The French Revolutionary calendar

Fabre d'Eglantine a former actor and dramatist, addressing the French National Convention in 1793 during the terror, on the necessity to introduce a new calendar:

"We could not go on reckoning the years during which we were oppressed by kings as part of our lifetime. Every page of the old calendar was soiled by the prejudices and falsehoods of the throne and the church."

The revolutionary calendar was in force in France from 1793 to 1805. Fabre, together with André Thouin, chief botanist at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, drew their inspiration for the new calendar from the natural world.

Germinal was the seventh month (late March to late April) and from the beginning was a dramatic month. Two revolutionary factions (the Hébertists and Dantonists) were guillotined in Germinal, Year II; starving Parisians stormed the National Convention in Germinal, Year III. Much later, mindful of its revolutionary heritage, the Paris Commune of 1871 reverted to the revolutionary calendar for 18 days, and found itself in Germinal, Year LXXIX.

From Ruth Scurr on rereading Zola's Germinal, Guardian 19/6/10

Gaza convoy and a single state

Been following the Gaza convoy story on the news.  Attending a demonstration would have been better but I'm on holiday, a poor excuse.   Israel is an illegitimate state and a single state solution is the only just one.   But repeated defeats have strengthened the hands of the fundamentalists.  History shows that this is always the way. So now we are obliged to support Hamas.  The situation seems hopeless.

Ireland Palestine solidarity

The story of Adam and Eve

Preface

This story is worth comparing to Prometheus. 

Introduction (needs brushing up a bit)

When God had finished making the world and had rested – which by the way he did on Saturday – he brought all the animals to Adam to name. Whatsoever name Adam called a particular animal, that would be its name always. 

Some few days after he had named all the animals, Adam felt lonely, and he told God this.  I need someone to talk to, he said. How so, said God, you can talk to the parrots.  It’s not the same said Adam.  They seem to answer, but they don’t really, and they don’t understand what I say to them, they only pretend.

Leave it to me, said God, I'll see what I can come up with.

So God made Eve. 

Adam loves Eve and Eve loves Adam, and they have an idyllic life in the Garden of Eden which God has made for them.  (The Garden of Eden was also known as Paradise - which incidentally means, in Persian I think - walled garden.)  They have all the fruit, vegetables and nuts that they could wish for.  And they don’t need to cultivate, everything just grows all the time, and there are no weeds.  They don’t eat meat, in fact no animals eat meat, the lion lies down with the lamb. 

The story

There was only one rule in Paradise, and it related to a particular tree in the middle of the garden.  This was called the Tree of Knowledge.  And the rule was that Adam and Eve were not allowed to eat its fruit.  God was quite definite on this point.  Anything else was OK, but not that.

Now it chanced one afternoon that while Adam was asleep, Eve went wandering. She liked the idea of exploring the garden without Adam at her side because much as she loved him she liked sometimes to do her own thing in her own way.  The garden had orchards with every sort of fruit tree, vegetable patches, copses of nut trees, and open parkland where the animals could roam.  A mighty river watered the garden and there were tinkling streams too, and secluded ponds.

On the afternoon we are talking of, Eve wandered into the middle of the garden to her favourite place, a grove with two trees perpetually covered in blossom. And yet despite the blossom they also had fruit. That’s something you never see nowadays.  One of these was the Tree of Knowledge.  She loved contemplating the Tree of Knowledge, especially when she was alone.

But lo and behold, under the Tree of Knowledge was sitting the Serpent, and he was munching an apple.  Now at this time I should mention that the Serpent had legs.  He had a wise look about him and he started to speak. He was in fact the Devil, but Eve had no reason to suspect this.  She didn't even know there was a Devil.  She had noticed the Serpent’s wise look before, and wasn’t entirely surprised to find that he could speak.

And this is what the Serpent said.

Eve, he said, this is a very fine apple that I've picked off this tree, shall I pick one for you? 

The Tree of Knowledge! said Eve. Indeed not. It's forbidden! God told us it’s the one tree we must not eat the fruit of. 

But it will make you wise like me said the Serpent. 

No! said Eve. God is so good to us. I don’t want to!

You would know the difference between Good and Evil said the Serpent.  You would know Right from Wrong.  Why would God not want you to know those things?  Surely you must be mistaken.

This conversation went on for two long hours, and the sun began to get low in the sky.  Every time Eve said no, the Serpent came up with new reasons why it would be a good idea to eat the apple.  He just about persuaded Eve that deep down God actually wanted her to eat it.  She didn’t understand the Good and Evil stuff that the Serpent kept on about, yet she felt herself wanting to understand.

At last, she ate one of the forbidden apples. The Serpent gave it to her and she ate it.  It was deliciously sharp, bitter almost.

Eve sat down under the tree.  The Serpent had disappeared.  She felt this was odd.  She wanted to continue her talk with the Serpent; some of the things he said were beginning to make sense. 

Eve felt she had done wrong. An hour beforehand she hadn't actually understood what the Serpent meant by right and wrong.

But now it began to dawn on Eve that there was a difference.

And the thing she had done was wrong. WRONG.  She KNEW she had done wrong.  She looked down and saw she was naked.  She must have been naked all the time, but now she KNEW it.  Hastily she tore down some fig leaves and used the stalks to weave them into an apron.  A feeling crept up on her which was new and which she didn’t like. The feeling was misery.  She didn’t want to KNOW she was naked, nor did she want to KNOW that she had done wrong. But she did know. She tried to forget these things.  But try as she might, she couldn't forget.

Before the apple I was happy thought Eve. Now I'm unhappy.

Happy, unhappy. Strange to tell, before the apple, Eve didn’t actually know either of these words.

She thought of Adam, and as she did so her misery grew.  I must run away and never see Adam again she thought. Or maybe I should explain to Adam what I've done and then go away.  Or maybe he will eat a forbidden apple and if we've both eaten one it won't be so bad.

She plucked one of the forbidden apples and went looking for Adam. She found him picking strawberries.  Adam was startled at Eve’s appearance.  What are the fig leaves for, he asked?  I was naked said Eve, and so are you.  What’s naked said Adam?  Eat this and you’ll know said Eve, offering the apple. 

That’s from the Tree of Knowledge, said Adam. We mustn’t eat that, throw it away, quick! 

Eve stood with her arm outstretched and the forbidden apple, saying nothing.  And from that nothing Adam understood what she had done.

It was the cool of the day and Adam knew God would soon be walking in the garden. He knew too that when God found what Eve had done, something very bad would happen.  He couldn't guess what, but in the pit of his stomach he felt he would never be allowed to see Eve again.

Give me the apple, he said.  And he ate it.  Like Eve, he first realised he had done WRONG, then he understood he was naked and understood why Eve had made the apron of leaves.  Eve was already gathering fig leaves for Adam and he put on the apron she made for him. Then like Eve before him he felt miserable.

Adam and Eve heard God walking nearby. They hid behind a thicket of bushes.  Where are you, said God. Come and show yourselves.  And they stood before him, wearing their aprons of fig leaves, and feeling foolish. 

Why are you wearing those fig leaves, asked God.  He knew, of course, but he asked anyway.

We were naked said Eve.  And we were ashamed said Adam. 

Who told you, you were naked? asked God. You have eaten the forbidden fruit!

The Serpent told me to eat it! said Eve.

Eve told me to eat it! said Adam.  He wished he hadn't said that.  But he said it.

God was angry. But was he disappointed?  Did he know all the time that this would happen? 

First God turned to the Serpent. You!  he said, for this thing you have done, you will creep on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the children of Eve. They will crush your head, and you will bite their heel.

Next God turned to Eve. You! he said to Eve, for this thing you have done, you will bear children in pain.  To grow crops you will toil and sweat.

Last, God turned to Adam. You! he said to Adam, for this thing you have done, thistles and nettles will grow in the fields. To eat your bread, you will labour all the days of your life to cultivate the soil. 

To Adam and Eve he said: and after your days of toil, when you are old and worn out, both of you will die.

And you, said God to the Serpent, you too will die. All living things will die.  You will die and return to the soil. For dust you are, and to dust you will return.

An angel flew down and whispered in God’s ear. Remember the Tree of Life said the angel. 

Did I mention that two magical trees grew in the middle of the Garden of Eden? One was the Tree of Knowledge, the forbidden tree that was the cause of all the trouble.  The other was the Tree of Life. 

When God first created Adam and Eve, he was happy for them to live for ever, just so long as they were ignorant of good and evil.  But now that they had eaten the forbidden fruit, and knew good and evil, God feared that they would become gods like him.  This he could now allow. Which is why he handed out such severe punishments. 

And why now he said: so that you shall die, you must not taste the Tree of Life. Therefore you must leave the Garden. An angel with a flaming sword will guard the entrance.  You can never return.

The sun had set in the western sky and dusk was falling. The world would never be the same again. Adam and Eve held hands as they walked through the gate, past the angel with the flaming sword, out of the Garden, into a new life of toil and hardship.  Some say that they had quarrelled after eating the forbidden fruit, each blaming the other for what had happened.  But if so, now they were reconciled again.

For a brief moment, God felt sorry for them.  Before they left he sewed them warm clothes made from the skins of beasts, to protect them in the cold harsh world they were about to enter.  

Mystery of life solved says New Scientist

I'm still puzzled by the synthetic cell story, and unclear as to its significance.  Alistair Elfick at the University of Edinburgh is quoted by New Scientist as saying that “it doesn't take us that much further scientifically”.

But in an editorial New Scientist says “If demonstration was needed that there is no such thing as the ‘mystery of life’, they have provided it in stunning style. The new life form they have made is derived from information, pure and simple.” 

That’s a real wow sentence.  But surely it overstates the case?  Because so far as I can tell we are no nearer finding out how to life first got started from inert matter.  So the ‘mystery of life’ remains.  Venter inserted the synthetic DNA into an existing cell as I understand it, or into the cytoplasm whatever that means. That first cell, with the synthetic DNA, then made masses of copies of itself.

But nobody has a clue how, starting with a bottle of chemicals on a lab bench, to make the first cell.  Or indeed how nature did it billions of years ago.  And that’s the question that really interests me.  Does what Venter has done get us any step along the road of understanding how life first arose?  I suspect the answer is no.

Artificial life – has it happened, and if so, then what?

Today the news is that Craig Venter claims to have made a synthetic cell.  Already this is being disputed.  Whether he really has, might be a matter of definition. Even he doesn’t claim to have made "artificial life". Story in New Scientist. 

And as usual excellent discussion on the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast. They’ve won an award recently and quite right too.

Is it an astonishing scientific achievement, on a par with the other defining moments in science over the last five hundred years?   Some say yes - some say within a century, this discovery will be at the root of a total overhaul of how we perceive life and ourselves. Someone compared it to the 1903 Wright flyer. If that’s a valid comparison, compare the Space Shuttle to the Wright brothers plane, less than 80 years later.

Could artificial life escape into the wild by accident or design, and destroy Earth’s ecosystem?  If so would that be a reason to ban research?   If so what else should be banned?

Are remarks about Frankenstein, playing God, tampering with Nature, meddling with the unknown, called for?  Not at all. The most disturbing aspect is that the discovery should be made by Venter and his team, who are committed to the financial exploitation of any such discovery, as their earlier attempts at the patenting of naturally occurring genes have shown.

I used to align myself firmly with the anti-genetic engineering lobby. And this “synthetic cell” is genetic engineering with knobs on.  But having listened in to scientists discussing genetic engineering, I now recognise that what I was actually objecting to was genetic engineering was being used for the enrichment of Monsanto and the impoverishment of Indian farmers.

As a postscript, whilst this may not be the creation of artificial life, if it’s a step in that direction, is it also a step in the direction of understanding how Nature did it?  Whether the genesis of life is an easy or a hard trick?  Towards answering the question: how probable is it that life has evolved many times independently in the universe, as opposed to only once?

The great scientist and the lucky horseshoe

A fellow scientist once visited Niels Bohr in his office and was amazed to find a horseshoe nailed to the wall above the great man’s desk. “Surely”, he asked Bohr, “you don’t believe that horseshoe will bring you luck?”

“I believe no such thing my good friend. Not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you luck whether you believe in it or not!”

Related by John Humphrys in In God We Doubt, p 70

Monstrous races, slavery and pictures in a museum

I am puzzled by some drawings in a museum in Madrid.

A couple of years ago I visited the Museum of the Americas. The first gallery is devoted to early European representations of the Americas, and I was particularly struck by some very carefully proportioned and detailed drawings, 15th or early 16th century I suppose, of native American people. They were life-size if I remember right. What was so striking was that there was just one thing wrong with these representations.  They were monstrous.  Heads in the wrong place.

Why were these drawings done, by whom, for whom, what purpose was to be served? I was hampered by not being able to read Spanish, other than by guesswork. Too late, I wished I had paid more attention to these exhibits, and found someone I could ask.  I've asked in University College Cork but haven't found anyone who is acquainted with them. The Museum of the Americas has disregarded my emails. Quite right too as I wrote in English.

My curiosity was renewed by attending a lecture given at UCC in 2009 about depictions of peoples on the Scandinavian peninsula by Adam of Bremen, an 11th century geographer. The Scandinavians were supposed by some at that time to be dog-heads, so there seems to be a parallel impulse at work.

My suspicion was that the monstrous depictions I saw in Madrid formed part of a campaign to convince the church authorities back home that the peoples of South America were non-human and could be enslaved.  The Vatican actually ruled them to be human, with souls in need of salvation.  This was due to the tireless efforts of certain Jesuits and Catholic priests which is an interesting story in itself.  16th century Spain was amazingly sophisticated compared to northern Europe. In Spain slavery was a matter of debate 200 years earlier than in England.  (I got this from a lecture on slavery by Nini Rogers, Queens University Belfast.)

Of course none of this actually stopped slavery.

Monstrous races image (Madame Pickwick Art Blog)

Back to the Madrid images. Prof Terence O'Reilly of UCC told me that whilst he hadn’t seen the drawings himself, “the deformed features you describe make me think they may show the influence of medieval maps (mappaemundi) in which the inhabitants of the remote regions of the world, then unexplored, were imagined to be 'strange and monstrous'. Early Iberian perceptions of the New World were shaped by biblical, classical and medieval images and legends, of which this tradition is a part.”

He referred me to the Hereford map. This is a map of the world produced in England around the year 1300. I was directed to a book in the UCC library by Scott D. Westrem The Hereford Map : a transcription and translation of the legends with commentary (1953). The map is circular, its centre is Jerusalem, with Europe from 6 o’clock to 9 o’clock, Asia from 9 o’clock to 3 o’clock, and Africa 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock. Monstrous races and south-western islands form a ring at the edge of Africa.

The Hereford mappa mundi

The top image depicts monstrous races and is the best I've found through Google, though it doesn’t really do justice to the figures on the Hereford map. The man sheltering from the sun under a huge foot is located in India. There’s a doghead. And the one with mouth and eyes in his chest is a Blemmye.

All these monstrous races and indeed most of the information on the map seems to rely on the authority of ancient Greek and Roman sources.

Of course it’s perfectly possible that both explanations apply to those depictions in the Museum of the Americas. That is, they were shaped by biblical, classical and medieval images and legends; and simultaneously they were part of a campaign to demean the American population to remove their human status and any legal barrier to their exploitation.  What was unsettling about the drawings in the museum was that were designed to create the impression that they were done from life.  And the more I think of it, the surer I am that they had a sinister purpose.

One day I'll go back to the Museum of the Americas and find someone who speaks English. Or I'll have to learn Spanish.

Recommendation of where to stay in Madrid : Hostal Barrera, c/ Atocha 96, 2º- 28012 Madrid.

Finally, does the Hereford map show any dog-heads in Scandinavia? No, however there's a man on skis, a bear and a furry monkey-like creature. According to the ancient source Aethicus Ister, the Scandinavians are non-human and evidently form part of the diet of Gog and Magog.

Notes: (1) Here's a Wikipedia article on Cynocephali (having the head of a dog).

(2) According to Tony Luppino on CBC radio, Marco Polo did not talk about monstrous races in his 13th century travels, but everyone thinks he did, because one of the first editions of his book had monstrous races illustrations. The Wikipedia article just cited claims gives a different account. Polo's Travels mentions dog-headed barbarians on the Andaman Islands, it claims. Though I wonder if the quotation supplied fully backs this claim up, as Polo is quoted as saying that these people are cruel and "are all just like big mastiff dogs".