is easier while in a waking rather than hypnotic state (hence free associations)

– The causes of neurosis are largely sexual

253


• Freud (1900)

– Not a scientific discipline, more like a new religion

– Freud the prophet has apostles and heretics (Jung) and infidels (Havelock Ellis)

– Vague theories that are impossible to test

– Continuous revisions to accommodate facts that don’t fit

– Patriarchal psychology (women psychology is neglected)

– A storyteller, not a scientist

254


• Freud (1920)

• Death instinct vs survival instinct (1920)

• Freud (1929)

– Civilization requires repression which causes neurosis: the more civilization the more neurosis

255


• David Hilbert (1900)

– Hilbert’s “Second Problem”

• Is mathematics complete?

• Is mathematics consistent?

• Is mathematics decidable?

– Entscheidungsproblem (1928): does a general

algorithmic procedure for resolving all

mathematical problems exist?

256


• The Victorian Age

– No major wars between the European powers

– The French geographer André Siegfried is

able to travel all over the world carrying only

his visiting card for identification

– Globalization on a scale never seen before

and not seen again for a century

– Sense of security not felt since the days of

the Roman empire

– but…

– …Arms race on a scale that the world never

had seen before

257


• Wilhelm Dilthey (1900)

– Founder of Hermeneutics

– Human knowledge can only be understood when the knower's life (lived in a historically-conditioned culture) is taken into consideration

– Understanding a text implies understanding the relationship of expression to what is expressed, a “holistic” process that involves the “spirit of the age” (the overall historical context)

– All cultural products are analogous to written texts

258


• Wilhelm Dilthey (1900)

– The human sciences differ from the natural

sciences (objective study of nature) because

they depend on the human experience

– The human sciences introduce three categories:

value, purpose and meaning

259


• Edmund Husserl (1901)

– The essence of something is not its physical

constituents or physical laws, but the way we

experience it

– ”Phenomenology” is the science of phenomena

– Science caused a crisis by denying humans the

truth of the reality that they experience (by proving

that phenomenon and being are not identical)

– Advocates a return to the primary experience of

the world

260



– Phenomena and being are one and the same

261


• Edmund Husserl (1901) – Consciousness is intentional: consciousness is

“consciousness of” (“intentional” as in “refers to”)

– The intentionality of consciousness correlates the act of knowing (noesis) by the subject with the object that is known (noema)

– The phenomenon is intuitively known to the subject

– The essence (eidos) of the phenomenon is the sum of all possible “intuitive” ways of knowing the phenomenon

– This has to be achieve after “bracketing out” (“einklammerung”) the physical description of the phenomenon (the description given by the natural sciences)

262



– What is left is a purely transcendental knowledge of

the phenomenon

– Subject and object are not separated

263


• Alexius Meinong (1902)

– Some objects do not exist but have subsistence

– It is true both that the round square is round and also

that it is square

264


• The cakewalk

(American Mutoscope & Biograph, 1903)

265


• George Moore (1903)

– Naturalistic fallacy: trying to define a moral

concept on the basis of non-moral concepts

(happiness, pleasure, utility)

– Good is a primitive concept

– The concept of good is learned by intuition

– Good is not an experimental quantity

– Good is not a noun, but a predicate used in

ethical judgements

– Rehabilitation of common sense

266


• George Moore

– Sense-data: what we perceive of an object (e.g.,

the texture of the surface of a table)

– How do we derive knowledge of an object from

our sense-data?

267


• Richard Semon: "Die Mneme" (1904)

– Evolution is a kind of memory that preserves the

effects of experience across generations

– Human memory and evolution work the same

way

– Mneme: the fundamental process that subsumes

both processes

– Engram: the unit of memory, or, better, the

pattern used to encode it (in the case of the brain,

the "memory trace")

– Ecphoric stimulus: the cue that helps retrieve a

memory

268


• Richard Semon: "Die Mneme" (1904)

– The likelihood of finding a memory depends also

on the cue that is used to retrieve it (the pattern

used to decode it)

– A cue is only a fraction of the memory (of the

engram), but it is enough to retrieve the whole

memory (engram)

269


• Peking to Paris Motor Challenge (1907)

Scipione Borghese, winner of the challenge, and photographer Luigi Barzini

270


• Pierre Duhem (1906)

– No scientific statement can be refuted, as one

can always tweak the scientific theory that the

statement belongs to so that the statement

becomes true

– The certainty that a proposition is true

decreases with any increase of its precision

271


• George Santayana (1906)

– Human beings are physical systems that can

be explained by the laws of Physics

– Minds are caused by bodies (mind is an

emergent property of matter)

– Minds cannot influence bodies

272


• Albert Einstein (1903)

– The photoelectric phenomenon is due to the

fact that light is a stream of finite “photons”

(energy quanta).

– Photons appear when electrons emit light.

– Photons disappear when electrons absorb light.

– The energy of the photon is a multiple of

Planck’s constant: the quantum is universal

273



– Axioms:

• The laws of nature must be the same

(invariant) in all frames of reference that are

inertial (Galileo’s old principle of relativity)

• The speed of light is the same in all

directions

– Then space and time cannot be absolute

274



– Consequences:

• The combined equations of Newton and

Maxwell do not satisfy Galilean relativity but

another kind of relativity

• Lorentz transformations to preserve relativity

(invariance)

• The length of an object and the duration of

an event are relative to the observer

• All quantities must have four dimensions, a

time component and a space component

(e.g., energy-momentum)

• Equivalence of mass and energy (E=mc2)

275



– Space and time are not absolute

– "Now" is a meaningless concept

– The past determines the future

– Nothing can travel faster than light

– Time does not flow (no more than space does),

it is just a dimension

276


• Albert Einstein

– 1911: Why the sky is blue

277


• Hermann Minkowski (1908)

– Space and time are different dimensions of the same space-time continuum

– Each observer has a different perspective on the events in the space-time continuum (e.g., length or duration)

– Past and future are segments of space-time continuum

– Each observer’s history is constrained by a cone of light within the space-time continuum

– Each observer’s history is a “world line”, the spatio-temporal path on which the observer is actually traveling through space-time

– “Proper” time is the spacetime distance between two points on a world line (the time experienced by the observer as she travels along her world line)

278


• Margaret Murray performs autopsy on an Egyptian

mummy at the Manchester Chemical Theater (1908)

279


• Defiance of conventions

– Negation of aesthetic and moral values

– Futurism (1909): machines

– Dadaism (1916): chance, irrationality

– Surrealism (1924): unconscious, dreams

280


• Fotoplayer for movie theaters

281


• Max Weber (1905)

– Rationalization, bureaucratization and alienation

associated with capitalism

– Capitalism originates from religious ideals

(Calvinism)

– The state claims a monopoly on the legitimate use

of violence

– Stahlhartes Gehause/ Iron Cage: increasing

rationalization of human life, which traps

individuals in over-bureaucratized social order

282


• Max Weber (1905)

– Science can improve the material conditions of the

individual but not provide meaning

– Science/technology demystifies life and makes it

less exciting to live

283


• Norman Angell (1911)

– World economies are so interdependent that war

cannot have any victor anymore

284


• Frederick Winslow Taylor (1911)

– Scientific management

– The production process must be subdivided into

tasks that unskilled workers can perform with the

help of machines

– Minimize training of workers

– Minimize dependence on specialized workers

285


Brussels

1911

Einstein Rutherford

Curie Poincare’

Onnes

286


• Nishida Kitaro (1911)

– Symbiosis between European rationalism and Zen

Buddhism

• Western Rationalism provides the rational

foundations (a robot without feelings or ethics),

Zen provides the feelings and the ethics

• "We don't exist because we think, but we think

because we exist."

• "To know is to love and to love is to know"

• Action-intuition: discovering the self in creative

activity and realizing the place of this personal

creativity in the historical context

287



– Eternal now

• The "eternal now" contains one's whole being and also the being of all other things

• The infinitesimal brief presence of the "here-and-now" creates past, present, and future.

• "Mu" (nothingness) creates a spacetime topology

• Mu = unmeasurable moment in spacetime ("less than a moment") that has to be "lived" in order to reach the next "mu"

• Mu also creates the time-experience, self-consciousness and free will

288



– The present is merely an aspect of the eternal

– "We do not feel the past: to feel something in the

past is a feeling in the present"

– The eternal generates all the time a self-

determining present (at every mu)

– "Mu no basho ronri" (place of nothingness):

nothingness as field, place or topos

– Unifies "pure experience" and field of force

289



– Unity of subjective and objective reality

• "Only one reality exists in the universe"

• "Phenomena of consciousness are the sole reality"

• "Objective reality does not exist apart from subjective consciousness"

• "That which Newton and Kepler observed and took to be the order of natural phenomena is actually the order of our phenomena of consciousness"

• "Subject and object do not exist separately, for they are the two relative sides of one reality"

• "The self does not exist apart from the world that it sees"

290



– Unity of subjective and objective reality

• Each self and each thing is an expression of

the only reality of the world (see Leibniz’s

monad)

• The self is not a substance: it is nothingness

(“to study the self is to forget the self”)

291



– The historical world

• The creative now not only creates time, but also space

• Each present is a unique combination of space and time

• Time can be viewed as both linear and cyclical, but converges in both states at the same space point

• This point is the historical world

• History is an ascending self-realization of the absolute

292



– Ethics

• "Morality is not a matter of seeking something apart from the self: it is simply the discovery of something within the self"

• "There is only one true good: to know the true self"

• "Our true self is the ultimate reality of the universe, and if we know the true self we not only unite with the good of humankind in general but also fuse with the essence of the universe and unite with the will of God"

293



– Ethics

• "We individuals are entities which have developed as cells of one society. The essence of the nation is the expression of the communal consciousness that constitutes the foundation of our minds"

• "At present, the nation is the greatest expression of unified communal consciousness. But the expression of our personality ... demands something even greater: a social union that includes all human kind."

294



– God

• "God transcends time and space, is eternal and indestructible, and exists everywhere"

• "God is none other than the world and the world is none other than God"

• "The universe is not a creation of God but a manifestation of God"

• "To love God is to know God"

• "Religion is the culmination of knowledge and love.

• "Religion is not to be sought for the sake of spiritual peace. Religion is a goal, not a means to something else."

295



– "Zettai mujunteki jikodoitsu" ("absolute

contradictory self-identity", unity of opposites)

296


• Gyorgy Lukacs (1911)

– Epic stage: system of meaning in which

human alienation does not exist, the soul does

not perceive any separation from the world,

object and subject are not divided, history and

nature are one

– People are made into things and therefore lose

their identity (commodification of everyday

life)

297


• Gyorgy Lukacs (1911)

– A style of thought might be imputed to a social

class

– “Development in history is neither random nor

chaotic, nor is it a straightforward linear

progression, but rather a dialectic

development. In every social organization, the

prevailing mode of production gives rise to

inner contradictions which are expressed in

class struggle”

298


• Edward Thorndike (1911)

– Animals learn based on the outcome of their

actions ("law of effect")

– The mind as a network

– Learning occurs when elements are connected

– Behavior is due to the association of stimuli

with responses that are generated through

those connections

– A habit is a chain of “stimulus-response” pairs

299


• USA: Popular music

Irving Berlin’s first hit

(1911)

300


• USA: Blues music

The first blues, 28 Sep 1912

301


• Carl Jung (1912)

– Parallels between ancient myths and psychotic fantasies

– Motives are not in the history of the individual but in the history of the entire human race

– Unconscious as a repertory of symbols

– Unconscious: Freud’s personal unconscious (repressed memories) + collective unconscious (inherited motives shared by all humanity)

– Collective unconscious: a shared repertory of archaic experience represented by "archetypes" which spontaneously emerge in all minds

302



– Mythology is the key to understanding the human mind

– Predispositions by all human brains to create some myths rather than others

– Humans are born with an extensive knowledge of the world.

303

What the Victorian Age knew • Carl Jung (1912)

– Libido is not just sexual

– Dreams reflect the collective unconscious

– Dreams connect the individual with the rest of humankind

– Mandala as the archetypical symbol of the self

– Trance (“active imagination”) helps the self become one with the archetypes and achieve immortality

– The goal of psychoanalysis is spiritual renewal

– Self-deification through the mystical connection with our primitive ancestors (“We must dig down to the primitive in us”… “a new experience of God”)

– A race is identified by the archetypes that bind all individuals of the race together with their ancestors

304



– Self: the whole psyche, conscious and unconscious

– Ego: the conscious part of the psyche

– Persona: identity

– Shadow: the unconscious part that the Ego does not

want to make conscious

– Anima: the unconscious psyche relating to the

opposite gender

305


• Precursors of Gestalt

• Vittorio Benussi (1912)

“Stroboscopic Apparent Motion and Geometric Optical

Gestalt Illusions”

• Max Wertheimer (1912)

• "Experimental Studies on Motion Vision“

306



– Psychoanalysis has replaced the soul with the

psyche, but it can only “cure” one psyche at a

time instead of the millions of souls that religion

used to “cure”

307


• The Evolution of the Earth/ Part VI

– Alfred Wegener (1912): continental drift (the

landscape of the Earth has changed not only

vertically but also horizontally)

308


• Frank Gilbreth

– Cyclograph or motion recorder (1912)

Bricklaying Fencer

309


• Frank Gilbreth

– Wire models (1912)

Wire model of foreman

on drill press. Perfect movement

310


• Ferdinand Saussure (1913)

– "parole" (a specific utterance in a language, performance) vs "langue" (the entire body of the language, competence)

– Structuralism: the phenomena of human life (e.g, language) are intelligible only inasmuch as they are part of a network of relationships

– A sign is meaningful only within the entire network of signs

– The meaning of a sign is its relationship to other signs (“Strictly speaking, there are no signs but only differences between signs”)

311



– Language is a field

– Meaning is generated through differences

between linguistic elements

– If one word were removed from a language, the

meanings of all other words would be changed

312



– A sign requires both a signifier and a signified (a concept in the mind)

– The relation between a signifier and a signified is arbitrary (the meaning of a sign is totally arbitrary)

– The relations between signifier and signified form a sign

– The structure of language is the negative relation among signs: one sign is what it is because it is not another sign

– It is the difference between signifiers that matters, not the signified

– Semiotics: science of signs

313



– Linguistic sign: the signifier is the sound and the signified is the thought

– A linguistic sign is a link between a sound and a concept (not the link between a name and a thing)

– Phoneme: the basic unit of language

– Morpheme: the basic unit of signification

– Mytheme: the basic unit of myth

– Phonemes can stand in two kinds of relationship: diachronic ("horizontal") and synchronic ("vertical")

314


• Structuralism

– Language is a system of signs having no

reference to anything outside itself

315


• Jazz

316



317



– Gravitation

• Finite speed of light is incompatible with Newton’s instantaneous gravitational attraction

• Need for a theory of gravitation that is consistent with Relativity

• Planets don’t fall in a straight line, they move in curved lines.

318



– The problem is light again

• Light is made of particles (photons)

• Photons are subject to gravity

• Light is affected by gravity

• Then space and time must look different from

inside and from outside a gravitational field

319



– Galileo’s principle: all bodies fall equally fast in a gravitational field

– Acceleration of a body under gravity must be independent of the body’s mass

– Thus gravitational mass and inertial mass must be the same (Newton postulated it but it did not prove it)

– The effect of a gravitational field is just like the effect of an acceleration (of an “accelerating reference frame”)

– It is no possible to distinguish between gravitational and accelerational forces by experiment (e.g, an acceleration of 9.8 m/sec^2 in outer space is "equivalent" to gravitational force on the Earth)

320



– The principle of relativity for systems accelerated with respect to one another

– Principle of Equivalence: Forces produced by gravity are in every way equivalent to forces produced by acceleration

– All forces (gravitational or not) are due to acceleration

– Free-fall motion is natural motion

– If space-time is curved, free fall is a straight line: planets do fall in a straight line, but space is not flat

– No need for gravitational forces

321



– If all accelerated systems are equivalent, then

Euclidean geometry cannot hold in all of them

– Masses do not attract each other: they curve

spacetime

322



– Newton's hypothesis that every object attracts

every other object is unnecessary

– Newton postulated the existence of a gravitational

force and the equivalence of gravitational and

intertial mass: Einstein used the equivalence of

gravitational and inertial mass to get rid of the

gravitational force

323



– Masses curve spacetime

– Spacetime's curvature determines the motion of masses

– Einstein's equivalent of the law of gravity: Every object, which is not subject to external forces, moves along a geodesic of spacetime (the shortest route between two points on a warped surface), its “world line” (the equivalent of a straight line in flat space)

– Spacetime “is” the gravitational field

324



– When an object appears (in 3D space) to be "at

rest" but under the effect of gravitational

attraction, it is actually being "accelerated"

(attracted) towards the center of the earth along

its world-line (in 4D spacetime) which happens

to be curved by the spacetime curvature caused

by the Earth's mass

– It is spacetime that is curved, not the geodesic.

325



– Gravitation is not a force

– Physics = Geometry of space-time

– Gravitation = space-time curvature

– Relativity theory is ultimately about the nature of gravitation

– Relativity explains gravitation in terms of curved space-time, i.e. Geometry

– ”Gravitational force" becomes an effect of the geometry of space-time

326



– The curvature of space-time is measured by a “curvature tensor” (Riemann’s geometry)

– Each point is described by ten numbers (metric tensor)

– Euclid's geometry is one of the infinite possible metric tensors (zero curvature)

– Other geometries describe spaces that are not flat, but have warps

– What causes the “warps” is energy-mass

– Clocks slow down in a gravitational field

– Light is deflected in a gravitational field

327



– Trivia: he was competing with Hilbert (who in

fact submitted his paper 5 days before

Einstein’s)

328



– Einstein’s last note

329



330



– Cosmological constant to counterbalance

the effect of gravity, so as to retain a static

universe

– God: Spinoza’s pantheism

– A new idea of science:

331



– Newton's Physics leads to the Enlightenment

– Darwin's Biology leads to Communism,

Fascism, Capitalism

– Einstein's Relativity leads to self-

determination movements (Western

civilization is not the center of the world, just

one of the many parts of it)

332


• Benedetto Croce (1917) – Only spirit exists, the world is an illusion

– Spirit manifests itself in four forms: Aesthetics (individual thought), Logic (collective thought), Economics (individual practice) and Ethics (collective practice).

– Human creative power is better represented by Art than Science

– History is philosophy in motion, an interpretation of the past in terms of the present

333


• Oswald Spengler (1918)

– Cyclical theory of the rise and decline of

civilizations

– Cultures are organisms

– Becoming is a primary concept, being is what

has “become”, so secondary

– Culture is the becoming, Civilisation is the

become

– Muslims, Jews and Christians are Magian:

cavern-like world, mosques/cathedrals

334



– Ancient Greece and Rome are Apollonian:

focus on the the human body, the local and

the present, opposition of form and matter

(classical buildings begin from the outside)

– Post-medieval Western Europe is Faustian:

focus on infinite space, opposition of force

and mass (modern buildings begin from the

inside)

335



– Democracy is driven by money through media

– Democracy inevitably leads to dictatorship, in

which money is no longer important

– Man makes history, Woman is history (and

cannot comprehend politics)

336


• World War I

– Europe in 1900

337


• World War I

– Austria

338


• World War I

– Causes

• Rapid mass mobilization

• Population explosion

• Decline of the Papacy

• Colonialism

• Nations (nationalist spirit)

339


• World War I

– Causes

• Assassination of Alexander I of Serbia (1903)

• Moroccan crisis (1905)

• Bosnian crisis (1908)

• Agadir crisis (1911)

• Balkan wars (1912-13) - Serbia doubles in size

340


• World War I

– Causes

• Alliances

AUSTRIA

GERMANY

FRANCE

RUSSIA

BRITAIN OTTOMANS

ITALY 1915

USA 1917

SERBIA attacks

alliance

1914

1879

1894

1904

Pan-Slavic movement


• World War I

– Causes – a false era of peace

• Concert of Europe: 1815-1914 No major wars in the European continent

• Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece fight Ottoman rule

• Austria supports independence movements but then replaces the Ottomans with itself

• Slavs (led by Serbia and supported by Russia) resent rule of Austria-Hungary

• Russia aims for Istanbul and a sphere of influence in the Slavic world (e.g., Balkans)

• Italy and Turkey fight a war (1912)

• British alliances with former enemies: Japan 1902, France 1904, Russia 1907


• World War I

– Causes – the Middle East


• World War I

– Whose war?

• The war was started by an accident

• Its precursors were ethnic and nationalism wars in the Balkans

• But it quickly becomes an ideological war

– Britain fights to uphold international law

– France fights to defend “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (political rights)

– Germany fights the mediocrity of democracy and the materialism of capitalism

– Germany fights for progress against Britain and France who fight for the status quo


• World War I

– Whose war?

• The diplomats mourn the end of an era of peace

and mutual respect

• The masses celebrate ecstatically

• The diplomats find the slaughter senseless

• The masses find the slaughter exciting

345


• World War I

– War machine (“all arms” battles)

• Firepower (200 divisions)

• Grenades, cannons, machine guns, torpedoes,

bombs

– Battle of the Frontiers: first time that

French, British and German soldiers

experienced modern firepower

– Within four months Austria has lost one

million soldiers

346


• World War I

– War machine (“all arms” battles)

• Transportation: battleships, submarines,

zeppelins, air bombs (pioneered by Italy in

1911) and air fighters, trains, cars, trucks,

tanks (battle of Cambrai, 1917)

• Lack of adequate communication (no radio or

telephone)

• Demise of the horse as the main assault

vehicle

347


• World War I

– War machine

• Oil and the internal combustion engine change

the very meaning of the word “war”

• At the end of the war Britain had more than

100,000 gasoline-powered vehicles (the USA

had 50,000)

• 1917: The USA accounts for 67% of the

world’s oil output

348


• World War I

– Business opportunity

• The USA, Holland, Switzerland and

Scandinavia profit from the war

• The Dow Jones index rises 80% between Dec

1914 and Dec 1915

349


• World War I

– Psychological war

• Propaganda (press, cinema)

• Criminalization of the enemy

• The masses enthusiastically support the war and

volunteer to die

• USA: the sinking of the Lusitania (1201

passengers die)

350


• World War I

– Information war

• Germany relies on wireless transmissions for its navy

• Britain’s “Room 40” (staffed with academics by Reginald Hall) captures German secret code for wireless transmission within four months of the start of the war

• Room 40 helps the USA prevent German propaganda in the USA and exposes German plans in the USA (1916: Germany supports Pancho Villa and invites Mexico to enter the war)

351

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Serbia, Russia, France, Britain, Japan,

Canada, Australia, Italy (1915), China

(1917), USA (1917), Romania win against

Austria, Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria

352

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– 60 million men mobilized

– Casualties: 8 million in battle

• Russia 2m

• Germany 1.8m

• France 1.3m

• Austria 1.2m

• Britain 900,000

• Turkey 600,000

• Italy 500,000

• USA 116,000

– British economic blockade of Germany causes more than 700,000 civilian deaths

353

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– 10,000 soldiers died in the last six hours of war,

after Germany and Austria had already

surrendered

354

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Winners and Losers

• Britain

• France

• Germany

• Austria

• Russia

• Japan

• USA

• Italy

• Turkey

355

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Winners and Losers

• Triumph of the nation state (Britain, France,

Italy, Japan)

• Defeat of the multi-ethnic multi-national

empires (Austria, Ottoman)

• Demise of a monarch ruling over a collection of

nations

356

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Winners

• Gavrilo Princip achieves his goals:

destruction of the Austro-Hungarian empire

and independence of Yugoslavia

• But Serbia pays a huge price: highest

casualties as % of the population

357

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– New countries:

• Poland (part of Austria and Germany)

• Czechoslovakia

• Yugoslavia

• Hungary

• Romania doubles in size

• Iraq (multi-ethnic), Palestine (multi-ethnic), Transjordan, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon (multi-ethnic), Saudi Arabia

• Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine

• Soviet Union

358

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– New countries:

• Austro-Hungarian empire

359

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– New countries:

• Several regions of the Ottoman empire

360

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– New countries:

• Wilson's principle of self-determination dissolves the multi-ethnic empires…

• … but 30 million people find themselves on the wrong side of a border, especially in the Balkans

361

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– New powers:

• In 1917, provoked by Germany, the USA enters the war

• In 1917, supported by Germany, the Bolsheviks seize power in Russia

362

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– WW1: End of the multi-ethnic empires within

Europe (notable exception: Soviet Union)

– WW2: End of the European empires outside

Europe

– Cold War: End of the Soviet Union (last multi-

ethnic empire run by Europeans)

363

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Creation of chronic instability

• Miniature empires run by one ethnic group:

– Yugoslavia (run by Serbs over Croats, Slovenes, Muslims)

– Poland (run by Poles over Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Belorussians, Jews)

– Czechoslovakia (run by Czechs over Germans, Slovaks, Ukrainians and Hungarians)

– Romania (run by Romanians over Hungarians)

364

The Victorian Age

• World War I


• Miniature empires run by one ethnic group:

– Poland makes enemies by its wars of

expansion of 1919-1923 that double its size

(Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania,

Russia)

– Balkan wars

365

The Victorian Age

• World War I


• Decentralization of control from empires to small independent nations

• Shift from wars among great powers towards regional violence

• Economic crises caused by partitioning of ethnic groups (especially in former Austria-Hungary)

• First era of hyper-inflation since the 16th century

366

The Victorian Age • World War I

– Grievances of the Versailles Treaty

• Russia loses Finland, Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Crimea

– Lenin’s communism

• Hungary loses a lot of territory

– Bela Kun’s communism

• Germany morally wins the war it was fighting (against expansionist Tsarist Russia) but is declared the main loser (and Germans were forced to live under Slavs)

– Hitler’s nazism

• Turkey loses its Arab satellites

– Ataturk’s revolution

367

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Grievances of the Versailles Treaty

• Italy: does not obtain Dalmatia

– Mussolini’s fascism

• France: 1.4 million men killed

– Raymond Poincare, determined to get

reparations from Germany

368

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Peak of the British Empire

• Obtains Tanzania and Namibia from Germany, Jordan and Iraq from Ottomans

• One fourth of the Earth

• Largest navy

• Largest air force

• Dominant power in the Middle East (besides India and West Africa)

• The Indian Ocean becomes a British “lake” (naval bases from South Africa to Kenya to Aden to India to Singapore to Australia)

369


– British Empire: Population: 400 million (65 million whites of

which 20 live in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa)

370

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– British Empire: Population: 400 million (65 million

whites of which 20 live in Canada, Australia, New

Zealand, South Africa)

– At the end of the war the British army has 8.5

people, of which 5.7 are from Britain, 1.4 from India,

630,000 from Canada, 420,000 from Australia,

136,000 from South Africa and 129,000 from New

Zealand plus about 300,000 Egyptian, black African

and Chinese laborers

371


– Peak of the British Empire

• Most of Africa’s mineral wealth + most of Africa’s

agricultural land + most of Middle Eastern oil +

India’s unlimited supply of labor

372

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Britain: the only remaining military power

• France: political instability

• Germany: war-reparation debt

• Russia: civil war

• Austria: dismantled

• Turkey: dismantled

• USA: isolationist

373


– Self-determination spreads to the British Empire

• The League of Nations (Wilson) and the Versailles Treaty spread the idea of self-determination to the British Empire

• 1917: Edwin-Samuel Montagu is appointed secretary of state for India and champions India’s independence

• April 1919: British massacre of Hindus at Amritsar, the beginning of large-scale riots In India (against the British, among different sects, against the Indian political class, etc)

• 1921: Ireland becomes independent having won an independence war, the first time since the USA

374

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Futility of the French Empire

• African colonies acquired for prestige not

economic interests

• Indochina a forced-labor system

• Most French investment goes to Algeria

375

The Victorian Age

• World War I

– Death of God

• Marx, Freud, Nietzsche and Einstein (all

Germans) create a world in which God is no

longer the prime mover of human history.

• World War I creates a world in which God-

appointed monarchs are no longer in control

• Secular ideology (fascism, nazism,

communism, capitalism) replaces religion

376

The Victorian Age

Piero Scaruffi

Copyright 2018

http://www.scaruffi.com/know

• Continued on victoart.ppt

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