Objects in Space

Wednesday, 27 August 2008 by bbbeard.

I read with fascination AmSci’s book review of “Falling for Science: Objects in Mind” by Sherry Turkle. Dr. Turkle is a professor of sociology at MIT, and though I’ve never met her, it sounds like we would have a lot to talk about. She is most famous for her books on the interactions of people and cyberspace. This latest book is a collection of essays and insights from former students and current professional scientists. They were all asked the same question, “Was there an object you met during childhood or adolescence that had an influence on your path into science?”

My immediate reaction was that the question as posed is a trifle silly (who “meets” objects?) and possibly tendentious, inasmuch as the book review starts with the binary stereotype that “Some people are oriented primarily toward other people, others toward things,” the latter folks being inclined toward science. But as I read on, I appreciated the depth of this insight: that many of us are captivated by the beauty and functionality of objects in our lives. And, like Lorenz’s butterfly, these objects lead us in directions we might not have predicted.

And it put me in mind of Jubal Early, the villain from the ‘philosophical’ Firefly episode, “Objects in Space“. If you haven’t seen the episode, order the DVD. One theme of the episode is the meaning which we humans imbue to physical objects, and how that meaning inheres to the observer, not the object. Joss Whedon has remarked the episode was inspired by Sartre’s Nausea.

Anyway, Proustishly, I recall the many “objects” that I appreciated in my childhood, objects which collectively contributed to the trajectory of my life.

The first object that sprang to mind was a perfboard “computer” kit, comprising a backboard, six perfboard disks, and a bunch of wires, screws, jumpers, and lights. It came with an instruction manual with dozens of “programs”, which one implemented by installing wires connecting the screws installed on the backboard, and labeling the various positions of the disks, which acted as multipole switches. It had limited capability, of course, the equivalent of about two or three bytes (!) of RAM, but was capable of some non-obvious computation. I suppose on one level its attraction was how it made accessible the mysterious world of computing, but on another level, it struck at that boundary between comprehensible and incomprehensible.

Another favorite was a tiny microscope that my father brought me from one of his many trips to the Orient. It came with a dozen or so slides of prepared, stained specimens. I spent countless hours fiddling with it, marveling at the intricacy of nature and the length scales beneath the visible, and trying in vain to find household items that would yield to its power. (In hindsight, some stain would have helped greatly.) Ultimately, of course, we used very nice microscopes in high school biology class, and the toy microscope yielded to entropy.

I was also the proud owner of a Tasco 60mm refractor with azimuthal mounting, which offered tantalizing details from the night sky. I spent many cold hours scanning my favorite constellations, star-hopping – and dreaming of having a larger scope. At one point I bought a 6″ refractor lens grinding kit from Edmunds, the idea being that grinding your own lens was so much cheaper than having a professional do it. I spent many hours pushing the lens back and forth over the grinding glass, but lens grinding is slow work. I gave up after a while and decided it would be quicker to go to college, get a job, and pay a professional to do it after all. So now I have a 10 inch Dobsonian sitting in my garage, where it serves as my wife’s favorite parking target.

I have to mention an “object” that was a profound talisman for me, the book “Calculus: One and Several Variables” by Saturnino Salas and Einar Hill. The first edition was a big red cloth-bound book which I found absolutely delightful, both from a tactile and an intellectual standpoint. I’m pretty sure I read it from cover to cover. I loved the beautifully hand-drawn figures, the cozy typeface, and especially the intuitive but rigorous presentation. For awhile I carried this book everywhere, and it is the text from which I learned calculus. I have noticed that subsequent editions have completely lost the magic, going to the soulless modern format: computer-generated plots, gray sidebars, and Times New Roman.

I could go on… the assorted bits of schwag from the Star Trek Fan Club, the Radio Shack Science Project Kits that came packaged in a neat red and clear plastic perfboard box, my first electric guitar, the Morse code set I had in elementary school, the hefty steel-ringed glass lens I still use as a paperweight…. These all provided little impulses on the trajectory I have followed.

So, as Jubal Early said, “Well… here I am.”

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