This will be a delay in my effort to understand my reaction to the YouTube video of Gregory Lemarchal and Andrea Bocelli.
I posted on FB a question about who I would invite to dinner. Though my guest list varies from day to day, these folks are clearly at the top of that list:
Richard Feynman. Brilliant, eccentric, absolutely fascinating. I just finished the book "Tuva or Bust" by his friend Ralph Leighton about the adventures he and Feynman had as they tried to visit Tannu Tuva, an autonomous region of Russia. Though Feynman would die before he had the opportunity to make the trip, their efforts eventually brought a major exhibition of Tuvan and Mongolian artifacts to the U.S. and may well have introduced a large number of folks to "throat singing," an musical form important to the Tuvan culture. If anyone is not familiar with this amazing technique, there are examples on YouTube, and I have a CD entitled "Back Tuva Future" by Ondar, which has some of Feynman talking on it along with Willy Nelson providing translated lyrics to one of the songs. Highly recommended.
Neil deGrasse Tyson. The heir to the popularizer role that Carl Sagan filled for many years. I think he and Feynman would have an amazing conversation, with deGrasse Tyson bringing Feynman up to date on some of the cosmological advances of the last couple of decades since Feynman died.
Charles Darwin. Having taught paleontology for many years and thus being intimately involved with issues of evolution in the fossil record, having the great genius of evolution to talk to would be such a delight for me. And perhaps I could learn more about how he felt when he got Wallace's paper with the same conclusions about evolution as his own prior to his publication of his famous "abstract" we so often consider the sole introduction of the ideas of natural selection in 1859.
Neil Shubin. Author of "Your Inner Fish" about the discover of yet another important "missing link" in the lineage between amphibians and reptiles, Neil would be able to share with Darwin the panoply of works that so fully have supported Darwin's thesis. Darwin always felt the fossil record did not support his ideas fully. This was, of course, before so much of the fossil record was revealed in many far-flung regions in amazing detail. And, he would be stunned, I'm sure, by the genetic research of the last few decades.
Who else? This changes from time to time...but as I write this, I'm drawn to Sean Carroll...the evolutionary geneticist who wrote "Endless Forms Most Beautiful," one of the most profound books I've ever read. That we now know how HOX genes control so much of development and that the genes can be thought of as a tool box rather than a blueprint would, no doubt, stun Darwin as much as it did me.
Clearly, this list is biased by my being a scientist. There are no representatives outside of science, and the list isn't really representative of all the amazing discoveries in so many other fields of science, especially chemistry. In a future post, I think I will consider a dinner with representatives of the arts and then, perhaps another dinner with those from the social sciences.
As I did on FB....let me pose the question to any who read this...imagine this kind of dinner. No restrictions on living or dead, nor fields represented. But think of the reasons and perhaps the interactions you imagine.
I posted on FB a question about who I would invite to dinner. Though my guest list varies from day to day, these folks are clearly at the top of that list:
Richard Feynman. Brilliant, eccentric, absolutely fascinating. I just finished the book "Tuva or Bust" by his friend Ralph Leighton about the adventures he and Feynman had as they tried to visit Tannu Tuva, an autonomous region of Russia. Though Feynman would die before he had the opportunity to make the trip, their efforts eventually brought a major exhibition of Tuvan and Mongolian artifacts to the U.S. and may well have introduced a large number of folks to "throat singing," an musical form important to the Tuvan culture. If anyone is not familiar with this amazing technique, there are examples on YouTube, and I have a CD entitled "Back Tuva Future" by Ondar, which has some of Feynman talking on it along with Willy Nelson providing translated lyrics to one of the songs. Highly recommended.
Neil deGrasse Tyson. The heir to the popularizer role that Carl Sagan filled for many years. I think he and Feynman would have an amazing conversation, with deGrasse Tyson bringing Feynman up to date on some of the cosmological advances of the last couple of decades since Feynman died.
Charles Darwin. Having taught paleontology for many years and thus being intimately involved with issues of evolution in the fossil record, having the great genius of evolution to talk to would be such a delight for me. And perhaps I could learn more about how he felt when he got Wallace's paper with the same conclusions about evolution as his own prior to his publication of his famous "abstract" we so often consider the sole introduction of the ideas of natural selection in 1859.
Neil Shubin. Author of "Your Inner Fish" about the discover of yet another important "missing link" in the lineage between amphibians and reptiles, Neil would be able to share with Darwin the panoply of works that so fully have supported Darwin's thesis. Darwin always felt the fossil record did not support his ideas fully. This was, of course, before so much of the fossil record was revealed in many far-flung regions in amazing detail. And, he would be stunned, I'm sure, by the genetic research of the last few decades.
Who else? This changes from time to time...but as I write this, I'm drawn to Sean Carroll...the evolutionary geneticist who wrote "Endless Forms Most Beautiful," one of the most profound books I've ever read. That we now know how HOX genes control so much of development and that the genes can be thought of as a tool box rather than a blueprint would, no doubt, stun Darwin as much as it did me.
Clearly, this list is biased by my being a scientist. There are no representatives outside of science, and the list isn't really representative of all the amazing discoveries in so many other fields of science, especially chemistry. In a future post, I think I will consider a dinner with representatives of the arts and then, perhaps another dinner with those from the social sciences.
As I did on FB....let me pose the question to any who read this...imagine this kind of dinner. No restrictions on living or dead, nor fields represented. But think of the reasons and perhaps the interactions you imagine.
Comments
Post a Comment