A Quay Brothers Animation Explains Anamorphosis, the Renaissance Illusion That Hides Pictures within Pictures

in Animation, Art, Religion, Science | November 2nd, 2020

First appear­ances can be deceiv­ing.

Take physi­cist Emmanuel Maig­nan’s 1642 fres­co in a cor­ri­dor of Rome’s Trinità dei Mon­ti monastery.

Viewed head on, it appears to be a some­what uncon­ven­tion­al land­scape in which one of the few remain­ing branch­es of a muti­lat­ed tree spreads over a city, far in the dis­tance. Streaky clouds sug­gest heavy weath­er is brew­ing.

Stroll to the end of the cor­ri­dor and take anoth­er look. You’ll find that the tree has con­tract­ed, and the clouds have recon­fig­ured them­selves into a por­trait of Saint Francesco of Pao­la, pray­ing beneath its boughs.

It’s a prime exam­ple of oblique anamor­pho­sis, an image that has been delib­er­ate­ly dis­tort­ed by an artist well versed in per­spec­tive, with the end result that the image’s true nature will only be revealed to those view­ing the work from an uncon­ven­tion­al point.

The Quay Broth­ers’ doc­u­men­tary short, above, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with art his­to­ri­an Roger Car­di­nal, uses a com­bi­na­tion of their delight­ful­ly creepy sig­na­ture pup­pet stop motion, as well as ani­mat­ed 3‑D cut outs, to lift the cur­tains on how the human eye can be manip­u­lat­ed, using prin­ci­ples of per­spec­tive.

Anamor­pho­sis may not seem like such a feat in an age when a num­ber of soft­ware pro­grams can pro­vide a major assist, but why would Renais­sance artists put them­selves to so much extra trou­ble?

The Quay Broth­ers delve into this too.

Per­haps the artist was inject­ing a bit of social crit­i­cism, like Hans Hol­bein the Younger, whose 1533 por­trait, The Ambas­sadors, includes a secret anamor­phic skull. This could be tak­en as a jab at the excess­es of the wealthy young diplo­mats who pro­vide the painting’s sub­ject, except that the one who com­mis­sioned the work, Jean de Din­teville, prized the mot­to “Memen­to mori.”

Maybe he know­ing­ly ordered up the naked death’s head to go along with his ermine and bling, an exam­ple of hav­ing one’s cake and eat­ing it too, and yet anoth­er dizzy­ing head trip for those view­ing the paint­ing from the intend­ed angle.

(Betcha didn’t have to work too hard to guess the skull’s loca­tion, though…)

Or an artist might choose to employ anamor­pho­sis as a brown paper wrap­per of sorts, as in the case of Erhard Schön’s erot­ic wood­block prints.

Else­where, the goal was to empha­size patience, reflec­tion, and cleav­ing to a pious path by reward­ing those who craned their necks toward a spir­i­tu­al peep­hole with an appro­pri­ate­ly reli­gious view.

(Pity the poor pil­grim who stepped up expect­ing Erhard Schön…)

For a 21st-cen­tu­ry take on anamor­phic art, have a look at the work of the graf­fi­ti col­lec­tive TRULY | Urban Artists here.

The Quay Broth­ers’ short film, “De Arti­fi­ciali Per­spec­ti­va, or Anamor­pho­sis,” has been made avail­able on The Met Muse­um’s YouTube chan­nel.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Opti­cal Poems by Oskar Fischinger, the Avant-Garde Ani­ma­tor Despised by Hitler, Dissed by Dis­ney

Watch Mar­cel Duchamp’s Hyp­not­ic Rotore­liefs: Spin­ning Discs Cre­at­ing Opti­cal Illu­sions on a Turntable (1935)

The Anatom­i­cal Draw­ings of Renais­sance Man, Leonar­do da Vin­ci

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Why Masks Work: A Slow Motion Demonstration (Plus a Guest Appearance by Dr. Fauci)

in Science | November 1st, 2020

The Slo Mo Guys spe­cial­ize in tak­ing every­day occur­rences and slow­ing them down … way down, so that we can see them in a new way. In this clip, they let you see what hap­pens when you talk with­out a mask, and then with a mask–all in order to demon­strate why a mask helps pre­vent the trans­mis­sion of COVID-19, a dis­ease that’s main­ly spread when peo­ple are exposed to res­pi­ra­to­ry droplets car­ry­ing infec­tious virus. Around the 4 minute mark, the host is joined by Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, who offers com­men­tary on the footage.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic, Fea­tur­ing Antho­ny Fau­ci & Oth­er Experts

Bill Nye Shows How Face Masks Actu­al­ly Pro­tect You–and Why You Should Wear Them

Dr. Fau­ci Reads an Undergrad’s Entire The­sis, Then Fol­lows Up with an Encour­ag­ing Let­ter

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The Gruesome Dollhouse Death Scenes That Reinvented Murder Investigations

in Art, Education, Life, Psychology, Science | October 30th, 2020

Who can resist minia­tures?

Wee food, painstak­ing­ly ren­dered in felt­ed wool…

Match­book-sized books you can actu­al­ly read…

Clas­sic record albums shrunk down for mice…

The late Frances Gless­ner Lee (1878–1962) def­i­nite­ly loved minia­tures, and excelled at their cre­ation, knit­ting socks on pins, hand rolling real tobac­co into tiny cig­a­rettes, and mak­ing sure the vic­tims in her real­is­tic mur­der scene dio­ra­mas exhib­it­ed the prop­er degree of rig­or mor­tis and livid­i­ty.

Lee began work on her Nut­shell Stud­ies of Unex­plained Death at the age of 65, as part of a life­long inter­est in homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tion.

Her pre­oc­cu­pa­tion began with the Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries she read as a girl.

In the 1930s, the wealthy divorcee used part of a siz­able inher­i­tance to endow Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty with enough mon­ey for the cre­ation of its Depart­ment of Legal Med­i­cine.

Its first chair­man was her friend, George Burgess Magrath, a med­ical exam­in­er who had shared his dis­tress that crim­i­nals were lit­er­al­ly get­ting away with mur­der because coro­ners and police inves­ti­ga­tors lacked appro­pri­ate train­ing for foren­sic analy­sis.

The library to which Lee donat­ed a thou­sand books on the top­ic was named in his hon­or.

The home­made dio­ra­mas offered a more vivid expe­ri­ence than could be found in any book.

Each Nut­shell Study required almost half a year’s work, and cost about the same as a house would have at the time. ($6000 in the 1940s.)

“Luck­i­ly, I was born with a sil­ver spoon in my mouth,” Lee remarked. “It gives me the time and mon­ey to fol­low my hob­by of sci­en­tif­ic crime detec­tion.”

Although Lee had been brought up in a lux­u­ri­ous 13 bed­room home (8 were for ser­vants’ use), the domes­tic set­tings of the Nut­shell Stud­ies are more mod­est, reflec­tive of the vic­tims’ cir­cum­stances.

She drew inspi­ra­tion from actu­al crimes, but had no inter­est in repli­cat­ing their actu­al scenes. The crimes she authored for her lit­tle rooms were com­pos­ites of the ones she had stud­ied, with invent­ed vic­tims and in rooms dec­o­rat­ed accord­ing to her imag­i­na­tion.

Her intent was to pro­vide inves­ti­ga­tors with vir­gin crime scenes to metic­u­lous­ly exam­ine, culling indi­rect evi­dence from the painstak­ing­ly detailed props she was a stick­ler for get­ting right.

Stu­dents were pro­vid­ed with a flash­light, a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, and wit­ness state­ments. Her atten­tion to detail ensured that they would use the full nine­ty min­utes they had been allot­ted ana­lyz­ing the scene. Their goal was not to crack the case but to care­ful­ly doc­u­ment obser­va­tions on which a case could be built.

The flaw­less­ness of her 1:12 scale ren­der­ings also speaks to her deter­mi­na­tion to be tak­en seri­ous­ly in what was then an exclu­sive­ly male world. (Women now dom­i­nate the field of foren­sic sci­ence.)

Noth­ing was over­looked.

As she wrote to Dr. Alan Moritz, the Depart­ment of Legal Medicine’s sec­ond chair, in a let­ter review­ing pro­posed changes to some ear­ly scenes:

I found myself con­stant­ly tempt­ed to add more clues and details and am afraid I may get them “gad­gety” in the process. I hope you will watch over this and stop me when I go too far. Since you and I have per­pe­trat­ed these crimes our­selves we are in the unique posi­tion of being able to give com­plete descrip­tions of them even if there were no witnesses—very much in the man­ner of the nov­el­ist who is able to tell the inmost thoughts of his char­ac­ters.

It’s no acci­dent that many of the Nut­shell Stud­ies’ lit­tle corpses are female.

Lee did not want offi­cers to treat vic­tims dis­mis­sive­ly because of gen­der-relat­ed assump­tions, whether the sce­nario involved a pros­ti­tute whose throat has been cut, or a house­wife dead on the floor of her kitchen, the burn­ers of her stove all switched to the on posi­tion.

Would you like to test your pow­ers of obser­va­tion?

Above are the remains of Mag­gie Wil­son, dis­cov­ered in the Dark Bath­room’s tub by a fel­low board­er, Lizzie Miller, who gave the fol­low­ing state­ment:

I roomed in the same house as Mag­gie Wil­son, but knew her only from we met in the hall. I think she had ‘fits’ [seizures]. A cou­ple of male friends came to see her fair­ly reg­u­lar­ly. On Sun­day night, the men were there and there was a lot of drink­ing going on. Some time after the men left, I heard the water run­ning in the bath­room. I opened the door and found her as you see her.

Grim, eh?

Not near­ly as grim as what you’ll find in the Par­son­age or the Three-Room Dwelling belong­ing to shoe fac­to­ry fore­man Robert Jud­son, his wife, Kate, and their baby, Lin­da Mae.

The peri­od-accu­rate mini fur­nish­ings and fash­ions may cre­ate a false impres­sion that the Moth­er of Foren­sic Sci­ence’s Nut­shell Stud­ies should be rel­e­gat­ed to a muse­um.

In truth, their abun­dance of detail remains so effec­tive that the Office of the Chief Med­ical Exam­in­er in Bal­ti­more con­tin­ues to use 18 of them in train­ing sem­i­nars to help homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tors “con­vict the guilty, clear the inno­cent, and find the truth in a nut­shell.”

Explore 5 Nut­shell Studies—Woodman’s Shack, Attic, Liv­ing Room, Garage, and Par­son­age Parlor—in 360º com­pli­ments of The Smith­son­ian Amer­i­can Art Muse­um Ren­wick Gallery’s exhib­it Mur­der Is Her Hob­by: Frances Gless­ner Lee and The Nut­shell Stud­ies of Unex­plained Death.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Record Store Designed for Mice in Swe­den, Fea­tur­ing Albums by Mouse Davis, Destiny’s Cheese, Dol­ly Pars­ley & More

“20 Rules For Writ­ing Detec­tive Sto­ries” By S.S. Van Dine, One of T.S. Eliot’s Favorite Genre Authors (1928)

Lucy Law­less Joins Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #5 on True Crime

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch a Young Carl Sagan Appear in His First TV Documentary, The Violent Universe (1969)

in Astronomy, Science, Television | October 5th, 2020

Much of the world got to know Carl Sagan through Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, the thir­teen-part PBS series on the nature of the uni­verse — and the inten­si­ty of Sagan’s own pas­sion to dis­cov­er that nature. First aired in 1980, it would become the most wide­ly watched series in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can pub­lic tele­vi­sion. But it’s not as if Sagan had been lan­guish­ing in obscu­ri­ty before: he’d been pub­lish­ing pop­u­lar books since the ear­ly 1970s, and 1977’s The Drag­ons of Eden: Spec­u­la­tions on the Evo­lu­tion of Human Intel­li­gence won him a Pulitzer Prize. When Cos­mos made its impact, some view­ers may even have remem­bered its host from a series of sim­i­lar­ly themed broad­casts a decade ear­li­er, The Vio­lent Uni­verse.

Pro­duced by the BBC in 1969 and broad­cast just three months before the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing, The Vio­lent Uni­verse (view­able above) explains in five parts a range of dis­cov­er­ies made dur­ing the then-recent “rev­o­lu­tion in astron­o­my,” includ­ing infrared galax­ies, neu­tri­nos, pul­sars and quasars, red giants and white dwarfs.

In so doing it includes footage tak­en in obser­va­to­ries not just across the Earth — Eng­land, Puer­to Rico, Hol­land, Cal­i­for­na — but high above it in orbit and even deep inside it, beneath the bad­lands of South Dako­ta. One install­ment pays a vis­it to Kōchi, the rur­al Japan­ese pre­fec­tur­al cap­i­tal where gui­tarist-astronomer Tsu­to­mu Seki makes his home — and his small home obser­va­to­ry, where he had worked to co-dis­cov­er Comet Ikeya–Seki just four years before.

All of this inter­na­tion­al mate­r­i­al — or rather inter­stel­lar mate­r­i­al — is anchored in the stu­dio by tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ist Robert Mac­Neil, lat­er of PBS’ The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, and a cer­tain pro­fes­sor of astron­o­my at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty by the name of Carl Sagan. Despite exud­ing a more delib­er­ate seri­ous­ness than he would in Cos­mos, the young Sagan nev­er­the­less explains the astro­nom­i­cal and astro­phys­i­cal con­cepts at hand with a clar­i­ty and vig­or that would have made them imme­di­ate­ly clear to tele­vi­sion audi­ences of half a cen­tu­ry ago, and indeed still makes them clear to the Youtube audi­ences of today. Apart, per­haps, from its Twi­light Zone-style theme music The Vio­lent Uni­verse has in its visu­al ele­ments aged more grace­ful­ly than the 70s series that made Sagan into a sci­ence icon. And how many oth­er oth­er pub­lic-tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries about the uni­verse include poet­ry recita­tions from Richard Bur­ton?

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan on the Virtues of Mar­i­jua­na (1969)

Carl Sagan Issues a Chill­ing Warn­ing to Amer­i­ca in His Final Inter­view (1996)

The Pio­neer­ing Physics TV Show, The Mechan­i­cal Uni­verse, Is Now on YouTube: 52 Com­plete Episodes from Cal­tech

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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GPS Tracking Reveals the Secret Lives of Outdoor Cats

in Data, K-12, Maps, Nature, Science, Technology | October 2nd, 2020

We track sharks, rhi­no, and bears, so why not Boo Boo Kit­ty, Peanut, and Pump­kin?

The Long Island feline res­i­dents volunteered—or more accu­rate­ly, were volunteered—by their human com­pan­ions to par­tic­i­pate in a domes­tic cat move­ment study as part of the inter­na­tion­al Cat Track­er project.

Each beast was out­fit­ted with a GPS track­er-enhanced har­ness, which they wore for a week.

(Many cat own­ers will find that alone some­thing of an achieve­ment.)

In total, almost a thou­sand house­holds in four coun­tries took part—the Unit­ed States, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, and the UK.

Sci­en­tists were par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed to learn the degree of may­hem these cher­ished pets were vis­it­ing on sur­round­ing wildlife in their off hours.

Any­one who’s been left a present of a fresh­ly mur­dered baby bun­ny, mole, or wing­less bat can prob­a­bly guess.

It’s a con­sid­er­able amount, though by and large the domes­ti­cat­ed par­tic­i­pants stuck close to home, rarely trav­el­ing more than two foot­ball fields away from the com­forts of their own yards. The impulse to keep the food bowl with­in easy range con­fines their hunt­ing activ­i­ties to a fair­ly tight area. Woe to the field mice who set up shop there.

Their move­ments also revealed the per­il they put them­selves in, cross­ing high­ways, roads, and park­ing lots. Researcher Hei­dy Kikil­lus, who tracked cats in New Zealand, report­ed that a num­ber of her group’s sub­jects wound up in a fatal encounter with a vehi­cle.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, gen­der, age, and geog­ra­phy play a part in how far a cat roams, with males, younger ani­mals, and coun­try dwellers cov­er­ing more ground. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, those who have not been neutered or spayed tend to have a freer range too.

“With­out the moti­va­tions of food and sex, most cats seem con­tent to be home­bod­ies,” zool­o­gist Roland Kays, one of the US Project lead­ers, not­ed.

Amer­i­can cit­i­zen sci­en­tists who’d like to enroll their cat can find infor­ma­tion and the nec­es­sary forms on the Cat Track­er web­site.

The cat-less and those with indoor cats can enjoy pho­tos of select par­tic­i­pants and explore their tracks here.

And what bet­ter fall craft than a DIY cat track­ing GPS har­ness?

via Nation­al Geo­graph­ic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Hear Readings of Albert Einstein’s Love Letters (and Chilly Divorce Letters) to His First Wife Mileva

in Letters, Science | October 1st, 2020

Beware the fake quo­ta­tion. They have become so ubiq­ui­tous they often appear in books and speech­es by politi­cians and their fam­i­ly mem­bers, not that any­one seems to care much. But most of us feel a mea­sure of shame at being duped, as Katharine Rose did when she found her­self moved by a let­ter sup­pos­ed­ly writ­ten by Albert Ein­stein to his daugh­ter, Lieserl, “regard­ing the ‘uni­ver­sal force’ of love.” The let­ter is a “beau­ti­ful read,” and it’s a fake. But many admir­ers of Ein­stein were eager to believe it.

Why? Like oth­er famous fig­ures to whom spu­ri­ous words are attrib­uted, Ein­stein isn’t just well-known, he is revered, a celebri­ty, and celebri­ties are peo­ple we feel we know inti­mate­ly. (A com­mon defense for fake-quote-shar­ing goes: “Well, if he didn’t say it, then it’s exact­ly the kind of thing he would say.”) Dis­cussing the theft of Einstein’s brain after his death, Ross Ander­son at Aeon observes that “an ordi­nary per­son can live and die pri­vate­ly, but a genius—and his grey matter—belongs to the world.” We might add, “and so do the inti­mate details of his pri­vate life.”

The details of Einstein’s mar­riage, and of his very unpleas­ant sep­a­ra­tion and divorce, from Mil­e­va Mar­ić have long been pub­lic knowl­edge. “Few pub­lic mar­riages have been sub­ject­ed to a more unnu­anced ver­dict,” Maria Popo­va writes at Brain Pick­ings. Their love let­ters first came to light in 1986, dis­cov­ered by Einstein’s grand­daugh­ter Eve­lyn. They were pub­lished in 1992 as The Love Let­ters, “a col­lec­tion of fifty-four mis­sives exchanged between the begin­ning of their romance” when they met as stu­dents in 1897 to their mar­riage in 1903. Dozens more are avail­able at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty’s online col­lec­tion of Ein­stein’s papers.

The let­ters are real, and they are “spicy,” as YouTu­ber Tibees shows us in the video at the top. No awk­ward pri­vate expres­sion is safe: we begin with let­ters Ein­stein wrote to his high school girl­friend, Marie Win­tel­er, includ­ing a breakup let­ter at 3:13. The excerpts here are all time­stamped on the video’s YouTube page, with help­ful sum­maries like “Einstein’s mom try­ing to break them up” (them being Albert and Mil­e­va), “Ein­stein hav­ing an affair with his cousin Elsa,” “Break­ing up with Elsa,” and “Get­ting back with Elsa.”

Elsa, you may know, was Einstein’s sec­ond wife, in addi­tion to being his cousin, and the cause of his sep­a­ra­tion and divorce from Mil­e­va, to whom he had pro­fessed undy­ing devo­tion. In the inter­est of ful­ly invad­ing the genius’s pri­va­cy, we have, above, some read­ings of his harsh “divorce let­ters” to Mil­e­va, with hits like “Sep­a­ra­tion,” “Propos­ing divorce,” and “Court pro­ceed­ings.” Love may or may not be a “uni­ver­sal force”—we do not, sad­ly, have Einstein’s thoughts on the matter—but we do know he found it a trou­bling­ly chaot­ic, unpre­dictable one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Albert Ein­stein Impos­es on His First Wife a Cru­el List of Mar­i­tal Demands

Hear Albert Ein­stein Read “The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence” (1941)

Albert Ein­stein Explains Why We Need to Read the Clas­sics

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Explore Dozens of Drawings by Charles Darwin’s Creative Children

in History, Science | September 15th, 2020

Charles Dar­win’s work on hered­i­ty was part­ly dri­ven by trag­ic loss­es in his own fam­i­ly. Dar­win had mar­ried his first cousin, Emma, and “won­dered if his close genet­ic rela­tion to his wife had had an ill impact on his children’s health, three (of 10) of whom died before the age of 11,” Kather­ine Har­mon writes at Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. (His sus­pi­cions, researchers sur­mise, may have been cor­rect.) He was so con­cerned about the issue that in 1870, he pres­sured the gov­ern­ment to include ques­tions about inbreed­ing on the cen­sus (they refused).

Darwin’s chil­dren would serve as sub­jects of sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tion. His note­books, says Ali­son Pearn of the Dar­win Cor­re­spon­dence Project at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library, show a curi­ous father “prod­ding and pok­ing his young infant,” Charles Eras­mus, his first child, “like he’s anoth­er ape.” Com­par­isons of his children’s devel­op­ment with that of orang­utans helped him refine ideas in On the Ori­gin of Species, which he com­plet­ed as he raised his fam­i­ly at their house in rur­al Kent, and inspired lat­er ideas in Descent of Man.

But as they grew, the Dar­win chil­dren became far more than sci­en­tif­ic curiosi­ties. They became their father’s assis­tants and appren­tices. “It’s real­ly an envi­able fam­i­ly life,” Pearn tells the BBC. “The sci­ence was every­where. Dar­win just used any­thing that came to hand, all the way from his chil­dren right through to any­thing in his house­hold, the plants in the kitchen gar­den.” Steeped in sci­en­tif­ic inves­ti­ga­tion from birth, it’s lit­tle won­der so many of the Dar­wins became accom­plished sci­en­tists them­selves.

Down House was “by all accounts a bois­ter­ous place,” writes McKen­na Staynor at The New York­er, “with a wood­en slide on the stairs and a rope swing on the first-floor land­ing.” Anoth­er archive of Darwin’s prodi­gious writ­ing, Cambridge’s Dar­win Manuscript’s Project, gives us even more insight into his fam­i­ly life, with graph­ic evi­dence of the Dar­win brood’s curios­i­ty in the dozens of doo­dles and draw­ings they made in their father’s note­books, includ­ing the orig­i­nal man­u­script copy of his mag­num opus.

The project’s direc­tor David Kohn “doesn’t know for cer­tain which kids were the artists,” notes Staynor, “but he guess­es that at least three were involved: Fran­cis, who became a botanist; George, who became an astronomer and math­e­mati­cian; and Horace, who became an engi­neer.” One imag­ines com­pe­ti­tion among the Dar­win chil­dren must have been fierce, but the draw­ings, “though exact­ing, are also play­ful.” One depicts “The Bat­tle of Fruits and Veg­eta­bles.” Oth­ers show anthro­po­mor­phic ani­mals and illus­trate mil­i­tary fig­ures.

There are short sto­ries, like “The Fairies of the Moun­tain,” which “tells the tale of Poly­tax and Short Shanks, whose wings have been cut off by a ‘naughty fairy.’” Imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty clear­ly had a place in the Dar­win home. The man him­self, Maria Popo­va notes, felt sig­nif­i­cant ambiva­lence about father­hood. “Chil­dren are one’s great­est hap­pi­ness,” he once wrote, “but often & often a still greater mis­ery. A man of sci­ence ought to have none.”

It was an atti­tude born of grief, but one, it seems, that did not breed aloof­ness. The Dar­win kids “were used as vol­un­teers,” says Kohn, “to col­lect but­ter­flies, insects, and moths, and to make obser­va­tions on plants in the fields around town.” Fran­cis fol­lowed his father’s path and was the only Dar­win to co-author a book with his father. Darwin’s daugh­ter Hen­ri­et­ta became his edi­tor, and he relied on her, he wrote, for “deep crit­i­cism” and “cor­rec­tions of style.”

Despite his ear­ly fears for their genet­ic fit­ness, Darwin’s pro­fes­sion­al life became inti­mate­ly bound to the suc­cess­es of his chil­dren. The Dar­win Man­u­scripts Project, which aims to dig­i­tize and make pub­lic around 90,000 pages from the Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Library’s Dar­win col­lec­tion, will have a pro­found effect on how his­to­ri­ans of sci­ence under­stand his impact. “The scope of the enter­prise, of what we call evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy,” says Kohn, “is defined in these papers. He’s got his foot in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”

The archive also shows the devel­op­ment of Darwin’s equal­ly impor­tant lega­cy as a par­ent who inspired a bound­less sci­en­tif­ic curios­i­ty in his kids. See many more of the dig­i­tized Dar­win children’s draw­ings at Brain Pick­ings.

   

Relat­ed Con­tent:

16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

What Did Charles Dar­win Read? See His Hand­writ­ten Read­ing List & Read Books from His Library Online

Charles Dar­win Cre­ates a Hand­writ­ten List of Argu­ments for and Against Mar­riage (1838)

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What Made Richard Feynman One of the Most Admired Educators in the World

in Education, Science | August 17th, 2020

If Richard Feyn­man had only ever pub­lished his work in the­o­ret­i­cal physics, his name would still be known far and wide. As it is, Feyn­man remains famous more than thir­ty years after his death in large part for the way he engaged with the pub­lic. From his pop­u­lar text­book The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics (which you can read free online here) to his best­selling con­ver­sa­tion­al essay col­lec­tions like Sure­ly You’re Jok­ing, Mr. Feyn­man to the class­es he taught at Cor­nell (now avail­able online) to his demon­stra­tion of what went wrong with the Space Shut­tle Chal­lenger, he kept in con­ver­sa­tion all his life with human­i­ty out­side the realm of pro­fes­sion­al sci­ence. This explains, in part, why Feyn­man became what Bill Gates calls, in the video above, “the best teacher I nev­er had.”

Gates points to Feyn­man’s lec­ture series “The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law,” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, as “a great exam­ple of how he could explain things in a fun and inter­est­ing way to every­one. And he was very fun­ny.”

That sense of humor com­ple­ment­ed a sense of rig­or: “Dr. Feyn­man used a tough process on him­self, where if he did­n’t real­ly under­stand some­thing, he would push him­self,” ask­ing ques­tions like “Do I under­stand this bound­ary case?” and “Do I under­stand why we don’t do it this oth­er way?” Such an effort to find the gaps in and fail­ures of one’s own under­stand­ing may sound famil­iar, fun­da­men­tal as it is to Feyn­man’s “note­book” tech­nique of learn­ing that we’ve post­ed about more than once before.

You only know how well you under­stand some­thing when you explain it to some­one else; many of us real­ize this, but Feyn­man lived it. The depth of his own under­stand­ing allowed him nev­er to be bor­ing: “Feyn­man made sci­ence so fas­ci­nat­ing,” Gates says, “He remind­ed us how much fun it is,” and in so doing empha­sized that “every­body can have a pret­ty full under­stand­ing. He’s such a joy­ful exam­ple of how we’d all like to learn and think about things.” Though the term “sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor” was­n’t in wide use dur­ing Feyn­man’s life­time, he played the role to near-per­fec­tion. And in the kind of mate­ri­als high­light­ed here, he con­tin­ues to con­vey not just knowl­edge but, as he liked to put it, the plea­sure of find­ing things out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Is Now Com­plete­ly Online

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

Richard Feynman’s “Lost Lec­ture:” An Ani­mat­ed Retelling

Richard Feyn­man Intro­duces the World to Nan­otech­nol­o­gy with Two Sem­i­nal Lec­tures (1959 & 1984)

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

The “Feyn­man Tech­nique” for Study­ing Effec­tive­ly: An Ani­mat­ed Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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