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You are here: Home / Nature & Respite / Three Months That Changed The World (Respite)

Three Months That Changed The World (Respite)

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Time for another thread, and perhaps a break from our exhausting round of ragegasms.

I don’t have anything particularly useful to offer, so I’m afraid that what you get is some random musing on some science-y stuff.

Yesterday afternoon I was reading a fascinating essay by Abraham Pais* on Einstein and quantum theory (as one does).  I was rolling along when this passage brought me to a screeching halt:

In the last four months of 1859 there occurred a number of events which were to change the course of science.

On the twelfth of September, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (1811-1877)submitted to the French Academy the text of a letter to Hervé Faye (1814 1902) in which he recorded that the perihelion of Mercury advances by thirty-eight seconds per century due to “some as yet unknown action on which no light has been thrown,” (Le Verrier, 1859). The effect was to remain unexplained until the days of general relativity.** On the twenty-fourth of November a book was published in London, entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882). Meanwhile on the twentieth of October Gustav Kirchhoff (1859) from Heidelberg submitted his observation that the dark D– lines in the solar spectrum are darkened still further by the interposition of a sodium flame. As a result, a few weeks later he proved a theorem and posed a challenge. The response to Kirchhoff’s challenge led to the discovery of the quantum theory.

I know, I know.  While Darwin’s book was pretty much instantly understood to open enormous new vistas in the study of the living world, no contemporary observers could have had more than a twitch of recognition of the significance of either Mercury’s motion or what would come from a deep dive into the electromagnetic spectrum.  But in hindsight we can (as Pais did) see those three months as a watershed, a before and after moment in the making of modern science, and hence of so much of our allegedly modern lives.

Three Months That Changed The World (Respite)

The economic historian Brad DeLong has made the case that 1870 or so was a critical turning point, the moment when humankind at last broke out of Malthusian trap that had capped growth and the chance for an ever increasing fraction of humankind to enjoy lives that exceed subsistence. He makes a strong argument, IMHO, but what strikes me is the way the last half of  the nineteenth century was genuinely a break with the past across so much of human experience, for ill (see, e.g. this) and very much for good.

My book in progress (out next spring) looks at one of those shifts, born of the long struggle to understand the mechanisms of infectious disease that came to a climax in the 1870s and 1880s. Pais here points to parallel leaps in other scientific domains. There’s no doubt that a raft of technologies born of various sciences made everyday life in the last third of the century meaningfully different across growing swathes of the globe than what one’s parents or grandparents had experienced in recent decades.

All of which to say is that I’m finding it both fun and provoking to look into that time.  History does not repeat itself, but, as they say, it knows the chords. I’m hearing a lot of resonances between our own time and what was going on about one hundred and fifty years ago.

That’s enough late-night dorm room meandering from me.  What do y’all think?  Leaving the miseries of minute-by-minute politics aside for a moment, how radical a shift in our understanding of and engagement of the world have we gone through over the last while?  What are the odds we’ll find a way to turn any such new ideas into human flourishing.

Or, if you’d rather, MLB’s Opening Day is ten days away.*** That’s fair game too.

Which is to say, this thread is as open as are at this blessed moment of possibility each team’s chances of winning the World Series.

*Pais was a physicist, a friend of Einstein and Bohr, the biographer of both men, and someone I had the good fortune to know, albeit slightly. One afternoon we got to walk around the Prague Jewish cemetery together; it was a truly moving hour or so.

**I tell the story of Le Verrier’s Mercury discovery and the at once serious and comic scientific quest that followed in The Hunt for Vulcan. It’s a fun read, if I do say so as shouldn’t.

***I, for one, do not take this coming Wednesday’s two game set in South Korea as baseball’s opening day. YMMV.

Image: Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on the Orrery… c. 1766.

Reader Interactions

63Comments

  2. 2.

    lowtechcyclist

    Le Verrier was also one of the discoverers of Neptune, if my memory hasn’t failed.

  3. 3.

    Yutsano

    I just put up post 300 on the last thread about woodcocks. I feel accomplished now, and in need of a shower.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    It’s a fun read, if I do say so as shouldn’t.

    Can confirm “fun read”. Of course, my definition of “fun” may be a bit askew, so take that into account.

    Fascinating that all three events happened so close together, though to be fair, seeing absorption lines was only one of the many things that lead to quantum theory, so I’d give that one a bit less weight than the other two.

  7. 7.

    Peke Daddy

    Maxwell’s equations. Roentgen discovering X-rays. Rutherford discovering the nucleus. Crick, Watson and DNA.

  9. 9.

    Traveller

    Thank you this fascinating post (and excellent choice of image). I can’t even pretend to understand most of it, but you write exceedingly well and so you at least, were a very fun read. Thanks again, Best Wishes, Traveller

  10. 10.

    Old School

    Sure enough, the Dodgers and Padres are playing two games in South Korea this week.

    I had missed that was happening.

  11. 11.

    lowtechcyclist

    Leaving the miseries of minute-by-minute politics aside for a moment, how radical a shift in our understanding of and engagement of the world have we gone through over the last while?  What are the odds we’ll find a way to turn any such new ideas into human flourishing.

    It all depends on how sufficient our response is to global warming, doesn’t it?  That’s the cloud over everything.

  12. 12.

    RSA

    How cool! Thanks for the stories.

    for ill (see, e.g. this)

    Is there a link missing in the text above?

  14. 14.

    Tom Levenson

    @lowtechcyclist: The discoverer, really. He made the calculation, sent the prediction off to the Berlin Observatory, where a couple of observers found Neptune pretty much where he said it would be after maybe an hour of observing.

    (There was a priority dispute with an English astronomer who had done a similar calculation, but who had failed to find anyone willing to take a look. Which is why credit now mostly goes to the Frenchman.)

    Le Verrier’s Neptune triumph plays  big role in the story of Vulcan, the intra-Mercurian planet invoked to explain the inner planet’s excess perihelion advance–all of which is in my so-immodestly promoted book.

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    Which is to say, this thread is as open as are at this blessed moment of possibility each team’s chances of winning the World Series.

    I’m hoping for a Women’s NCAA win but my team got a very tough draw even though they did get a #1 seed. Go Hawkeyes!

    Changing the subject, in the open thread category, I’ve been intrigued with the anti-trust settlement that the National association of Realtors signed last Friday.

    CNN   An earth-shattering, multibillion-dollar antitrust ruling against the National Association of Realtors late last year led to a settlement on Friday that will loosen the powerful trade group’s stranglehold on America’s housing market. The $418 million settlement with a group of homebuyers is expected to take effect sometime around July, pending a judge’s approval. It would transform a number of rules and guidelines set by the NAR that critics say have kept housing prices artificially inflated.

    The TL;DR: 6% commissions, split between the buyer’s and seller’s brokers, will no longer be the norm. Agent commissions are expected to fall — in some cases, dramatically — because they will be competitive and negotiable, and sellers will be able to shop around for better rates. And other broker tactics that critics say are anticompetitive, such as a rule that made sellers’ agents set compensation for buyers’ agents, will be prohibited.

    It’s not all good news: Buyers may have to pay their broker directly in the future, which could be tough for buyers accustomed to financing that commission as part of their mortgage. And some buyers could choose to forgo using a broker altogether. Also, a bunch of brokers are probably about to quit.

    But the biggest takeaway for homebuyers is undoubtedly welcome: The overall cost to buy a home should fall by thousands of dollars on average.

    For decades, Americans have paid a standard commission of around 6% when selling a home, split between the seller’s broker and the buyer’s broker. The National Association of Realtors and its 1.5 million agents say those fees are negotiable. But certain NAR rules have kept commissions significantly higher than in other countries, where they can average around 1% or 2%.

    After the settlement, those commissions will be fully competitive, meaning brokers can advertise their rates to prospective sellers, and people can shop around for bargains.

    Real estate commissions are expected to fall between 25% and 50% because of the new rules, according to TD Cowen Insights.

  19. 19.

    SteveinPHX

    The season starts when Cincy plays it’s first game. Every night before I go to bed I rub two chicken legs together and say a prayer for the Reds upcoming season.
    May the pitching staff stay healthy!

    I gotta get back to work.

  20. 20.

    Steeplejack

    @Tom Levenson:

    Is is there supposed to be a hyperlink in “so much of human experience, for ill (see, e.g. this) and very much for good”?

  24. 24.

    Ksmiami

    Unlocking the genome is probably one of the most significant break throughs in terms of humanity’s future and it’s just starting- biotech/genomics companies are looking to solve diseases etc at a molecular level and according to our own particular makeup.

  26. 26.

    counterfactual

    @Scout211: I feel a disturbance in the Force, as if millions of MAGA-hats cried out in terror, and were cancelled.

    This will hit Trumps campaign finances.

  27. 27.

    bjacques

    Monoclonal antibodies for treating non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in about the last 30 years is the one I care about. Not for me personally, but close enough.

    I finally finished Money For Nothing a few months ago, due to time pressures—my record for starting and finishing a book is still about ten years, for The Satanic Verses. Anyway, cracking book! I didn’t realize derivatives, or something like them, existed 300 years ago.

  28. 28.

    ColoradoGuy

    Maxwell’s Equations opened the door to the 20th Century, and broke the hold of mechanistic views of electricity, light, and magnetism. It went from a lab curiosity and an interesting mathematical trick to the foundation of all of electronics, radio waves, radar, X-rays, and a direct precursor to Einstein’s equations.

    Our modern view of the unseen world of the electromagnetic spectrum would be incomprehensible to even the greatest minds of the Nineteenth Century … with the exception of Maxwell.

  30. 30.

    Miss Bianca

    @bjacques: wow. My mother and my oldest  brother both died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Mom a bit over 30 years ago and brother about 12-13 years ago. I had no idea there had been any big breakthroughs in treatment for this disease.

  31. 31.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Been a bunch of years since I read it, but I have a particular fondness for your Measure for Measure.

    My hardcover copy is, along with about 99% of my total physical library, in storage at the moment. Had hoped I could get MfM in a Kindle edition, but that seems not to be possible.

  32. 32.

    kalakal

    The last half of the 19th century was the most incredible period of technological change. Someone born in 1850 who lived to 70 would see the introduction of, amongst other things, the internal combustion engine, electric lighting and electrification generally, sail giving way to steam*, human flight, tanks,telephones, machine guns, radio etc

    *in 1860 around 90% of the worlds shipping was sail powered, by 1890 sailing ships were practically extinct

  34. 34.

    bjacques

    @Miss Bianca: I don’t know if it was a breakthrough because I can’t compare NHL’s aggressiveness in this case (2019-2020) to others, though at less one other in the ward didn’t expect a good outcome, but to me it was a revelation, and they were already doing trials of MABs without chemo (I think). I don’t know what the state of the art is now. But we were just lucky the course of treatment ended just when COVID lockdown was coming. The hospital was already converting a floor to a COVID ward.

  38. 38.

    PAM Dirac

    @Miss Bianca:

    I had no idea there had been any big breakthroughs in treatment for this disease.

    Non-Hodgkins lymphoma is very important in the history of cancer treatment. In the late ’60s the chemotherapy schedules (MOPP) to treat non Hodgkin’s lymphoma were the first to show any real survival benefits for any tumor. It’s hard to imagine now how big a deal that was. At the time cancer was thought to be an unsolvable problem except for maybe surgery. Cancer research was kind of a backwoods of health research. The was a feeling that committing to cancer research was a bad move for talented scientists. (Aside: I wonder sometimes if this attitude let women be accepted into cancer research, like Trudy Elion who won the Noble Prize in 1988 for work done in the 60s and 70s). There wasn’t a lot of drug company interest which is why the Cancer Chemotherapy National Service center was created by act of Congress in 1955. The success of the protocols changed things dramatically and really led directly to the War on Cancer Act in 1971. There was a 50th anniversary symposium and I highly recommend the talk by Vince DeVita for the history. For an overall view of the history of cancer treatment I highly recommend The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. I spent over 40 years at NCI so all this is near and dear to my heart.

  41. 41.

    Tom Levenson

    @karen marie: Have you seen the Donald Westlake novel of the same name?

    This would be a good time to recall that titles can’t be copyrighted.

  43. 43.

    karen marie

    @Tom Levenson:  I totally forgot about Westlake!  I knew I’d read a book with that title.  I didn’t realize I’d read two!

    I love Donald E. Westlake.  May his books remain in print forever.

  44. 44.

    greenergood

    As far as discoveries of the late 1800s, can I add the discovery of the paleolithic  cave paintings of Altamira in Spain in 1868, that made us humans realise we’ve been doing this creative stuff for a long time and that our ancestors weren’t the knuckle draggers we’d been told we were…

  45. 45.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Ksmiami: Unlocking the genome is probably one of the most significant break throughs in terms of humanity’s future and it’s just starting…

    That’s my opinion too. It’s amazing we have tools that work at the molecular level. My current gig is with a gene sequencing company and the technology is mind boggling. It’s only the very beginning but still impressive.

  47. 47.

    TBone

    @RSA: 💜 I’m happy to know someone read it! Thank you! I’ve sent it to friends and family but no one responded 😞

    Happy Womens’ History Month!

  48. 48.

    DrDaveChemist

    It’s almost a cliché, but Einstein’s published works in 1905 probably outrank this, and it came from one scientist in three distinct areas of inquiry: Brownian motion (essentially proving the existence of atoms of a definite size), the photon model for the photoelectric effect (paving the way for quantum physics), and special relativity (which ultimately led to nuclear energy, among many other offshoots).

    On the other hand, I’m proud to be a scientific “descendant” (based on academic pedigree) of Kirchhoff (and Bunsen, who was also interested in the interaction between light and matter), so I’m happy to see his work celebrated. Plenty of room to point out that science has done an awful lot for humanity over the last few centuries and that understanding things like cause and effect is important.

  50. 50.

    Librarian

    Pais was, like Einstein, a faculty member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and his biography of Einstein is entitled “Subtle is the Lord”. It has been criticized by some for having too much physics in it.

  51. 51.

    Glidwrith

    Tissue engineering is coming down the pipeline as well. Give it another 10-20 years and we might be replacing stomach and intestines. Bladders can already be replaced and we’ve got consortiums working on liver, lung and kidney. Those three might take longer as they are very complex.

  52. 52.

    lurker

    chiming in on a dying thread, Babbage was active a little earlier in the 1800s with his Difference Engine and Analytical Engine concepts.  Unquestionably, the 1800s were a time of changes by leaps and bounds in all sorts of areas of scientific inquiry.  While Babbage’s devices never came to fruition directly and clearly built on earlier ideas, he is legitimately considered the father of computing due to these concepts.  Now, whether computers are a good thing is something we can discuss separately…

  53. 53.

    karen marie

    @Mr. Bemused Senior:   I watched a video earlier today about “the oldest DNA.”  It was an episode of PBS’s NOVA.

    A Danish guy got the bright idea that ancient DNA might be discoverable in soil.  Samples were taken from permafrost in Greenland, and indeed they did find ancient DNA!  So cool.  Plants, animals, microscopic critters – the whole kit and kaboodle

    @Librarian: It’s long been my opinion that physics has too much physics in it.

  54. 54.

    frosty

    …1870 or so was a critical turning point, the moment when humankind at last broke out of Malthusian trap that had capped growth and the chance for an ever increasing fraction of humankind to enjoy lives that exceed subsistence.

    Pretty simple. Industrial Revolution, coal, steam and the beginning of finding and using fossil fuels. It’s food, one step removed, and with more food, Malthus is obsolete.

    One of the commenters on a long-dead blog I read every day (The Oil Drum) had as his signature this phrase: Is mankind smarter than yeast?

    Beer: Yeast eats all the sugar, starves and dies.

    Wine: Yeast eats the sugar, secretes alcohol and dies in its own waste.

    We’d better get smarter fast! (Sorry if I doomscrolled your post, Tom)

  55. 55.

    frosty

    @Yutsano: ​That video you posted was great!! The last couple of weeks I’ve been searching eBird for hotspots where I can see a Woodcock. None of them involve crossing a road as far as I can tell.

  56. 56.

    Timill

    @lurker: Not only computing came from Babbage. He needed identical parts for the engines. One of his subcontractors was a young guy named Joe Whitworth, who invented the Whitworth thread to try to make the Engines possible.

  57. 57.

    frosty

    @TBone: ​  @RSA: ​I read it and sent it to my friend with Long COVID.

    This is important work, I’m glad she’s digging into it. I dodged a bout of Lyme Disease a decade or so ago when I had a doc who listened when I told her my knuckles hurt when I clenched a fist and that I’d had a deer tick bite six months earlier. She did a battery of tests and put me on Doxycycline.

    These days it’s “I got 30 tick bites, can I have some Doxy plz?”​
    ​
    ​

  58. 58.

    TBone

    @frosty: thank you for reading and sharing!  I hope it gives hope to your friend, and I’m glad you got a good doctor when you needed one.  Be careful out there, please 😊

    PSA for others:  it’s not merely about Lyme and Covid.  It’s fascinating immunologic work that sorely needs attention (and money, of course). Women fighting for women, also too. Implications for myriad diseases that may be the result of bacterial or viral infection such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.

  59. 59.

    azlib

    Nice post Tom.  I did not know the date of those events. Basically, those discoveries were the end of the mechanistic view of how the universe actually works.

  61. 61.

    TBone

    Holy cow!  I just read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letter for March 18 💙 what a coincidence 😉

    Also today, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to advance women’s health research to integrate women’s health into federal research initiatives, strengthening data collection and making funding available for research in a comprehensive effort to equalize attention to men’s and women’s health across their lifespans. The federal government did not require women’s health to be included in federally funded medical research until 1993. In a speech today, First Lady Jill Biden recalled that in the early 1970s, researchers studying estrogen’s effect in preventing heart attacks selected 8,341 people for the study. All of them were men.

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