Curiosity and Science, Intent and Wisdom 11:22

Posted on June 4, 2022 by Brian H. Gill

Louis William Wain's (1860-1939) 'A curious cat.' Originally a gift from the artist to Ernest Ralph, Wain's barber in Napsbury. (ca. 1930)
(From Bonhams auction house, used w/o permission.)
(Louis William Wain’s “A curious cat.” (ca. 1930))

As a behavior, curiosity is part of being a rat, a cat, or a human.

In humans, at least, it’s also an emotion.

Whether the decline in curiosity exhibited by many of us as we mature is a natural process, or is the result of education1 — that’s a can of worms I’ll ignore today.

Cultural values very likely also encourage, or discourage, curiosity. Happily, there’s more to my native culture than this proverb:

“Curiosity killed the cat,” meaning:

  • Curiosity can get you in trouble sometimes
    (Common Proverbs, LSI Education, London)
  • Stop asking questions
    (English idioms, Resources for learning English, EF/Education First)

Mad Scientists and Being Human

Studio Foglio's Mr. Squibbs, used w/o permission.Again, there’s more to my culture’s attitude toward curiosity than “stop asking questions.”

Although you’d never know it from our tales of mad scientists, rife with warnings against the folly of “tampering with things man was not supposed to know.”

“Dr. James Xavier: “I’m blind to all but a tenth of the universe.”
Dr. Sam Brant: “My dear friend, only the gods see everything.”
Dr. James Xavier: “My dear doctor, I’m closing in on the gods.”
(“X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes” (1963), via IMDB.com)

In contrast, we’ve got folks like Chesterton and Samuel Johnson.

“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.”
(“Heretics,” Chapter III: “On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small”, G. K. Chesterton (1905) via Wikiquote)

“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”
(“The Rambler,” Samuel Johnson (1750-1752) via Wikiquote)

My view is close to Chesterton’s, that there’s no such thing as an uninteresting subject. But that’s my preference, or opinion. It matters to me, but isn’t therefore a universal truth.

So, is curiosity a good idea or a bad one?

St. Augustine, Ignorance, Foolishness and Metaphorical Cloaks

A frontispiece for 'Historia Mundi Naturalis,' by Pliny the Elder, published Sigmund Feyerabend, Frankfurt am Main. (1582)As usual, it’s not that simple.

Neither is what St. Augustine of Hippo had to say about curiosity in his “Confessions.”

“Notwithstanding, in how many most petty and contemptible things is our curiosity daily tempted, and how often we give way, who can recount?”
(“Confessions,” Book X, St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 400 A.D.) Trans. Edward Bouverie Pusey, via Gutenberg.org)

Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and uninjuriousness;
(“Confessions,” Book II, St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 400 A.D.) Trans. Edward Bouverie Pusey, via Gutenberg.org)

Making sense of curiosity, and avoiding foolishness, wasn’t any easier 14 and a half centuries after St. Augustine of Hippo wrote his “Confessions.” And wasn’t any less controversial, I strongly suspect.

Science, Social Justice and Getting a Grip

Wiley Miller's Non Sequitur: The Church of Danae vs. logic and the laws of physics. (August 24, 2016) used w/o permission.Not quite a millennium and a half after St. Augustine of Hippo’s day, Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci became Pope Leo XIII.

The late 19th century was not good times for folks who like the status quo.

New ideas and festering old attitudes were getting along about as well as fire and oil, cobra and mongoose.

From 1878 to 1903, Pope Leo XIII insisted that both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism were bad ideas, and that workers deserved decent wages and safe working conditions.

I figure he upset a great many folks, and I think that he was right.

Oversimplifying Pope Leo XIII’s position on social justice, science, and theology, something fearful: he reminded us that both God and truth matter. And that neither is going to get in the way of our faith.

Seems obvious, putting it that way. To me, at any rate. But I wasn’t brought up believing that faith meant putting my mind on “hold.”

Meanwhile, Darwin’s “Origin of Species” mixed with the efforts of liberal Anglicans to pry England’s schools loose from Henry VIII’s state church.

With results similar to what you’d get from a blender set to “puree,” with the lid off.

Meanwhile, archaeology was becoming less of an amateur treasure-hunting sport and more of a legitimate scholarly pursuit. And, perhaps inevitably, we got both ‘Biblical archaeology’ and ‘Bible science,’ AKA ‘creation science.’

Happily, somewhere in the early to mid 20th century, ‘Biblical’ archaeologists started focusing more on unraveling part of humanity’s long story, and less on confirming their assumptions. Stalwart anti-evolutionists, on the other hand, carried on.2

I’ll give ardent champions of both ‘Biblical’ studies credit for enthusiasm and imagination.

Making Sense and Other Alternatives

ArchonMagnus' diagram of scientific method.But deciding what’s real first, and then selecting facts that fit the preferred conclusion?

I can’t see that as a good idea.

Starting with a conclusion, making up questions that’ll prove it, and then picking facts that give the ‘right’ answers is pretty much the opposite of scientific method.3

That sort of alleged “science,” used as arguments for believing what folks like Ussher said the Bible says? It’s not just bad science. It’s “faith” based on fictions. Or, at best, based on codified folklore.

I’ll grant that ‘creation science’ media has been a tried and true staple for some — not all — Christian retailers.

But I also think that real-world analogs to Non Sequitur’s “Church of Danae” encourage the notion that religion in general and Christianity in particular don’t make sense.

Lovecraft’s “Placid Island of Ignorance”

Nottsuo's 'Shoggoth.' (2016)Then there’s H. P. Lovecraft and his “placid island of ignorance” attitude.

Lovecraft apparently started out as a conventional American Protestant.

Then, in 1902, he started learning about space, got interested in astronomy, and realized that this universe is really, really big.

That, World War I, plus Lovecraft’s interest in Nietzsche and Mencken, gave us his cosmicism philosophy and the Cthulhu mythos.4

I like reading tales like “The Call of Cthulhu,” but don’t share his attitude toward the “terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein….”

Possibly because my faith didn’t require that I see Earth as the center of everything before I became a Catholic, and still doesn’t.

“…The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. … The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age….”
(“The Call of Cthulhu,” H. P. Lovecraft (1929); via WikiQuote)

A Pope, a Saint, the Bible, and “Terrifying Vistas”

Detail, Hubble Space Telescope's ACS' view of NGC 602 and N90. (July 14/18, 2004) from NASA/Hubble, used w/o permission. (NGC 602 is an open cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud.)Before looking — make that glancing — at what St. Thomas Aquinas said about curiosity, here’s how Pope Leo XIII, St. Augustine of Hippo and the Bible say about those “terrifying vistas.”

“…God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures — and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures. … Even if the difficulty is after all not cleared up and the discrepancy seems to remain, the contest must not be abandoned; truth cannot contradict truth….”
(“Providentissimus Deus,” Pope Leo XIII (November 18, 1893) [emphasis mine])

“Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air…. They all answer you, ‘Here we are, look; we’re beautiful.’…
“…So in this way they arrived at a knowledge of the god who made things, through the things which he made.”
(Sermon 241, St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 411) [emphasis mine])

“Indeed, before you the whole universe is like a grain from a balance,
or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.
“But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things;
and you overlook sins for the sake of repentance.”
(Wisdom 11:22–23 [emphasis mine])

“God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.”
(Genesis 1:31 [emphasis mine])

Lovecraft Lives??

E. J. Pace's 'The Descent of the Modernists,' from 'Christian Cartoons.' (1922)(From E. J. Pace, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(A scary picture from “Christian Cartoons,” E. J. Price. (1922))

Another quote/excerpt, partly because I like the title’s take on “curiosity killed the cat,” and partly because “being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose” sounds downright Lovecraftian.

“Curiosity killed the cat, but it may help you get the Nobel prize“
BioFrontiers Institute, University of Colorado (March 17, 2017)

“I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is so far as I can tell — it does not frighten me.”
(Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out)

I don’t see a point in being frightened by what humanity hasn’t learned yet, or by what we have been learning.

As for being lost in this universe, that’s really not an issue; since I’ll be spending my life here on Earth. Only a few folks have left humanity’s home, and then only for a few days. So far. And that’s another topic.

Living in a Vast and Ancient Universe
Collage of Andrew Z. Colvin's 'Earth's Location in the Universe' diagrams, via Wikimedia Commons.

In any case, I’m a Catholic.

My faith doesn’t depend on opinions held by Ussher or any other European scholar, a few centuries back: before we began learning how vast and ancient this universe is.

Detail, 'The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme,' The Hubble Heritage Project. Space Telescope Science Institute. (April 24, 2007) Via Wikimedia Commons.And it’s sure not threatened by knowledge of this wonder-packed universe. Or, for that matter, by what we don’t know.

“No matter where and how far we look, nowhere do we find a contradiction between religion and natural science. On the contrary, we find a complete concordance in the very points of decisive importance. Religion and natural science do not exclude each other, as many contemporaries of ours would believe or fear. They mutually supplement and condition each other. …”
“…Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against scepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and always will be: ‘On to God!’“
(“Religion and Natural Science,” Lecture about the relationship between religion and science. Originally entitled Religion und Naturwissenschaft. (1937) Complete translation into English: “Max Planck: Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers” (1968); via Wikiquote [emphasis mine])

“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the firmament proclaims the works of his hands.”
(Psalms 19:2)

“The Vice of Curiosity?”

Detail, Gentile da Fabriano's 'Coronation of the Virgin,' gable painting, right inner panel, showing St. Thomas Aquinas.' (ca. 1400)Now, finally, a (very) little of what St. Thomas Aquinas said about “the vice of curiosity” in “Summa Theologica.”

“…As stated above (II-II:166:2 ad 2) studiousness is directly, not about knowledge itself, but about the desire and study in the pursuit of knowledge. Now we must judge differently of the knowledge itself of truth, and of the desire and study in the pursuit of the knowledge of truth. For the knowledge of truth, strictly speaking, is good, but it may be evil accidentally, by reason of some result, either because one takes pride in knowing the truth, according to 1 Corinthians 8:1, ‘Knowledge puffeth up,’ or because one uses the knowledge of truth in order to sin….”
(“Summa Theologica,” Second Part of the Second Part, Question 167; St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century) Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920) via NewAdvent [emphasis mine])

First off, the “accidentally” St. Thomas Aquinas talks about here isn’t the “I ran off the road accidentally” sense of the word.

An “accident” can be an unplanned event, a fallacy, an abrupt geological discontinuity, or a philosophical idea. Then there’s Accident, Maryland, and that’s yet another topic.5

In context, I’m pretty sure that this “accidentally” is the philosophical variety: a property something has which is not part of its essential nature, and which can change.

A brick, for example, could be painted brown, blue or green. But it would still be a brick. The brick’s colors are there “accidentally,” while the brick remains essentially a brick.

So, if knowledge of truth truth is basically good, how could it possibly be bad?

Pretty easily, actually, since we have free will and have been dealing with consequences of a really daft decision. (Genesis 1:31; 3:1-19; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 385-412, 1730-1742)

Quarks, Truth and Intent

The 'Flammarion Woodcut, from his 'L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire.' (1888)Next, “Summa” shows us how someone can use studiousness for a wrong reason.

I gather that it’s a matter of intent. (Catechism, 1750-1756, 1789)

“…for instance those who study to know the truth that they may take pride in their knowledge. Hence Augustine says (De Morib. Eccl. 21): ‘Some there are who forsaking virtue, and ignorant of what God is, and of the majesty of that nature which ever remains the same, imagine they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world. So great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue.’…”
(“Summa Theologica,” Second Part of the Second Part, Question 167; St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century) Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920) via NewAdvent [emphasis mine])

I don’t run into scientific triumphalism nearly as much now as I did in my youth. Although now and again I read someone’s rehash of ‘now that we understand the laws of nature.’

Cush's diagram of Standard Model of elementary particles, plus hypothetical gravitons. (2017)And I suspect that scientists are becoming less the old-school aristocratic scholars, and more a bunch of giddy nerds.

I mean to say, giving newly-discovered elementary particles monikers like “quark” and “gluon” — which come in red, green, blue and five other color singlet states?6

I strongly suspect they’re having fun, as well as trying to unscrew the inscrutable. And that’s yet again another topic.

Or maybe not so much. I like the informal turn science seems to have been taking, but don’t and won’t claim that ‘through nerdishness shalt thou be savethed.’

I’m pretty sure that a nerd could get as self-absorbed as the stuffiest stuffed-shirt man of science.

To Be Continued
Hubble Space Telescope's ACS image: NGC 602 and N90 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. With Wisdom 11:22 text.

The trick, for me at least, is remembering that God’s God, I’m not — for which we should all be thankful. And that’s still more topics.

I had more to say about Question 167, Second Part of the Second Part, in “Summa Theologica:” including why I started reading it. But I’ve run out of time this week, so that must wait.

Thanks for reading this — and please click the “Like this” button, below.

That’s all I’ve got this week, except for the usual links:

1 Being interested

2 A Saint, a pope, an activist, history and weirdness:

3 Dealing with truth, one way or another:

4 On the edge of “terrifying vistas:”

5 Philosophy and a town in Maryland:

6 It’s elementary:

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A Roman Founding Myth and Aeneas, Action Hero

Posted on May 28, 2022 by Brian H. Gill

Agostino Carracci's 'Aeneas and his family fleeing Troy.' (1595)
(From Agostino Carracci, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wikimedia Commons; used w/o permission.)

I figure folks have been hankering for the ‘good old days’ since long before we started keeping written records. And occasionally preserving them.

The records, I mean. Not the ‘good old days.’

Change happens, which is anything but a new idea.

“πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει”
“Everything changes and nothing stands still.”
(Heraclitus; (ca. 500 B.C.) via Plato’s “Cratylus,” Diogenes Laërtius in “Lives of the Philosophers” Book IX, section 8; one of many translations/Wikiquote)

Since I’m a Catholic, I think this universe is in a “state of journeying,” “in statu viae.” It’s moving toward an ultimate perfection, but isn’t there yet. Everything and everyone in this world helps move it along. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 302, 306-308)

Or gets in the way.

We’ve got free will. Folks sometimes behave badly. But, happily, God is large and in charge. We do have reason to keep hoping. And working to make this a better world. (Catechism, 268-274, 309-314, 1730-1742, 1817-1821, 1928-1942, 2415-2449)

Large and In Charge? God, Human Nature, and Consequences

Location of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Wikipedia Maps.The mass murder in an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school has been headline news this week, so I’d better clarify “God is large and in charge;” and why my faith isn’t shaken when someone decides to hurt others.

God makes everything. Including us. God said that everything and everyone is “very good.” Then the first of us decided that their ‘I want’ outranked their relationship with God. We’ve been making daft decisions ever since. (Genesis 1:31; 3:1-19; Catechism, 385-412)

As I see it, humanity and human nature was and is basically good. But we’re wounded, dealing with consequences of a very bad decision.

I suppose God could have overridden our free will, making us into nice and orderly little robots. Can’t say that I see that as an appealing idea.

Instead, we’re still human: with all the authority, power and responsibility that goes along with our nature. I’ve talked about that before.1

This Week: Golden Ages, Troy and a Founding Myth

Screenshot from a 20th Century Fox trailer for 'Gentlemen_Prefer_Blondes.' Marilyn Monroe and men in formal attire. (1953) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.Although I’ll occasionally get nostalgic, I’m convinced that trying to drag society back to some imagined golden age is impossible.

Which is a good thing, since the ‘good old days’ I remember — weren’t.

And I’m as sure as I can be, that we’ve never had Hesiod’s Golden Age.

Although some ‘good old days’ were objectively better than an unpleasant present.

This week I’ll be talking about Hesiod’s and other golden ages, Troy and the Late Bronze Age collapse, and one of Rome’s founding myths.

Once and Future Golden Ages

Scott Adams' 'Dilbert.' Dogbert's Good News Show. (April 30, 1993
(From Scott Adams, used w/o permission.)

Calling the ‘good old days’ a Golden Age arguably started with Hesiod’s “Works and Days,” composed around 700 B.C. — assuming that Hesiod was Hesiod and that’s another topic.

At any rate, Hesiod described five ages: Golden, Silver, Bronze, Heroic and Iron.

Everybody got along during Hesiod’s Golden Age, nobody got old and everyone had enough to eat. Then pretty much everything and everyone went downhill.

Hesiod said that his ‘now’ — when the population of places like Athens and Knossos had grown to maybe 5,000 — was the Iron Age. And that life in the Iron Age is all toil and hardship, with nothing but the decline of all moral and religious standards ahead.

Sounds a lot like the doomsayers of my youth, actually.

And today’s headlines: not the same bogeymen, but the same ‘we’ll all die’ attitude.

Hesiod-style Golden Ages and their lower-case ‘good old days’ metaphoric analogs have been endemic in Western civilization ever since. Alternating with the equally-sensible apocalyptic visions of scaremongers.

Seeing ‘today’ as less than ideal isn’t uniquely Greek, or Western.

Yongxinge's photo: detail of a painting in the Long Corridor, Summer Palace, Beijing. (2006) Folks in south Asia have the Satya Yuga, AKA Krita Yuga, segment of the Yuga Cycle.

Folks in one of my ancestral homelands looked forward, if you can call it that, to Ragnarök: which would be anything but a golden age.

On the other hand, Völuspá says that survivors will get together on Iðavöllr and build the city of Gimlé. All of which is debatable and debated,2 although I see it as an example of a ‘good old days’ or golden age that hasn’t happened yet.

Fear, Phaedrus and Social Media

Hedwig Storch's photo of Thutmosis III cartouches in the temple at Deir el-Bahari. Photo taken May 14, 2011I see many ‘good old days’ and ‘golden ages’ as at least partly subjective.

Take Plato’s somewhat crotchety Socrates, in “Phaedrus,” for example.

“…this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. … you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth … they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality…”
“Phaedrus,” Plato, (ca. 370 B.C.) Benjamin Jowett, trans; via Project Gutenberg)

“External written characters” weren’t exactly new in Socrates’ day. Folks in Greece had been adapting Phoenician script to their language for at least three and a half centuries.3

But judging from Plato’s version of Socrates’ viewpoint, writing was still a newfangled and potentially disruptive force. In the eyes of folks who put high value on rote memorization, at any rate.

Ironically, we know about Socrates mainly because Plato and others wrote down his ideas. And that’s yet another topic.

Or maybe not so much.

Plato’s Socrates saw writing as something that would keep folks from really thinking about ideas. Sort of like today’s fears that social media makes folks into shallow nitwits.

More than 23 centuries later, I think Plato’s Socrates was right. Sort of.

I learned to read as a child, and have read a great deal. But I can’t recite even a short poem like Tennyson’s “Ulysses” from memory. Not without re-reading and rehearsing it.

My rote memory skills aren’t what they would have been in an unlettered society.

On the other hand, because I can read — I have access to Plato’s dialogues, translated into my native language. And a great deal more.

Forgetting, and Rediscovering, Troy

The Troy Excavation Archive, Canakkale's photo: bronze seal with Luwian hieroglyphs. Found in Troy VI. (1995)
(From The Troy Excavation Archive, Canakkale; via Smithsonian Magazine; used w/o permission.)
(A bronze seal with Luwian writing, found in the ruins of Troy.)

Other ‘good old days’ were objectively better than the then-current here and now.

Take folks who had been living in Troy, for example. Those who got out in time.

Seven centuries before Socrates was born, four or five centuries before Homer’s day, Troy was a great city of the northeastern Aegean.

It’s not there any more, and hasn’t been for millennia.

In 1995, an archaeologist found a Luwian hieroglyphic inscription on a bronze seal in the ruins of Troy. Some scholars think Trojans spoke Luwian back then, but we’re not sure.

Meanwhile, folks over in what would be Greece were flourishing, introducing new technology and innovative architecture. They were literate folks, using a written language we call Linear B.

Then, somewhere between 1200 and 1150 B.C., something went horribly wrong.4

The End of Civilization as They Knew It: Death, Destruction and Then the Greek Dark Ages

Finn Bjørklid's (?) map showing the Bronze Age collapse.Cities burned. Bodies in Karaoğlan were left unburied — that’s the site’s Turkish name, we don’t know what its people called their city — and survivors for the most part forgot how to write.

I don’t blame them. For some time, just staying alive would very likely have been a full-time job.

Survivors in Mycenaean Greece stopped using Linear B. It took them centuries to start redeveloping an alphabet based on Phoenician script.

Homer’s “Iliad” is the only account of the Trojan War I’ve heard of. Assuming that Homer actually composed the epic poem, roughly four centuries after the disaster.

And that the legendary author was really real.

I’ve read that since Homer didn’t really exist, he couldn’t have written the “Iliad,” and anyway he couldn’t write.

Can’t argue with logic like that. And that’s yet again another topic.

Somewhere between the time Odoacer deposed Augustulus and London’s Fleet Prison finally closed, Western scholars decided that Troy hadn’t ever existed. Then Schliemann found Trojan ruins.

Troy and the Trojan War was still a debatable, or debated at any rate, topic when I earned my history degree.

Then we learned that the Trojan War was just part of an apocalypse we now call the Late Bronze Age collapse.5

Roman Origins and Aeneas

Ron Beck/USGS Eros Data Center Satellite Systems Branch image of Rome, Italy, from Landsat 7 data. (August 3, 2001)
(from Ron Beck, USGS Eros Data Center Satellite Systems Branch, via NASA’s earthobservatory, used w/o permission.)
(Rome, Italy: an image from the Landsat 7 satellite. (August 3, 2001))

Folks have been living where Rome is today for at least 14,000 years. We’re pretty sure that what became the city of Rome got started around 770 B.C. — give or take a half-century.

Various Roman historians came up with their own ‘year one’ for Rome, using one or another of the Olympiads as reference points. Or, in Cato the Elder’s case, the Trojan War.

Putting Rome’s founding 432 years after the Trojan War meshes well with the “Aeneid:” Virgil’s tale of Roman origins.

The “Aeneid” could be based on actual events, since Trojan refugees would have been well-advised to head west, away from what we call the Late Bronze Age collapse.

But whether Virgil’s Aeneas is based on a real Trojan survivor, or is a sort of Roman Molly Pitcher, depends on who’s talking.

And small wonder. The Trojan hero was mentioned by Homer: who didn’t exist, according to an occasionally-fashionable academic view.

The earliest stories about Aeneas left a paper trail that starts around 750 B.C., give or take. That’s about four centuries after the Trojan War.

Since then, his story has been re-imagined and re-told by Virgil, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Livy, Ovid, Snorri Sturlason — his Aeneas was named Mennon — Guido delle Colonne and others. So I’d be surprised if what we know about Aeneas wasn’t a trifle muddled.6

Getting back to Virgil’s Aeneas, he’s a larger-than-life hero who leads Trojan survivors through assorted adventures, finally settling on hills by the Tiber river.

Aeneas: Action Hero

Pieter Schoubroeck's 'Aeneas trägt seinen Vater Anchises aus dem brennendem Troja.' (1606))
(from Pieter Schoubroeck; via Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wikipedia; used w/o permission.)

Virgil’s “Aeneid” wasn’t so much a biography of Aeneas as it was Rome’s national epic or founding myth: an origin story for Virgil’s Rome and Romans.

Cornè's 'Landing of the Pilgrims.' (ca. 1803-1807)Sort of like the Great American Novel, as imagined by some.

Or, I’d say, more like the mythologized Pilgrim Fathers; as described in holiday specials during my youth.

Instead of trying to summarize Virgil’s 9,896 lines of dactylic hexameter, I’ll skip over the judgement of Paris, Trojan horse, Dido and a whole mess of Roman gods: re-telling what’s left as an action-adventure story.

Barely escaping Troy’s destruction, Aeneas leads a small band of refugees away from the flaming ruins of their city and their world.

After encountering monsters, heroes, a queen and other refugees who are trying to build a new Troy, Aeneas descends through the underworld and learns that he’s destined to found a great city. Which he does, at Pallanteum, which became part of Rome.

Virgil’s “Aeneid” casts the Roman goddess Venus as the mother of Aeneas, with other Roman gods and goddesses replacing the Greek originals.

His epic was arguably every bit as mythic as Homer’s.

So was his Aeneas: who lived a life of Roman virtues, with a selfless sense of duty toward his familial, religious, and societal obligations.7 Although from my 21st century perspective, the Dido incident didn’t fit that pattern.

History, Myth and the Apotheosis of Washington

Detail of 'The Apotheosis of Washington,' United States Capitol rotunda; Constantino Brumidi. (1865)
(From Constantino Brumidi, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Detail of the U.S. Capital rotunda’s “The Apotheosis of Washington” fresco. (1865))

I’m forgetting something. Let’s see.

Heraclitus. Uvalde, Texas. Hesiod’s Golden Age and Linear B. An ancient apocalypse. Right.

Virgil’s “Aeneid” is a founding myth, or — from some academic viewpoints — either a warning against or praise of Augustus Caesar’s rule. And that’s still another topic.

But I’ve been talking about the “Aeneid” because I suspect that Virgil saw Troy and Trojans as the setting and citizens of a long-lost golden age. And that one of his goals was to show Rome as the rightful heir of his era’s metaphorical Camelot.

I think founding myths are important parts of a culture’s folklore.

So are tales of golden ages.

If nothing else, our Camelots and Pax Romanas let us imagine a better world: and would ideally inspire us to correct what’s wrong with our era, and preserve what’s right.

I also think remembering that myths aren’t history is vital. A myth can ‘truthfully’ teach attitudes and values without being objectively true.

But mythologizing a culture’s heroes, no matter how well-intentioned, can lead to — ah — remarkable images like “The Apotheosis of Washington” on the ceiling of my nation’s capitol rotunda.8 And that’s — you guessed it — another topic. Topics.

I’ve got more to say about golden ages; Rome’s good times, bad times and Tarquin the Proud; and, probably, the Oath of the Horatii. But that must wait for another day.

Meanwhile, here’s the usual list of related stuff:

1 Human nature and the existence of evil:

2 Ages, golden and otherwise:

3 A poet, philosophers and writing:

4 ‘It was the best of times,’ for a while:

5 Skipping lightly over the most recent three millennia:

6 Heroes and heroines, myths and legends:

7 Virgil’s Aeneas — Trojan prince, refugee and founder of a great city:

8 Old, and new, stories:

Posted in Golden Ages, Series | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

TAE and ITER: A Few Steps Closer to Fusion Power

Posted on May 21, 2022 by Brian H. Gill

JET/UKAEA's photo: inside their JET reactor.One way or another, energy is in the headlines nearly every day.

But I won’t be talking about the latest energy crisis, shortage or agreement.

Instead, I’ll be looking at developments in fusion power from a few months — and a few days — ago.

Getting Started: Fusion Basics

Converting Matter Into Energy: It’s Happening Every Second

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Solar Dynamics Observatory's photo: a coronal mass ejection. (August 31, 2012)
(From NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

We’ve been using fusion power since day one. In a sense.

Every second, our sun fuses around 600,000,000 tons of hydrogen, making about 596,000,000 tons of helium.

The missing four million tons of matter are converted into energy. A tiny fraction of it eventually reaches Earth, powering plants and giving us the occasional sunburn.

Hydrogen fusion happens in our sun’s core because stuff there is very dense and very hot.

Had I but world enough and time, this is where I’d start talking about plasma, nuclear binding energy, Arthur Eddington and Ivy Mike.1

But I don’t so I won’t. Not this week, at any rate.

Instead, I’ll take a quick — for me — look at progress made by scientists, technicians and AI on both sides of the Atlantic.

I’d intended to talk about this back in February. Then I got sick, and that’s another topic.

One Goal: Fusion Power — Two Approaches

ITER’s Tokamak: a Euro-British International Doughnut

JET/UKAEA's photo: inside their JET reactor; left, during a five-second pulse; right, with normal lighting.
(From TAE Technologies, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“The walls of the JET reactor were changed to a material made from beryllium and tungsten”
(BBC News))

“Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy”
Jonathan Amos, BBC News (February 9, 2022)

“European scientists say they have made a major breakthrough in their quest to develop practical nuclear fusion – the energy process that powers the stars.

“The UK-based JET laboratory has smashed its own world record for the amount of energy it can extract by squeezing together two forms of hydrogen.

“If nuclear fusion can be successfully recreated on Earth it holds out the potential of virtually unlimited supplies of low-carbon, low-radiation energy….”

The JET fusion reactor produced 50 megajoules of energy. Any word with “mega” in it sounds like a lot, but in this case it’s enough to boil the water in about 60 kettles.

Even so, it’s a big deal. The experiments show that JET’s design actually works. And that’s good news, since another reactor, being built in France, uses the same basic design.

JET has been developed, built and tested at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, as part of the ITER program.2

International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Origins: Very Briefly

BBC News' illustration of a nuclear fusion process.
(From BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Ultimately, the process would be used to drive steam turbines to generate electricity”
(BBC News))

“…The ITER facility in southern France is supported by a consortium of world governments, including from EU member states, the US, China and Russia. It is expected to be the last step in proving nuclear fusion can become a reliable energy provider in the second half of this century.

“Operating the power plants of the future based on fusion would produce no greenhouse gases and only very small amounts of short-lived radioactive waste….”
(Jonathan Amos, BBC News (February 9, 2022))

ITER stands or stood for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. It’s also “the way” or “the path” in Latin.

ITER’s roots go back to 1978, when the Soviet Union, European Atomic Energy Community, United States, and Japan started working together. The idea was to turn fusion power plants from a hypothetical pipe dream into a practical reality.

Their cooperation stayed hypothetical until Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet Union’s Communist Party general secretary. Today’s ITER started on October 24, 2007.

I have no idea whether this example of international cooperation will survive Putin’s efforts to disgrace Russia.3 And that’s yet another topic.

Meanwhile, in America

TAE Technologies' photo: one end of their C2W device, 'Norman'.
(From TAE Technologies, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(Meet TAE Technologies’ C2W, “Norman.”)

“Fusion race kicked into high gear by smart tech”
Paul Rincon, BBC News (February 10, 2022)

“A US company is speeding up the path to practical fusion energy by using Google’s vast computing power.

“By applying software that can improve on its own, TAE Technologies has cut down tasks that once took two months to just a few hours.

“Google has lent the firm its expertise in ‘machine learning’ in order to help accelerate the timeline for fusion.

“Nuclear fusion promises a plentiful supply of low-carbon energy, using the same process that powers the Sun….”

I’ll admit to a bias. I like what I’ve read about TAE.

First, but not most important, it’s an American company.

I like seeing folks anywhere using their God-given brains to solve problems and help others. But I also like seeing Americans doing the same thing.

Anyway, TAE is — from one viewpoint — doing everything wrong.

Instead of setting up their own department of paperwork, liasoning with a Federal Bureau of Blotting Paper and Inertia, and employing thousands of clerks whose sole purpose is filling out forms in quadruplicate — they’re actually doing research.

Don’t get me wrong. I think there’s a time and place for record-keeping and coordination.

And I strongly suspect that doing almost nothing but coordinating and record-keeping is what put Japan in the IIMD’s digital competitiveness ranking’s 27th place.

IIMD? There’s a whole mess of IIMDs out there. This one is the International Institute for Management Development. And seems that it calls itself IMD.

It’s a business education school in Lausanne, Switzerland and Singapore. I hadn’t heard about it until this week.

Anyway, TAE’s practical approach reminds me of Lockheed’s Skunk Works,4 and that’s yet again another topic.

TAE’s “Norman:” a Different Approach

TAE Technologies' illustration: an artist's rendering of C2W, 'Norman.'
(From TAE Technologies, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“Norman,” an artist’s conception.)

“…The company’s 30m (100ft) -long fusion cylinder — called C2W ‘Norman’ after TAE’s founder, physicist Norman Rostoker, who died in 2014 — represents a different approach to the doughnut-shaped ‘tokamak’ to be used for the world’s biggest fusion experiment, the multi-billion-euro ITER project….

“…[TAE CEO Dr Michl Binderbauer] says the results of the partnership with Google could shave a year from the company’s longer-term schedule, which envisages a commercial fusion test device by 2030….”
(Paul Rincon, BBC News (February 10, 2022))

I’d like to talk about TAE’s approach to practical fusion power: but got ‘page not found’ results when trying to access their research library.

So I figure they’ve changed their site architecture since the citations were made.

Or I could assume that it’s part of a vast conspiracy. Masterminded by Big Oil, the Pixie-Illuminati Cabal, or my favorite: shape-shifting space-alien lizard-men. Maybe I shouldn’t make jokes like that. Some folks take such nonsense seriously.5

Anyway, TAE’s “Norman” isn’t just like ITER’s tokamak design.

Since I won’t have time this week to find TAE’s published research and study it, I’ll skip lightly over what I have found.

Particle Accelerators and Coilguns, Pumpkins and Doughnuts

Frame from Steve Gribben's animation of a coil gun. Source: 'CRICKET — Closeout' (CRICKET: Cryogenic Reservoir Inventory by Cost-Effective Kinetically Enhanced Technology) Larry J. Paxton, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, Geospace and Earth Sciences. (2019)For starters, TAE’s “Norman” isn’t shaped like ITER’s tokamak reactors.

A tokamak looks sort of like a pumpkin: one that was assembled by a cubist sculptor, with parts from a building supply store’s remainder sale. A pumpkin with a doughnut-shaped hole in the middle.

The C2W “Norman” device — my oldest daughter came up with a shorter description than I would have.

Daughter:
“Kinda reminds me of a Gauss rifle.
“I’d like to thank video games for my knowledge of this monstrosity’s existence.”

Me:
“See, they’re educational!!”

Daughter:
“Granted, the one in Doom looks more like a fun-sized railgun, but, hey, it’s still cool….”
(From a chat between me and my oldest daughter (May 15, 2022))

Hardware in the Doom video games isn’t real. But much of it is based on stuff that is. Like Gauss rifles, which is another name for coilguns.

A coilgun is a mass driver with one or more coils which act as electromagnets. It’s like a railgun, sort of, except that a railgun has rails and a coilgun doesn’t.

A Norwegian scientist patented the first coilgun in 1904, although development probably started decades earlier.

Maybe words like coilgun, mass driver and railgun sound futuristic, but they’re all linear motors: tech that’s based on 19th century research.

Despite being called — occasionally — Gauss rifles, a coilgun’s barrel isn’t rifled. “Gauss” harks back to Carl Friedrich Gauss. He’s the German mathematician who applied his talents to, among many other things, the study of magnetism.

I could call a coilgun a particle accelerator, since its projectile is a ‘small localized object.’

But I won’t, since a particle accelerator’s particles are very small: on an atomic or subatomic scale.6

“Doing Something Quite Different….”

TAE Technologies' photo: control room.
(From TAE Technologies, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(Fusion experiments at TAE Technologies: automated and supported by machine learning technology.)

Starting a fusion reaction by firing high-energy particle beams into each other isn’t a new idea.

Scientists at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, did it in the early 1970s. They got good data out of their experiments, but I gather that most researchers decided fusion reactors using linear particle accelerators weren’t practical.

They didn’t produce enough energy, compared to the energy they consumed.

That was in the 1970s and 80s. And that’s why pretty much everyone except TAE Technologies is working with doughnut-shaped or spherical fusion reactors.

Using machine learning, where software learns from experience, isn’t unique to TAE. Artificial intelligence helps run and study the JET reactor, for example.

I’m guessing that folks at TAE think they can develop a practical fusion power plant by 2030 because their AI is unusually smart. And because they’re looking at the task from a different angle. Several different angles, probably.

For example:

“…According to Prof Jeremy Chittenden, of Imperial College London, TAE is ‘doing something quite different to what everyone else is doing’. Rather than relying on the heat of the plasma to generate fast-moving particles for fusion, the device uses external particle beams which are fired into the hot gas, similar to what happens in a particle accelerator. ‘That’s your fusion source,’ he explains….”
(Paul Rincon, BBC News (February 10, 2022))

One more thing.

The TAE reactor, if they’re successful, will run on deuterium and protium. That sounds exotic, but protium is fancy name for the most common form of hydrogen. Earth’s rivers, lakes and oceans are full of the stuff.7

Fusion Power: Panacea, No; Possible and Practical, Yes

Benefits, Risks and a Grain of Salt

National Ignition Facility's photo: high-energy laser beams converging. (2021)
(From NIH, via Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, used w/o permission.)

So, once we have fusion power plants, our environmental worries are over and we’ll all live in green-energy paradise?

Eh, yes and no.

Reactors using deuterium-tritium fusion won’t give us fits nearly as much as old-school coal-fired and nuclear power plants.

Tritium? That’s another hydrogen isotope: rare, radioactive and not particularly healthy to be around.

And, although hypothetically a deuterium-tritium reactor would turn all the hydrogen into helium, tritium included: the reality is that some tritium won’t be fused and will get into the atmosphere.

But not much, not if the stuff is handled properly. That’s good news.

Tritium combines with oxygen, forming water. Radioactive water.

The not-so-good news is that some of that water could get into our bodies, staying there for a week or so before getting cycled out.

Then there’s the tech that starts and maintains the fusion reaction: high-energy lasers or particle accelerators, powerful magnets.

All of which control and direct a whole lot of energy. If everything works as it should, it’s not a problem; but if something goes wrong, all that energy is going to go somewhere. And that could be a problem. A big one.

Basically, I see fusion power plants as a good idea; and certainly a better tradeoff between benefit and risk than those using coal or fission reactions.

But I grew up in the Sixties, and remember when folks who should have known better finally realized that asbestos wasn’t a miracle mineral after all.8 So I take glowing claims that fusion power plants are nothing but good news — with a grain of salt.

Boris Badenov’s Insight and the Greenwald Limit

I’ve said it before. There’s no such thing as completely safe technology. Even something we’ve used for ages, like fire, can hurt us if we’re not careful.

It’s like Boris Badenov said, in the original Bullwinkle Show:

Natasha Fatale
“Boris, dahlink, I thought this hiding place was foolproof.”

Boris Badenov
“Foolproof, yes. Idiot proof, no.”
(Down to Earth or the Bullwinkle Bounce/Fall Story or Adrift in the Lift,” The Bullwinkle Show (1960) via IMDB.com

Finally, I don’t know whether TAE will have their commercial fusion power test model ready by 2030.

But I am sure we’re getting close to building practical fusion power plants. Much closer.

Partly because of technology being developed, and partly because we’re learning more about how fusion works.

Recently, for example, researchers developed a mathematical model that helps explain why the Greenwald limit exists. It’s — complicated.

But it looks like tokamak reactors could handle almost almost double the plasma density that’s currently possible. That would mean nearly twice as much energy produced.9 And that’s still another a topic, for another time.

More, and less, related stuff:

1 Nuclear fusion, a sketchy background:

2 A place and a device:

3 Highlights, and otherwise, from the last few decades:

4 Good news, not-so-good news:

5 Silliness and a technology company:

6 Science in the 19th century, technology in the 20th and 21st:

7 Atoms and AI:

8 Learning, sometimes slowly:

9 A new and hopeful development:

Posted in Science News | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Death, Orders, and a War Crimes Trial in Ukraine

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Brian H. Gill

BBC News photo: Camp Radiant, near Bucha, Ukraine. A children's recreation camp which was (allegedly) repurposed as a slaughterhouse by Russian troops. (2022)
(From BBC News, used w/o permission.)

I hadn’t planned on doing another “Ukraine” post for quite a while.

But this news item caught my attention:

“Russian soldier pleads guilty in first war crimes trial of Ukraine conflict”
Sarah Rainsford, BBC News (May 18, 2022)

“…Vadim Shishimarin admitted shooting a 62-year-old man a few days after the invasion began. He faces life in jail….”

I gather that Mr. Shishimarin had been commanding a tank division’s unit when his convoy was attacked.

Then he and four other soldiers stole a car. As they were traveling near Chupakhivka, they met a 62-year-old may who was riding a bicycle.

Mr. Shishimarin was ordered to kill the man, so he did.

I don’t know why Mr. Shishimarin pleaded guilty. And I don’t know if he tried using the “I was only following orders” defense. If he did, then maybe that’s why he’s looking at life in jail, not an execution.

“Just following orders,” AKA superior orders or the Nuremberg defense, didn’t start with the Nuremberg trials and will probably still be debated long after I’m gone. Command responsibility is the flip side of superior orders, and I’m getting a bit off-topic.

Horrible as what Russia’s military is (allegedly) doing in Ukraine, it’s not all bad news.

(“Allegedly?” I talked about “purported,” “alleged” and “allegedly” back in April. I’m putting links to other “Ukraine” posts below.)

Ukraine’s government is following established legal procedures, including procedures which involve international law. And they’re both gathering and preserving evidence. Some of that evidence is from information technology that didn’t exist during and after World War II.

And we’ve learned — a lot — since President Lincoln signed General Orders No. 100, the Lieber Code.1 To what degree we’ve woven that knowledge into wisdom — is another topic.

I’ve talked about the mess in Ukraine before:

1 Rules and principles:

Posted in Discursive Detours, Journal | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Ukraine’s Bohorodchany Iconostasis: At Risk Again

Posted on May 14, 2022 by Brian H. Gill

Birczanin's photo of the Manyava Skete courtyard. (August 8, 2009)
(From Birczanin, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

If no news is good news, then there’s good news from Manyava, Ukraine. Or maybe it’s Maniava. I’ve seen both transliterations of Манява. In Polish, I gather that it’s Maniawa.

I haven’t run across an “official” version of the name in my language’s alphabet. Since the “Maniava” and “Manyava Skete” Wikipedia pages aren’t consistent, I won’t fret over which is the right one. But I’ll try to stick with “Manyava,” except when I’m quoting a source.

Anyway, around 3,500 folks call Manyava home.

One Wikipedia page says Manyava is a village. Another calls Sauk Centre, Minnesota, where I live, a city. I call Sauk Centre a town, partly because I figure that 4,300-odd folks aren’t enough make Sauk Centre a city.

But here in Minnesota, it’s “City of Sauk Centre,” and I’m drifting off-topic.

Manyava’s no-news is that the Russian military apparently haven’t gotten around to “liberating” it yet. Possibly because it’s in Western Ukraine. And not a big enough target.

Liviv, on the other hand, about a hundred miles north of Manyava, was home to maybe 717,000 folks when Putin’s generals started their Ukrainian neo-Nazi hunt.

I gather that most of Liviv is still intact, apart from some missile strikes — a remarkably high fraction of which hit military targets.

At any rate, Manyava is famous for the Manyava Skete. A skete is a particular sort of Eastern Orthodox monastery. The Manyava Skete is at the edge of Manyava.1

The Manyava Skete is famous for the iconostasis in its church, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Which isn’t there any more. The iconostasis, I mean.

There’s a bit of a story behind that.

A Village, a Monastery and a Kingdom

Mykola Swarnyk's photo of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis in the National Museum in Lviv. (2022)
(From Mykola Swarnyk, via Smithsonian Magazine, used w/o permission.)
(The Bohorodchany Iconostasis, as displayed in the National Museum, Lviv. (2022))

Where was I?

Manyava and Liviv, Ukraine.

Russia’s Ukrainian neo-Nazi hunt, invasion, whatever.

Manyava’s claim to fame: the Manyava Skete.

Right.

Other monikers for the Manyava Skete are the Ukrainian Athos and Great Hermitage Monastery in Manyava.

The Great Hermitage Monastery was the only Orthodox monastery in Galicia in 1781.

This Galicia was the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. It was part of the Hapsburg Monarchy at the time. Then, in 1804, it became part of the Austrian Empire. Which was also run by the Hapsburgs.

The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria isn’t, by the way, the Kingdom of Galicia.

That kingdom used to be on the Iberian Peninsula’s northwest corner. It was run by Hapsburgs, too. Then Charles II of Spain finally died.2

A Hapsburg Interlude

Hugo Gerard Ströhl's House of Habsburg coat of arms, conforming with one of Habsburg County. (1890)The Hapsburgs were remarkably successful European rulers from around 1273 to 1780.

Or 1806, or 1918: I could pick several plausible ‘last of the Hapsburgs’ dates.

The northeastern Hapsburgs didn’t inbreed themselves into oblivion. Many folks say they’re Habsburgs, not Hapsburgs.

Either way, we’ve still got fairly high-profile Hapsburgs. Like Gabriela von Habsburg, artist and ambassador; Georg von Habsburg, diplomat; and Walburga Habsburg Douglas, lawyer and politician.3 And that’s another topic. Topics.

Back to Manyava. Or Maniava.

Origins of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis

Mykola Swarnyk's Photo: Icon of Christ the Teacher, from the Bohorodchany Iconostasis by Yov Kondzelevych. (photo taken July 2, 2013) From Mykola Swarnyk, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.I’ve read that Job of Manyava, Ivan Vyshensky, Zakhariya Kopystensky and/or Yov Kondzelevych founded the Manyava Skete in 1601. Or 1606. Or maybe 1611.

And that the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine’s name for the Manyava Skete is the Maniava Hermitage.

On the other hand, I found general agreement that Yov Kondzelevych was a talented artist. And that he helped make the Bohorodchany Iconostasis. Along with many other folks.

They were working on the Bohorodchany Iconostasis at least from 1698 to 1705. We’re pretty sure about this, because inscriptions on the “Christ the Teacher” and “Ascension of Christ” icons include those dates.

When they were finished, the iconostasis was installed in the Manyava Skete’s Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.4

So, if the Bohorodchany Iconostasis was made for the Manyava Skete’s church, then how come it’s not called the Maniava Hermitage iconostasis? Or some name like that, at any rate.

I’m guessing that it’s partly because a Hapsburg emperor wanted his subjects to be happy and enlightened: by his standards.

The Age of Enlightenment in Retrospect

Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine's photo of Yov Kondzelevych's Maniava Hermitage iconostasis (1698-1705) photo from Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), hosted by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, used w/o permission)
(From the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), used w/o permission.)
(The Maniava Hermitage iconostasis, including upper tiers.)

The Age of Enlightenment had been in progress since 1637, 1650, or 1687. Or maybe it started in 1701. Or 1715.

Europe’s self-described enlightened aristocrats strove to support knowledge, reason, and religious tolerance. That’s what they said, at any rate.

I figure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Particularly as an alternative to disasters like the Thirty Years’ War.

I still think Enlightenment ideals like pursuing knowledge and happiness, freedom and tolerance, make sense.

1566 propaganda print, celebrating faith-based vandalism.And I certainly think encouraging people to think is better than inspiring berserk rage through religion-themed propaganda and weaponized pietism.

I also think sapere aude, “the battle cry of the Enlightenment,” makes sense.

Although I also think “dare to be wise” is a better translation. And that Horace said it, more than a millennium before the days of Descartes, Newton and Kant.5

“Dimidium facti qui coepit habet; sapere aude; incipe!”
“He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!”
(“Epistles,” Book I, epistle ii, lines 40-41; Horace (ca. 20 B.C. – 14 B.C.)

How the Enlightenment’s enlightened rulers implemented their noble-sounding ideals is another matter.

Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, “Enlightened Ruler”

Pompeo Batoni's painting of Peter, Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany (left), and Emperor Joseph II (right). (1769) From Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, used w/o permission.Take Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adame, for example.

In my language, the name’s Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam. But I’ll call him Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. Or just plain Joseph.

Joseph is the chap with the dark coat in that painting. It’s Pompeo Batoni’s 1769 portrait of Joseph and his brother, Peter, Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany.

Grand Duke Leopold became the next Holy Roman emperor, and made a decent job of it. But I gather that Joseph is an Enlightenment superstar.

He arguably earned that reputation.

Joseph promoted education, confiscated monasteries and other church property, and made religious freedom a legal right. As long as folks didn’t get together for worship in groups of more than a hundred, and met in someone’s house.

Or, if they insisted on having more than a hundred present, their church didn’t look like a church and didn’t have a door opening onto a street.

Can’t have religious tolerance if folks go around worshiping any way they want, you know.

Anyway, some historians dubbed Joseph’s domestic policies Josephinism: hailing him as an “Enlightened ruler.”

I’ll give Joseph credit for sincerity, and for having the good sense to commission a Mozart opera and a Beethoven funeral cantata. Easing up on press and theater censorship strikes me as a good idea, too.

And maybe he really believed that monasteries were “sources of superstition.”

Anyway, Joseph’s officials took over the Manyava Skete on July 1, 1785. The monastery stayed closed until the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Or was rebranded as the Russian Federation.6 And that’s yet another topic.

A Confiscation, a Purchase and an Abrupt Move

Google Street View: Bohorodchany. (May 2015) From Google Maps, used w/o permission.)
(From Google Maps, used w/o permission.)
(Bohorodchany, Ukraine, before the Russian invasion. (May 2015))

Three years after the Manyava Skete became government property, folks in Bohorodchany, some 16 miles north of Manyava, bought the monastery’s iconostasis.

They paid the equivalent of about $12 USD in today’s market.

Fast-forward more than a century. The iconostasis was still in Bohorodchany’s Church of the Holy Trinity. A Swiss-German journalist, Victor Tissot, wrote about the “precious monument” in the late 19th century.

Bohorodchany was near the front lines in August of 1914, during a Russian invasion.

A great many folks were getting out as fast as they could, when Austro-Hungarian troops rode into Bohorodchany.

The soldiers weren’t there to “liberate” the town. They and some of the locals dismantled and packed the town’s iconostasis into trucks. Then the soldiers took the pieces to a museum in Vienna.

Bohorodchany, by the way, isn’t a town. It’s an urban-type settlement, the same way Sauk Centre is a city.

Next stop for the Bohorodchany Iconostasis was the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland: a country that existed again, officially, after World War I.

If you think that all sounds complicated, then you’re right. If you want simple, read an airport novel7 or listen to political speeches; and that’s yet again another topic.

Events, 1924-2022

Kasia Strek's photo of folks protecting artwork in Lviv's Peter and Paul Garrison Church.)
(From Kasia Strek and Smithsonian Magazine, used w/o permission.)
(Covering sculptures that can’t be moved in the Peter and Paul Garrison Church, Lviv.)

Fast-forward again, this time to 1924.

Paul Whiteman and his band played Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in New York City’s Aeolian Hall, New York City.

The Ottoman Caliphate collapsed.

And Andrey Sheptytsky, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church’s Metropolitan Archbishop, bought the Bohorodchany Iconostasis.

Archbishop Sheptytsky had parts of the Bohorodchany Iconostasis displayed in the Lviv Ecclesiastical Museum.

Ishvara7's map of empires and colonies. (1900-1910)The Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires had been fighting over who owned what parts of eastern Europe until World War I ended both Austria-Hungary and the old Russian Empire.

Parts of Ukraine became an anarchist state, followed by a succession of people’s republics, and were part of the Soviet Union when Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia invaded Poland in 1939.

After that, Hitler’s Germany invaded Ukraine.

Some Ukrainians saw the Wehrmacht as an improvement on Soviet rule. Understandably, I think, considering what Stalin’s Holodomor had done to them. And the churches which had been shut down by Stalin’s commissars.

That lot had the Bohorodchany Iconostasis dismantled, but not destroyed. I don’t know why, since they’d been eager enough where it came to destroying icons.

The commissars hung one of the massive work’s panels in a folklore museum and warehoused the rest in Lviv’s shuttered. Cathedral

Anyway, the 1939 Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact lasted until 1941. After World War II ended, Ukraine’s Soviet rulers went back to protecting Ukrainians from poets, historians and other folks who use their brains. Then the Soviet Union dissolved.8

And now Putin’s military is back, killing Ukrainians.

War, Human Life, Art and Making Sense

Kasia Strek's photo of the the Sheptytsky National Museum's director, Ihor Kozhan, and panels from the Bohorodchany Iconostasis before they were packed and taken from museum.)
(From Kasia Strek and Smithsonian Magazine, used w/o permission.)
(Bohorodchany Iconostasis panels, before they were packed and moved to safety. (2022))

A frame from Ukraine's National News Agency's video showing aftermath of Russia's liberation of Bucha. (April 3, 2022)Oddly enough, Putin doesn’t seem to have thought of ‘de-Nazifying’ Russia.

That would make at least as much sense as his Ukrainian neo-Nazi hunt, since Russia’s leaders made a deal with Nazi Germany.

Maybe some notions are simply too daft for anyone to consider as an excuse for mass murder and/or genocide. And that’s still another topic, one that I’ve talked about fairly recently.

This week, I’ve been focusing on a particular item in Ukraine’s cultural heritage: the Bohorodchany Iconostasis.

Since I’ve been skipping lightly over dead Ukrainians littering the country’s streets, I’d better clarify a thing or two.

I don’t like war. It kills people and breaks things.

But sometimes it’s less bad than the alternative. So I won’t criticize Ukrainians who are trying to keep Russian troops from killing their neighbors. I’ve said this before.

If I had a choice between either saving a human life or preserving a work of art, I’d pick saving a human life.

But if I could do both, then that’d be my choice. So I think folks in Lviv who are taking portable artwork to relatively secure spots, and putting hopefully-protective covers over sculptures that can’t be moved, are doing a good thing.

There’s more to say, about iconostases — or would that be iconostasi? never mind — rood screens, religious art, and art in general. Lots more.

But I’m running out of time this week, so I’ll be brief. For me.

Creating art is part of being human. As such, it’s a good idea. Within reason. Creating religious art and using it to get closer to God is a good idea. Again, within reason. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2501-2503)

Finally, a reminder: comments and ‘likes’ should be possible again, now that I’ve made my Brendan’s Island website and this blog more secure.

So please, click the ‘like’ button. And if you’ve got something to say about this week’s topic(s) and what I’ve written, leave a comment.

Now, the usual links to more-or-less-related stuff:

1 Manyava, mostly:

2 Kingdoms, kings and emperors:

3 House of Hapsburg:

4 Origins of an iconostasis:

5 Bright ideals:

6 ‘Isms,’ artists and history:

7 More history:

8 Still more history:

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