Now let us say that Omega Centauri contained 10,000 pre-supemovas and that every one of these exploded at their earliest opportunity. There would be fewer twinkles altogether, but they would appear over a shorter time in terval and would be, individually, twice as bright.
It would be a perfectly ideal explosion, for it would be unobscured by dust clouds; it would be small enough to be quite safe; and large enough to be sufficiently spectacular for anyone.
And yet, now that I've worked up my sense of excite ment over the spectacle, I must admit that the chances of viewing an explosion in Omega Centauri are just about nil.
And even if it happened, Omega Centauri is not visible in New England and I would have to travel quite a bit south ward if I expected to see it high in the sky in full glory and I don't like to travel.
Hmm… Oh well, anyone for a neighborhood fire?
Part II
Of Other Things
11. Forget It!
The other day I was looking through a new textbook on biology (Biological Science: An Inquiry into Life, written by a number of contributing authors and published by Har court, Brace amp; World, Inc. in 1963). 1 found it fascinating.
Unfortunately, though, I read the Foreword first (yes, I'm one of that kind) and was instantly plunged into the deepest gloom. Let me quote from;the first two paragraphs:
"With each new generation our fund of scientific knowl edge increases fivefold… At the current rate of s.cien tific advance, there is about four times as much'significant biological knowledge today as in 1930, and about sixteen times as much as in 1900. By the year 2000, at this rate of increase, there will be a hundred times as much biology to dcover' in the introductory course as at the beginning of the century."
Imagine how this affects me. I am a professional "keeper upper" with science and in my more manic, ebullient, and carefree moments, I even think I succeed fairly well.
Then I read something like the above-quoted passage and the world falls about my ears. I don't keep up with science. Worse, I can't keep tip with it. Still worse, I'm falling farther behind every day.
And finally, when I'm all through sorrowing for myself, I devote a few moments to worrying about the world generally. What is going to become of Homo sapiens?
We're going to smarten ourselves to death. After a while, we will all die of pernicious education, with our brain cells crammed to indigestion with facts and concepts, and with blasts of information exploding out of our ears.
But then, as luck would have it, the very day after I read the Foreword to Biological Science I came across an old, old book entitled Pike's Arithmetic. At least that is the name on the spine. On the title page it spreads itself a bit better, for in those days titles were titles. It goes "A New and Complete System of Arithmetic Composed for the Use of the Citizens of the United States," by Nicolas Pike, A.M.
It was first published in 1785, but the copy I have is only the "Second Edition, Enlarged," published in 1797.
It is a large book of over 500 pages, crammed full of small print and with no relief whatever in the way of illustrations or diagrams. It is a solid slab of arithmetic except for small sections at the very end that introduce algebra and geometry.
I was amazed. I have two children in grade school (and once I was in grade school myself), and I know what arith metic books are like these days. They are nowhere near as large. They can't possibly have even one-fifth the wordage of Pike.
Can it be that we are leaving anything out?
So I went through Pike and, you know, we are leaving something out. And there's nothing wrong with that. The trouble is we're not leaving enough out.
On page 19, for instance, Pike devotes half a page to a listing of numbers as expressed in Roman numerals, ex tending the list to numbers as high as five hundred thou sand.
Now Arabic numerals reached Europe in the High Middle Ages, and once they came on the scene the Roman numerals were completely outmoded. They lost all pos sible use, so infinitely superior was the new Arabic nota tion. Until then who knows how many reams of paper were required to explain methods for calculating with Roman numerals. Afterward the same calculations could be performed with a hundredth of the explanation. No knowledge was lost only inefficient rules.
And yet five hundred years after the deserved death of the Roman numerals, Pike still included them and ex pected his readers to be able to translate them into Arabic numerals and vice versa even though he gave no instruc tions for how to manipulate them. In fact, nearly two hun 138 dred years after Pike, the Roman numerals are still being taught. My little daughter is learning them now.
But why? Where's the need? To be sure, you will find Roman numerals on cornerstones and gravestones, on clockfaces and on some public buildings and documents, but it isn't used for any need at all. It is used for show, for status, for antique flavor, for a craving for some kind of phony classicism.
I dare say there are some sentimental fellows who feel that knowledge of the Roman numerals is a kind of gate way to history and culture; that scrapping them would be like knocking over what is left of the Parthenon, but I have no patience with such mawkishness. We might as well suggest that everyone who learns to drive a car be required to spend some time at the wheel of a Model-T Ford so he could get the flavor of early cardom.
Roman numerals? Forget iti-And make room instead for new and valuable material.
But do we dare forget things? Why not? We've forgot ten much; more than you imagine. Our troubles stem not from the fact that we've forgotten, but that we remember too well; we don't forget enough.
A great deal of Pike's book consists of material we have imperfectly forgotten. That is why the modern arithmetic book is shorter than Pike. And if we could but perfectly forget, the modern arithmetic book could grow still shorter.
For instance, Pike devotes many pages to tables-pre sumably important tables that he thought the reader ought to be familiar with. His fifth table is labeled "cloth meas ure.29 Did you know that 2% inches make a "nail"? Well, they do. And 16 nails make a yard; while 12 nails make an ell.
No, wait a while. Those 12 nails (27 inches) make a Flemish ell. It takes 20 nails (45 inches) to make an English ell, and 24 nails (54 inches) to make a French ell. Then, 16 nails plus 1% inches (371/5 inches) make a Scotch ell.
Now if you're going to be in the business world and import and export cloth, you're going to have to know all those ells-unless you can figure some way of getting the ell out of business.
Furthermore, almost every piece of goods is measured in its own units. You speak of a firkin of butter, a punch of prunes, a fother of lead, a stone of butcher's meat, and so on. Each of these quantities weighs a certain number of pounds (avoirdupois pounds, but there are also troy pounds and apothecary pounds and so on), and Pike carefully gives all the equivalents.
Do you want to measure distances? Well, how about this: 7 92/100 inches make I link; 25 links make I pole; 4 poles make I chain; 10 chains make I furlong; and 8 furlongs make I mile.
Or do you want to measure ale or beer-a very com mon line of work in Colonial tim6s. You have to know the language, of course. Here it is: 2 pints make a quart and 4 quarts make a gallon. Well, we still know that much anyway.
In Colonial times, however, a mere gallon of beer or ale was but a starter. That was for infants. You had to know how to speak of man-sized quantities. Well, 8 gallons make a firkin-that is, it makes "a firkin,of ale in Lon don." It takes, however, 9 gallons to make "a firkin of beer in London." The intermediate quantity, 81/2 gallons, is marked down as "a firkin of ale or beer"-presumably outside of the environs of London where the provincial citizens were less finicky in distinguishing between the two.