Locke’s Index

https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock

Like many thinkers of his age, John Locke maintained a commonplace book, an intellectual scrapbook of ideas and quotations he’d found in his readings. In order to be useful, such a book needs an index, and Locke’s method is both concise (occupying only two pages) and flexible (accommodating new topics as they come up, without wasting pages in trying to anticipate them).

The index lists the letters of the alphabet, each accompanied by the five vowels. Then:

When I meet with any thing, that I think fit to put into my common-place-book, I first find a proper head. Suppose for example that the head be EPISTOLA. I look unto the index for the first letter and the following vowel which in this instance are E. i. If in the space marked E. i. there is any number that directs me to the page designed for words that begin with an E and whose first vowel after the initial letter is I, I must then write under the word Epistola in that page what I have to remark.

The result is a useful compromise: Each of the book’s pages is put to productive use without any need for an overarching plan, and the contents are kept accessible through a simple, expanding index that occupies only two pages. The whole project can grow in almost any direction, and when the pages are full then a new volume can be begun.

(Via the Public Domain Review.)

| Literature

Unquote

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Bookworm_-_Grohmann_Museum.jpg

“A multitude of books confuses the mind. Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.” — Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius

| Literature · Quotations

“The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations”

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:E._Fortescue-Brickdale_--_Romeo_and_Juliet_Farewell.jpg

In 1895 French writer Georges Polti drew up a list of every dramatic situation that might arise in a story or performance, based on an earlier list drawn up by Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi. They number only 36 — Polti listed the elements necessary for each:

  1. Supplication (“a Persecutor, a Suppliant and a Power in authority, whose decision is doubtful”)
  2. Deliverance (“an Unfortunate, a Threatener, a Rescuer”)
  3. Crime Pursued by Vengeance (“an Avenger and a Criminal”)
  4. Vengeance Taken for Kindred Upon Kindred (“Avenging Kinsman, Guilty Kinsman, Remembrance of the Victim, a Relative of Both”)
  5. Pursuit (“Punishment and Fugitive”)
  6. Disaster (“a Vanquished Power, a Victorious Enemy or a Messenger”)
  7. Falling Prey to Cruelty or Misfortune (“an Unfortunate, a Master or a Misfortune”)
  8. Revolt (“Tyrant and Conspirator”)
  9. Daring Enterprise (“A Bold Leader, an Object, an Adversary”)
  10. Abduction (“The Abductor, the Abducted; the Guardian”)
  11. The Enigma (“Interrogator, Seeker and Problem”)
  12. Obtaining (“A Solicitor and an Adversary Who Is Refusing, or an Arbitrator and Opposing Parties”)
  13. Enmity of Kinsmen (“a Malevolent Kinsman; a Hated or Reciprocally Hating Kinsman”)
  14. Rivalry of Kinsmen (“The Preferred Kinsman; the Rejected Kinsman; the Object”)
  15. Murderous Adultery (“Two Adulterers; a Betrayed Husband or Wife”)
  16. Madness (“Madman and Victim”)
  17. Fatal Imprudence (“The Imprudent; the Victim or the Object Lost”)
  18. Involuntary Crimes of Love (“The Lover; the Beloved; the Revealer”)
  19. Slaying of a Kinsman Unrecognized (“The Slayer; the Unrecognized Victim”)
  20. Self-Sacrifice for an Ideal (“The Hero; the Ideal; the ‘Creditor’ or the Person or Thing Sacrificed”)
  21. Self-Sacrifice for Kindred (“The Hero; the Kinsman; the ‘Creditor’ or the Person or Thing Sacrificed”)
  22. All Sacrificed for a Passion (“The Lover; the Object of the Fatal Passion; the Person or Thing Sacrificed”)
  23. Necessity of Sacrificing Loved Ones (“The Hero; the Beloved Victim; the Necessity for the Sacrifice”)
  24. Rivalry of Superior and Inferior (“The Superior Rival; the Inferior Rival; the Object”)
  25. Adultery (“A Deceived Husband or Wife; Two Adulterers”)
  26. Crimes of Love (“The Lover; the Beloved”)
  27. Discovery of the Dishonor of a Loved One (“The Discoverer; the Guilty One”)
  28. Obstacles to Love (“Two Lovers; an Obstacle”)
  29. An Enemy Loved (“The Beloved Enemy; the Lover; the Hater”)
  30. Ambition (“An Ambitious Person; a Thing Coveted; an Adversary”)
  31. Conflict With a God (“A Mortal; an Immortal”)
  32. Mistaken Jealousy (“The Jealous One; The Object of Whose Possession He Is Jealous; the Supposed Accomplice; the Cause or the Author of the Mistake”)
  33. Erroneous Judgment (“The Mistaken One; the Victim of the Mistake; the Cause or Author of the Mistake; the Guilty Person”)
  34. Remorse (“The Culprit; the Victim or the Sin; the Interrogator”)
  35. Recovery of a Lost One (“The Seeker; the One Found”)
  36. Loss of Loved Ones (“A Kinsman Slain; a Kinsman Spectator; an Executioner”)

Each situation has its variations; for example, The Count of Monte Cristo is a Revenge for a False Accusation, a variation on the Crime Pursued by Vengeance; and Great Expectations is a Life Sacrificed for the Happiness of a Relative or Loved One, a variation on Self-Sacrifice for Kindred.

The whole book is here.

| Literature

“De Nyew Testament”

We Fada wa dey een heaben,
leh ebreybody hona ya name.
We pray dat soon ya gwine
rule oba de wol.
Wasoneba ting ya wahn,
leh um be so een dis wol
same like dey een heaben.
Gii we de food wa we need
dis day yah en ebry day.
Fagib we fa we sin,
same like we da fagib
dem people wa do bad ta we.
Leh we dohn hab haad test
wen Satan try we.
Keep we fom ebil.

From the New Testament in Gullah. The whole book is here.

| Language · Literature · Religion

Twice-Told Tale

In 1986 the Los Angeles Times received a peculiar 167-page novel from Lawrence Levine of St. Augustine, Fla. Titled Dr. Awkward & Olson in Oslo, it began “Tacit, I hate gas (aroma of evil), masonry …” It ended “No, Sam — live foam or a sage Tahiti CAT!” And the very middle read “I deplore media, rats, gals, a tar bag and a maniac Dr. Awkward ‘Cain,’ a mad nag, a brat, a slag star. Ai! Demerol, pedicular addenda, Edgar!”

Working four hours a day for five months, Levine had composed a novel that was one long palindrome, 31,594 words.

“There were lessons in trial and error, in logic, in vocabulary, in syntactics, and a wide-ranging lexical development that I never thought possible,” Levine revealed elsewhere. “I wrote the novel because to my knowledge no other person had ever composed an equal nonesuch. I decided, as it were, to be the first.”

The Times responded, “The world needs more Levines — playful eccentrics determined to scale the heights where no one has gone before, even if getting there isn’t much of an accomplishment. Or, as the metaphysicians say, ‘No lemons, no melon.'”

| Language · Literature

Small World

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Little_Prince,_Kyiv.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 novella The Little Prince, the narrator encounters “a most extraordinary small person” whose planet is “scarcely any larger than a house.”

This led University of Ljubljana physicist Janez Strnad to consider the implications. If the radius of the prince’s planet were 64 meters and it had Earth’s density, then the weight of a prince with a mass of 30 kg would amount to 0.003 newtons, corresponding on Earth to the weight of a mass of 0.3 g. (If the planet had the density of an asteroid, his weight would be lower still.)

The planet cannot have an atmosphere, because the mean velocity of gas molecules is greater than the escape velocity.

If the prince moved faster than 80 millimeters per second he’d be sent into orbit around the planet; if faster than 11 centimeters per second he’d leave it altogether.

“He could overcome the limitations concerning his velocity by either binding himself with a rope to his planet or building a spherical shell around it,” Strnad concluded. “The human body adapts to weightlessness and astronauts have to perform special gymnastic exercises not to suffer on returning to the Earth. For the little prince, coming to Earth would be a serious adventure, were he not a fictitious character.”

(Janez Strnad, “The Planet of the Little Prince,” Physics Education 23:4 [1988], 224.)

| Literature · Science & Math

A Little Latin

mcbryde whistle illustration

In M.R. James’s superbly creepy 1904 short story “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You My Lad,” a Cambridge professor investigating a Templar ruin finds a whistle bearing the inscription “Quis est iste, qui venit?”

“I suppose I am a little rusty in my Latin,” he thinks. “It ought to mean, ‘Who is this who is coming?’ Well, the best way to find out is evidently to whistle for him.” And he does, and everything follows from there.

“It’s a rare use by M.R. James of Latin as a pivotal plot point, and a wonderful pedagogic caution to study hard in your lessons or else be grabbed by a ghoul,” writes Roger Clarke in A Natural History of Ghosts.

James says no more about it, but “a Latin scholar would know that iste was a pejorative term, that whoever was coming is unpleasant or, indeed, not exactly human. It should be translated as ‘What is this revolting thing coming towards me?'”

| Language · Literature

The Boekenkast

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

In the Kinkerbuurt, Amsterdam, the streets are named after Dutch poets and writers of the 18th and 19th centuries. Correspondingly, Yugoslavian artist Sanja Medic transformed the façade of a local building into a case holding 250 ceramic “books” by these authors.

It’s a substantial library — each volume weighs more than 25 kg, so the frontage had to be reinforced to support them.

| Art · Literature

Another First

Jules Verne’s 1882 novel La Jangada tells the story of Joam Dacosta, a Brazilian man wrongly accused of theft and murder. In Book Two his friends struggle to save him by solving a cryptogram, whose last paragraph is given in the text:

Phyjslyddqfdzxgasgzzqqehxgkfndrxujugiocytdxvksbxhhuypo
hdvyrymhuhpuydkjoxphetozsletnpmvffovpdpajxhyynojyggayme
qynfuqlnmvlyfgsuzmqiztlbqgyugsqeubvnrcredgruzblrmxyuhqhp
zdrrgcrohepqxufivvrplphonthvddqfhqsntzhhhnfepmqkyuuexktog
zgkyuumfvijdqdpzjqsykrplxhxqrymvklohhhotozvdksppsuvjhd.

In the end this works out to:

Le véritable auteur du vol des diamants et de l’assassinat des soldats qui escortaient le convoi, commis dans la nuit du vingt-deux janvier mil huit cent vingt-six, n’est donc pas Joam Dacosta, injustement condamné à mort; c’est moi, le misérable employé de l’administration du district diamantin; oui, moi seul, qui signe de mon vrai nom, Ortega.

In the article linked below, Miami University mathematician Frederick Gass explains rigorously how the cipher might be solved. In the novel, Judge Jarriquez has a brainstorm: He learns that the writer might have been named Ortega, guesses that the declaration might end with that signature, and works out the rest from there.

“By virtue of this solution, Jules Verne is credited with the first published exposition of the probable word method for Gronsfeld ciphers.”

(Frederick Gass, “Solving a Jules Verne Cryptogram,” Mathematics Magazine 59:1 [February 1986], 3-11.)

| Literature · Puzzles