Cosmos Episode 1: The good, the bad, and the problematic stuff

by Salman Hameed

The rebooted Cosmos has started with a bang. But bangs can go in many different directions. Here are some thoughts on the first episode. But with some caveats first: I was enamored with the first Cosmos. So it is always tempting to compare the rebooted version to the original one. But I watched the original when I was thirteen - and it is impossible for me to be in the same state of mind while watching Cosmos 2.0. Second, the idea of Cosmic Calendar was original in Sagan's Cosmos - and while it has been updated, the new Cosmic Calendar is now a copy. As is the phrase, "we are made up of star stuff". Plus, because of the hype, publicity, and the team behind Cosmos 2, we have to raise our standards of evaluation - and that may not be that fair. With some of these limitations in mind, here are some things that stood out for me:


The Good Stuff: The visuals are spectacular! I also enjoyed the addition of animations in story telling. In particular, I absolutely loved the animated sequence of the development of human civilization at the end of the Cosmic Calendar. Similarly, the pacing of the Bruno segment was perfect (though it had historical problems - see below). The tour of the universe and the Cosmic calendar could have been better with less "information" and more context. For example, there were too many stops in the early part of the Cosmic Calendar - and I think that diluted the overall impact. Oh and a big missed opportunity towards the end of the Calendar when Tyson was talking about the early hominid species. As I remember, the background had the famous 3.5 million year old Laetoli footsteps, possibly of three individuals, preserved in the volcanic ashes of Tanzania. It would have been amazing to have imagined where those three individuals might have been headed - while leaving these footprints that not only have lasted over 3 million years, but also have provided us with the evidence of bipedalism before the development of modern brain. One could have also jumped from these footprints to the importance of Neil Armstrong's footprint on the Moon. Okay - I didn't write the show and it may be unfair to start bringing up new additions.

The Bad Stuff: There already has been criticism for the animated story centered on Giordano Bruno. So lets get it out there: Cosmos 2.0 did not do a good job with history. Here are two reasons why this is a problem: a) It provides unnecessary fodder to places like the Discovery Institute (see here), and b) There is no excuse for bad history. After all, we all complain when bad science is depicted in TV shows and movies. Heck, Tyson was even upset with Sandra Bullock's zero-gravity hair in Gravity. Considering this, they should pay the same respect to other fields, including history. So what was wrong with the Bruno story? Well, the story implied that he was primarily burnt for his 'heretical' view of an infinite universe (with infinite number of worlds) and his belief in Copernicanism. Like the Galileo Affair, this is often depicted as a clash between science and religion, or at least science and catholicism (though Cosmos 2.0 correctly pointed out opposition to Copernicanism from Lutherans and Calvinists as well). Reality is more complicated, and this particular narrative of Bruno vs the Church was created in the 19th century  (See this Irtiqa post from 2008:   Why was Giordano Bruno Burnt at the Stake?). As Corey Powell explains very nicely in his post, Did 'Cosmos' pick the wrong hero?, Bruno was accused of several heresies, and a belief in an infinite universe was just one of them:

The Roman Inquisition listed eight charges against Bruno. His belief in the plurality of worlds was just one. The others involved denying the divinity of Jesus, denying the virgin birth, denying transubstantiation, practicing magic, and believing that animals and objects (including the Earth) possessed souls. You could fairly call Bruno a martyr to the cause of religious freedom, but his cosmic worldview was neither a deduction nor a guess. It was a philosophical corollary of his heterodox belief that God and souls filled all of the universe.

Oh and he thought that most of the Church officials were idiots - and called them "asses". So while, technically it is true that he was burnt at the stake for his belief in plurality of the worlds, to have a story that makes it the only thread is a bit misleading. And just as we don't like bad science in the name of simplicity, we should not like bad history in the name of simpler narratives.

Perhaps the worst thing in all this is that this can become a divisive issue. Similarly, Tyson at one point says that if you are ready to accept scientific methodology (I'm paraphrasing here), then join me in this voyage. I would have guessed that everyone should be invited to join in this adventure, and hopefully, all viewers will come out with a deeper appreciation of science and the universe.

I also thought that after the soaring rhetoric of Cosmic Calendar, where humans are literally insignificant, it was a letdown to end the show with Tyson's meeting with Sagan. Yes, yes, it is about passing the torch. But that was already done at the beginning of the episode. The original Cosmos left us pondering about the future of humanity (what will we do in the next second of the Cosmic Calendar?), whereas the first episode of Cosmos 2.0 left us firmly planted on Earth with Tyson.

The Problematic stuff: In Reflections on the Pale Blue Dot, Sagan wrote:

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

And yet, Cosmos 2.0 started with glorifying one of the current leaders: President Obama. I have no idea what Sagan would have thought about Obama's drone program, NSA spying, and the long solitary confinement by the government of Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning). Sagan opposed many of President Reagan's policies and even declined an invitation to meet with him at the White House. Unlike seeking a Presidential endorsement for his show, I wonder if he would have wooed the audience just by focusing on the grandeur of the universe - like he did in 1980. I think the very beginning of Cosmos 2.0 succumbed to the celebrity culture, and thus became a bit smaller.

Waiting for episode 2. I know that one of the episodes will also feature al-haytham (Alhazen) as one of the major animated characters. Hope they get the history right.

Related post: 
Watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos in Pakistan in 1984

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Excellent article on the current political struggle in Turkey

by Salman Hameed

It is a pleasure to post this article from my friend and research collaborator, Berna Turam. Things have been messy and complicated in Turkey. She provides a nice primer to understanding the current crisis, which in large part, is due to a struggle between the ruling AKP party in Turkey and the Gulen Movement (GM):

Turkey has recently been shaken up by the tumultuous altercation between the globally active Muslim community-movement, the Gulen movement (GM) and the pro-Islamic

Justice and Development Party (AKP) in power for over a decade. Both Western and local audiences have been stunned by the intensity of the clash, which peaked in the last couple of months. 

Previously, most observers had wrongly assumed that these groups were inherent allies because of their faith-based worldview. In sharp contrast to this misperception, these groups came from entirely different pasts and political orientation, although they share a common interest in free market economy and cherished upward socio-economic mobility. 

In fact, these two pious Muslim groups have not cooperated with each other with the exception of a five-year period during the first term of the AKP (2002-2007). Historically, they come from two different branches of Islam in Turkey. The leader, Fethullah Gulen, and his followers have never approved of - or stood close to - Necmettin Erbakan's more radical Islamism, embodied by Milli Gorus (National Outlook). 

Although the GM at large shifted their votes from centre-right parties to the AKP in the 2002 election, Gulen never truly trusted Erbakan's tradition and his protege Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has served as the prime minister since 2002. 

Nevertheless, similar to the liberal democrats of Turkey, the GM stood close by the AKP during its first term, when the AKP was conducting consistent political reform and respecting principles of secular democracy. This conditional partnership started to weaken in the aftermath of the 2007 elections, and cracked in the last term of the AKP (2011-present), when the latter developed an increasingly self-confident and authoritarian attitude in the absence of a strong opposition.

There is now little doubt about Erdogan's increasing authoritarian measures (some comical, as the threat to ban YouTube and Facebook because they host some of the leaked corruption wiretaps - a measure rejected by Turkish President), but the Gulen Movement is not completely innocent either:

Power struggles are caused by the inability to share power, and are fuelled by contradicting political and economic interests. Hence, they are organic parts of power politics and can be played out entirely legitimately, as long as the rules of democracy are protected. However, in the current Turkish case, we recently witnessed persisting violation of these rules with increasing speed and frequency. 

No doubt, this is hurting the young democracy in Turkey and its relatively fragile democratic institutions. Acts of corruption committed by the members of the government are being revealed frequently through the release of tapes, some of which have been illegally produced through unpermitted wire-tapping. Neither the corruption nor some of the methods used in making and releasing the tapes qualify as democratic practices. 

This situation is turning a promising pattern of positive state-society interaction achieved in the first years of the millennium into a war zone of destruction. It is destroying positives steps that have been made in politics, economics, art and other spheres. 

More importantly, as in most power struggles, there are also unintended consequences. Both the AKP and the GM are trespassing over the borders they previously promised not to. On the one hand, the AKP is violating the firm boundary between religion and politics. Erdogan used to preach his fondness of a secular state to Egypt and Middle Eastern democracies during the Arab Spring. 

Secularists and the leading followers of the GM have objected against the AKP's decreasing commitment to secularism. These worries are not to be discarded easily, as the PM and his government continue to take fatwas from religious figures. It is not surprising then to witness the frustrations of the GM about the radicalisation of the AKP. In fact, the GM has a good record of secularism by separating religion from education in their scientifically oriented schools.
...
On the other hand, however, the GM has trespassed over the boundaries of civil society, within which it emerged and expanded across the world as a self-defined non-state "civic" entity.  Consistent with this image, the GM has refused to form a political party. 

For decades, the leader and his followers took clear stance against mixing religion and politics, by clearly displaying this principle in their confinement of politics to civic engagements with the state. However, when GM's individual members began taking important offices in the branches of the state, they entered a different zone of politics. Understandably, both the AKP and the democrats of Turkey are concerned about the formation of a parallel state by the GM.

But more importantly, where is all this going?

The right thing to do for the GM is to contribute to a strong democratic opposition against the over-empowered authoritarian AKP through the ballot box. The local elections in the end of March 2014 and national elections in a few years will provide a major litmus test for the GM to illustrate and prove its ultimate intentions and goals.
Electoral politics, however can be divisive. Just as the AKP's voters have disagreed in the face of the government's freedom violations and corruption, the GM may also face divisions. 

Two factors may contribute to this. First, the GM has a large grass-root inside and outside Turkey, and a globally influential leadership in the community who are not in the state bureaucracy. Second, the prioritisation of competitive education in the movement created a new educated elite with civil sensibilities and political and economic leverage. 

The near future will show if the GM will transform this power struggle and merge its votes with the secularist opposition for the Republican People's Party (RPP). Voting for RPP is a difficult choice, not only for pious Muslims but even for some liberal and leftist democrats, as RPP has historically not cultivated democratic credentials and practices. 

To the contrary, the party has been closely associated with military coups and violations of human rights. Hence, in the upcoming elections the RPP will also be tested on its capacity to transform its radical secularist and anti-democratic edges, which have formerly excluded and discriminated against pious Muslims, Islamists and other minorities. 

The upcoming local and national elections will put both the Gulen movement and the RPP to a test and will give them an opportunity to change old habits.   

Surely, the present political chaos did not pop up erratically out of nowhere. Before the Taksim-Gezi protests broke out in June 2013, Turkey was already dealing with these very difficult experiments on the ground. In the aftermath of the Gezi protests, one thing is clear: If Turkey comes victorious out of this political crisis, it will stand as an historical example for the future of the Muslim world. 

It will be a showcase of shifting the axis of conflict from the ancient Islamist-secularist dichotomy to a struggle between those who defend democracy and those who infringe on it in the Middle East. 

Read the full article here. 

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A new book on the reception of Darwin's work in the Arab world

by Salman Hameed

I had been waiting for this book for a while. I had read parts of Marwa Elshakry's dissertation on the reception of Darwin and evolution in the Arab world and found her work to be fascinating and outstanding. Well, now her book Reading Darwin in Arabic: 1860-1950 is out and I'm currently reading it. In the mean time, here is a review of the book from the Times Literary Supplement (tip from Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad):

The title Reading Darwin in Arabic notwithstanding, most of the men discussed in this

book did not read Charles Darwin in Arabic. Instead they read Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Ernst Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, Thomas Huxley, Gustave Le Bon, Henri Bergson and George Bernard Shaw in European or Arabic versions. They also read popularizing accounts of various aspects of Darwinism in the scientific and literary journal al-Muqtataf (“The Digest”, 1876–1952). The notion of evolution that Arab readers took away from their reading was often heavily infected by Lamarckism and by the social Darwinism of Spencer. Darwin’s The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in 1859, but Isma‘il Mazhar’s translation of the first five chapters of Darwin’s book into Arabic only appeared in 1918. 

For a long time, the reception of Darwinism was bedevilled by the need to find either neologisms or new twists to old words. As Marwa Elshakry points out, there was at first no specific word in Arabic for “species”, distinct from “variety” or “kind”. “Natural selection” might appear in Arabic with the sense “nature’s elect”. When Hasan Husayn published a translation of Haeckel, he found no word for evolution and so he invented one. Tawra means to advance or develop further. Extrapolating from this verbal root, he created altatawwur, to mean “evolution”. Darwiniya entered the Arabic language. Even ‘ilm, the word for “knowledge” acquired the new meaning, “science”. With the rise of scientific materialism came agnosticism, al-la’adriya, a compound word, literally “the-not-knowing”. 

The reviewer makes an interesting point that much of the discussion on evolution in the Arab world centered on politics rather than in works of fiction etc. I can imagine that the educated elites of the colonized world would be thinking more or less on political matters. Nevertheless, I have to finish the book to comment on that, but it is an interesting point:

The debate was prolonged and bitter, yet, on the showing of Elshakry’s thoroughly researched book, it strikes me as lacking in exhilaration. The vast vistas of time conjured up by Lyell and Darwin, the molten landscapes, the reign of the great monsters, the excitements of the fossil hunts and the quest for the missing link, none of these things seems to have struck an imaginative chord in Egypt, Syria or Lebanon. There is little or nothing in the Arabic literature of the Nahda, or “Renaissance”, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that can be compared to Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine or Olaf Stapledon’s First and Last Men and nothing, I think, to parallel the subtler exploration of Darwinian themes in George Eliot’s Middlemarch or Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, or, for that matter Darwin’s own rhetoric. The Origin of Species had concluded with these words: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved”. 

The embrace of evolutionary ideas was closely bound in with political considerations. 

Instead theologians, scientific popularizers, polemicists and journalists sought either to reconcile the new ideas with the Qur’an or to deny their validity on the grounds that they could not be so reconciled. In these debates Darwin’s The Descent of Man was more fiercely attacked and defended than The Origin of Species. Muslim polemicists against Darwinism gratefully borrowed the Protestant theologian William Paley’s analogy of a watch found abandoned on a beach, since the intricate design of such an instrument surely argued irrefutably for a designer. The Islamic reformer and activist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–97) produced an early and intemperate attack on Darwin that was clearly not based on any direct acquaintanceship with his ideas (though Afghani later softened, and claimed that there was not a lot that was new in Darwinism, the Arabs having got there first). On the other hand, his leading disciple and pioneer of Islamic modernism, Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) became an enthusiast for the social Darwinism of Spencer and he was actually introduced to the great sage by his friend, the poet, Arabist and anti-imperialist Wilfrid Blunt. 

As was the case with reception of Darwinism in China, embrace of evolutionary ideas was closely bound in with political considerations, especially the challenges posed both by the West’s ideology and its military might. Science was now understood to be primarily Western science. Those who, like Abduh, broadly supported the theory of evolution were accused of being accomplices of cultural imperialism avant la lettre. The scramble for Africa was seen as the product of a political version of natural selection. Darwinism was denounced as part of the ideology of empire and something that underwrote the Anglo-Saxon claim to supremacy. In particular, the editors of al-Muqtataf, who drew so heavily on British publications, Ya‘qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, were regarded with suspicion by Egyptian nationalists and, in fact, the editors seem to have had good contacts with Lord Cromer, the proconsul in Egypt from 1883 to 1907. In 1952, the year Nasser came to power, al-Muqtataf was forced to close. On a non-political level there was much that was peculiarly British in The Origin of Species and some Arab readers were probably repelled by Darwin’s intense interest in dog breeding. 

On the other hand, prominent supporters of Darwin and Spencer enthusiastically embraced the new foreign ideas as tools that might free them not only from the British presence in Egypt, but also from Ottoman and Khedivial despotism, as well as the shackles of what was seen as an outworn religious tradition. Spencerian social Darwinism, with its application of the concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and politics, could be read as offering hope for the regeneration of the Arab world. 

Okay, this should whet your appetite for the book. Read the full review here. 

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Watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in Pakistan in 1984

by Salman Hameed

It was sudden. It was unexpected. I was in 9^th grade when my life took a dramatic turn. Like many of my peers at school, I was planning on pursuing electrical or computer engineering at N.E.D. University. My father is an engineer. My eldest brother is an engineer. The path seemed to have been laid out. But then, on a fateful night, Cosmos got aired on Pakistan Television (PTV). By the time the first episode ended, I had decided to become an astronomer. In less than an hour, a science poet from Brooklyn had fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life in Pakistan!

I don’t remember the exact date, but this was some time in 1984. I had heard of neither Carl Sagan or of his Personal Voyage in the form of the show Cosmos. In fact, when I sat down to watch the first episode, I was initially disappointed to find out that it was a documentary. I loved science fiction films, but used to run away from documentaries. I was thirteen. But the name of the show, “Cosmos”, fooled me. It sounded cool and mysterious.

And then Carl Sagan, in his inimitable accent and style, invited us all to join him in the voyage:

The surface of the earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore we've learned most of what we know. Recently we've waded a little way out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

I was hooked. The first episode ended with Sagan’s famous Cosmic Calendar, where the entire history of the universe was compressed into one year. The Big Bang happened on January 1^st. In this calendar, the Sun and the planets formed only in September, and life arose on September 21^st. Modern humans appear at 11:52pm on December 31^st, and the entire written history would lie within the last 13 seconds of the cosmic year. The episode ended, but I remember sitting in stunned silence for a little while. For the first time, I had encountered the true enormity of space and time. My jaw stay dropped for the coming weeks and months, and I was an annoying teenager who was trying to explain the Cosmic Calendar to anyone who would listen (and even listening was not exactly a precondition). 

I had fallen in love with astronomy. Through Cosmos, I found out that one could be a professional astronomer. This was a revelation: You can get paid to do what you really love to do! Seventeen years after the airing of Cosmos in Pakistan, I obtained my doctorate in astronomy in the US. Carl Sagan died in 1996, and I never got a chance to thank him personally for transforming my life via only a picture tube. 

I routinely watch clips of Cosmos for writing inspiration. I have the series on iTunes, DVD, and, yes, even on VHS. I want to make sure that in case of a technological apocalypse, one of these formats will allow me the continued pleasure of being awed by Sagan’s personal voyage into the cosmos.

Now I await the premiere of the new Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. By all accounts, it looks dazzling. Tyson, himself, is an outstanding communicator of science and a worthy successor of Sagan. I’m excited to see this updated Cosmos. So much has happened in astronomy since the first Cosmos. Planets around other stars. An accelerating universe. Dark Matter. Dark Energy. But in all honesty, I’m also a bit apprehensive. Sagan is often portrayed primarily as a science communicator. But I think his biggest contribution was to provide us with a rich and sensitive humanistic view of the universe. He managed to balance awe and humility in the face of the enormous cosmos uncovered by science. I hope the new Cosmos finds a way to retain this spirit.

The wait is almost over. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey premiers tomorrow. Here is the trailer: 

Cosmos - A Spacetime Odyssey With Neil deGrasse... by Michael500ca

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Digitized Collection of Arabic and Persian Medical Books and Manuscripts at Yale University

by Salman Hameed

If you are working on the history of Arabic or Persian medicine, you should check out the digitized collection at Yale University's Medical Historical Library (tip from Tabsir):

This digitized collection of selected volumes of medical books and manuscripts, dating from 1300 to 1921, is drawn from the Medical Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.  This collection reflects the Arabic and Persian intellectual efforts that translated, augmented, and transmitted Greek and Roman medical knowledge to Western societies during the Renaissance.  It includes iconic works by authors such as Avicenna

and al-Razi. 

The Medical Historical Library, originally formed by the joining of three collections by bibliophiles Harvey Cushing, John Fulton, and Arnold Klebs, has over 120,000 volumes dating from the 12th to the 21st centuries.  While primarily composed of works in Western medicine and science, a smaller selection of Arabic and Persian books and manuscripts are a "hidden collection" in the Library.  Through the support of the Arcadia Fund, the Medical Historical Library was able to digitize Arabic and Persian books and manuscripts, as well as early translations in Latin, French, and English.   

This project was conceived to build on the earlier success of past Middle Eastern digitization efforts at Yale University Library and a past collaboration between YUL and the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), which digitized a small selection of Arabic and Persian manuscripts which are available at the Arabic and Middle Eastern Electronic Library (AMEEL).  The project added another level beyond the Arabic/Persian collection, as early Latin, French, and English translations of Arabic medical works were selected to be part of the grant.  The transmission and translation of Arabic and Persian medicine into Europe has been a source of scholarly interest, as Arabic and Persian societies were vital in the retention and augmentation of ancient medical knowledge. 

For more information about this digital collection, contact the Medical Historical Library via email or phone 203-737-1192. 

- See more at: http://web.library.yale.edu/digital-collections/arabic-and-persian-medicine#sthash.62LIcl1b.wAzziDJi.dpuf

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An opera inspired by a solar eclipse

by Salman Hameed

We often don't think about eclipses. Lunar eclipses go by without much notice. There is a bit more excitement with total solar eclipses. After all, these phenomena are just alignments based on the orbits of Earth, the Moon, and the Sun - and nothing more. The same is true for much of astrology - but it still retains its popularity for human affairs. Historically, however, eclipses were considered omens - often on the bad side. But eclipses have also inspired great art. Now a 19th-century opera, Prince Igor, by Alexander Brodin is being performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera - and it looks fantastic. For those of us who won't be driving to New York anytime soon, it is also being shown live in theaters as well. And if you still are not impressed, consider the fact that it is based in what is now Ukraine! Talk about timings. Here is an excerpt of a review from Nature that talks about its plot:

The opera's plot hinges on the defeat, psychological journey and redemption of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich. A historical ruler of Putivl in modern-day Ukraine, he is at war against the Polovtsy nomads, who have laid waste to Russia. The eclipse appears just five minutes into the prologue, a portent of Igor's military failure. The light coming through the windows darkens for a few seconds. “The sky grows dark? What does it mean? It is a sign from heaven,” sings the chorus, begging the soldiers not to go to war. “The Sun is a crescent, like the Moon.” The solar motif runs through the opera: in the third act, Igor, devastated by his defeat, evokes the Sun again: “I will save my people ... the Sun will shine again.” Ultimately, Borodin throws off the pall of superstition to show that humans — not celestial events — are in charge. At the very end, the prince, with an abruptness that we found unconvincing, begins to salvage wood from the ruins to rebuild his city, once again leading his people. 

Looks fantastic, but it is 270 minutes long!! Read the full review here (you may need subscription to access it).

And while we are on the topic of eclipses, one interesting story is of how Christopher Columbus used his knowledge of eclipses to gain influence over the native population in Jamaica. From Science News from 2006:

Nearly 2 years after sailing from Cadiz in 1502, Columbus and his restless, disgruntled crew were stranded on the north coast of Jamaica, confined to worm-eaten, leaking ships. The native inhabitants were no longer awed by the newcomers. Annoyed by their voracious appetites and angry at the depredations of crew members, who had plundered several villages, the population was hostile and would no longer supply food.
Weary and ill, Columbus had withdrawn to his ship. There, he pondered his precarious situation. Returning to the stained pages of the Ephemerides, he noted Regiomontanus's prediction of a total eclipse of the moon on Feb. 29, 1504. 

Such an eclipse occurs only when the moon passes into Earth's shadow. A lunar eclipse looks the same anywhere on Earth, but it occurs at different times, as measured by local clocks. Regiomontanus's book contained not only the expected dates of eclipses but also diagrams illustrating how completely the moon would be covered and precise information about each eclipse's duration and timing down to the hour. 

Columbus had observed a lunar eclipse on an earlier voyage and had noticed discrepancies between the predictions made by Zacuto and those contained in the Ephemerides. Moreover, he had no reliable way of determining the correct local time of this particular projected eclipse. The times provided by Regiomontanus for its start and end were for Nuremberg, Germany. 

Despite these uncertainties, Columbus was desperate enough to take a chance. On the day before the predicted eclipse, he summoned the leaders of the native inhabitants and warned them through an interpreter that if they did not cooperate with him, the moon would disappear from the sky on the following night. 

The natives for the most part were unimpressed; some even laughed. Columbus nervously awaited the outcome of his gamble. Could he rely on tables that had been compiled several decades earlier and that predicted the positions of celestial bodies only for the years between 1475 and 1506? How large were the errors? 

Amazingly, the prediction proved correct. As the full moon rose in the east on the appointed night, Earth's shadow was already biting into its face. As the moon rose higher, the shadow became larger and more distinct until it completely obscured the moon, leaving nothing but a faint red disk in the sky. 

The natives were sufficiently frightened by this unexpected occurrence and by Columbus's uncanny prediction to beg forgiveness and appeal to him to restore their moon to the sky. Columbus responded that he wished to consult with his deity. He retired to his quarters, using a half-hour sandglass to time how long the eclipse would last. Some time later, when the eclipse had reached totality, he emerged to announce that the moon, in answer to his prayers, would gradually return to its normal brightness. 

The next day, the natives brought food and did all they could to please Columbus and his crew. Columbus himself used the timing of the eclipse to calculate his ship's longitude, but his answer proved wildly erroneous. 

On June 29, 1504, a Spanish ship rescued Columbus's stranded party, a year after it had beached on the Jamaican coast. A few months later, Columbus set sail for Spain, bringing to an end his voyages to the New World.

Read the full story here. 

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Egyptian government crackdown on academics

by Salman Hameed

The government of Egypt is being absolute in quashing any dissent. In particular, it has - so far - been successful in treating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group in its entirety, and to prosecute anyone who has any sympathies with the group. I doubt that this kind of absolutism will last more than a few years. In the mean time, however, people are paying a high price. And worse, even those people who study Egypt are not safe either:

The indictment here of a well-known professor on charges of espionage has sparked new concerns about academic freedom in Egypt. The military-backed government is carrying out a widespread crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that until last year governed the country. Some political scientists say they can no longer speak freely for fear of being accused of supporting the Brotherhood. 

That is what Emad el-Din Shahin, a professor of public policy at the American University

in Cairo, said happened to him. Mr. Shahin, editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics and a former visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of Notre Dame, is a defendant in what prosecutors have dubbed “the greatest espionage case in the country’s modern history.” 

Mr. Shahin’s co-defendants are mostly senior members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including former President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted by the army following mass protests last summer. Among the specific charges against the professor are espionage, leading an illegal organization, providing a banned organization with information and financial support, calling for the suspension of the constitution, preventing state institutions and authorities from performing their functions, harming national unity and social harmony, and trying to change the government by force. 

Fortunately, Shahin was out of the country at the time, and may not be young back in the foreseeable future. In the mean time, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has also drafted a letter in support of Emad Shahin. But he is not the only one and academics now have to think twice before visiting Egypt:

Last year two Canadian academics were detained for nearly two months after being accused by Egyptian prosecutors of “participating with members of the Muslim Brotherhood” in an attack on a police station. While neither is a political scientist, their case showed the risks facing visiting professors. 

Mr. Shahin’s case has drawn the most public attention, but other academics also face prosecution for public statements. Amr Hamzawy, a professor of political science, also at the American University in Cairo, has been charged with “insulting the judiciary” for a post on Twitter criticizing a court ruling. Mr. Hamzawy has played a prominent political role in the last three years, winning a seat in Parliament and leading a liberal party. He has also criticized the military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi last summer and the crackdown on Islamists that has left more than 1,000 dead and tens of thousands in prison.

What a shame! Read the full story here. 

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Chatting about astronomy on PTV World

by Salman Hameed

When I was in Pakistan this past December, I had a chance to participate in a morning chat show on PTV-World. The video is now available for the show (thanks to Nabeel Tirmazi for that) and I have embedded it below. One thing to note: regardless of the topic, it is almost impossible not to talk about religion in Pakistan. Therefore, you will see that this topic came up repeatedly in the conversation. That said, it is good to see that there was also a genuine interest in astronomy amongst the hosts of the show and that we talked about comets, nuclear fusion, and Mars at breakfast time. I'm a proponent of keeping science and religion separate (Stephen Jay Gould's Non-overlapping Magisteria - NOMA) and I tried to make the case here as well. However, it was funny that the guest who followed me, straight-away launched into saying that religion and science are the same things. But not only that, he went to make a reference to Mecca being at the center of the world (for my critique of that, see Why are Muslims calling to replace GMT with Mecca Time?).

In any case, I enjoyed the conversation. In fact, our astronomy discussion continued for another hour after the show. I hope PTV-World brings in more science programs.

Here is the video (it is in English):


World This Morning-Dr. Salman Hameed & Dr... by worldthismorning

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Heading over to Creighton University

by Salman Hameed

The Kripke Center at Creighton University, Omaha, is holding a two day symposium on Religion and the Sciences: Opportunities and Challenges on Feb 21-22. Here is the description of the symposium:

Scholars in many fields of religious and theological studies have used the sciences to address a number of issues and attempt to answer a variety of questions with which they

are confronted. This symposium will explore the intersection of religious/theological inquiry with the social and natural sciences and how religion scholars use the sciences to address issues of human sexuality, cosmology, the environment, social ethics, epistemology, and others.

If you are in Omaha and are interested in the topic, join us there. You can find the schedule of the symposium along with the titles of talks here. The Kripke Center also published the Journal of Religion and Society.

I'm excited to be visiting Creighton again. My friend/collaborator, Tracy Leavelle, is the chair of the history department there, and he will be presenting his Hawai'i work at the symposium. In addition I'm hoping that Jon Calvert - also in the history department at Creighton - will also attend the symposium. I highlighted his excellent biography of Sayyid Qutb a few years back, and also his thoughtful talk on the history and politics of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood from last June.

If I get a chance, I will try to post from the symposium as well.

In the mean time, this is what I'm leaving behind in Amherst:

Okay, okay, it can be pretty as well. But still…Enough already! By the time I get back on Saturday, there better be spring here:

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Alan Lightman on seeking permanence in our universe (or in other universes)

by Salman Hameed

Alan Lightman is one of my favorite writers. He used to be an accomplished astrophysicist and now he is an outstanding writer. His new book is titled The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew. It is a collection of his essays and I haven't had a chance to read it yet. But he is a thoughtful writer and it is always a pleasure to read him. Here is a taste of it in the Wall Street Journal where Lightman ponders the search for meaning in an ephemeral universe:

I don’t know why we long so for permanence, why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs. With futility, we cling to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. We visit and

revisit the old neighborhood where we grew up, searching for the remembered grove of trees and the little fence. We clutch our old photographs. In our churches and synagogues and mosques, we pray to the everlasting and eternal. Yet, in every nook and cranny, nature screams at the top of her lungs that nothing lasts, that it is all passing away. All that we see around us, including our own bodies, is shifting and evaporating and one day will be gone. Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago? 

The evidence seems overly clear. In the summer months, mayflies drop by the billions within 24 hours of birth. Drone ants perish in two weeks. Daylilies bloom and then wilt, leaving dead, papery stalks. Forests burn down, replenish themselves, then disappear again. Ancient stone temples and spires flake in the salty air, fracture and fragment, dwindle to spindly nubs, and eventually dissolve into nothing. Coastlines erode and crumble. Glaciers slowly but surely grind down the land. 

What about our sun and other stars? Shakespeare’s Caesar says to Cassius: “But I am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fix’d and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.” But Caesar was not up on modern astrophysics. The North Star and all stars, including our sun, are consuming their nuclear fuel. After which they will fade into cold embers floating in space or, if massive enough, bow out in a final explosion. Our sun, for example, will last another five billion years before spending its fuel. Then it will expand enormously into a red gaseous sphere, enveloping the earth, go through a serious of convulsions, and finally settle down to a cold lifeless ball. One by one, the stars in the sky will wink out. In the distant future, space will be black.

Ultimately, he finds permanence in the idea of multiverses:

For the religious, there is God and the immortal soul. But for those of us who, like me, do not believe in any divine substance lying outside the material universe, there is one last possibility for something eternal. Recent ideas in physics suggest that our universe may be only one of a staggering number of universes, constantly emerging out of the hazy probabilities of quantum mechanics, existing for a limited period of time like our universe and then passing away. After which new universes would be born, in an endless cycle of birth and demise. Most of these other universes would be very different from ours. Some would have 17 dimensions of space. Some would have planets and stars, like our universe, while some might contain only a diffuse cloud of energy. Some few might harbor life, while most would not be endowed with the special conditions needed for life. Even though we in our universe could have no contact with these other universes, we might consider ourselves part of a super family of universes, a vast cosmic chain of being stretching back into the infinite past and forward to the infinite future. In this way, the tiny flash of our individual lives, the passing of the human generations and the millennia, the fading of our sun, and finally the demise of our entire universe could be given a much larger meaning, a place in an infinite and eternal tapestry of unfolding worlds.

I'm a bit surprised that he so quickly excluded our own universe from permanence. All evidence so far suggests that our universe will expand forever, and even if all the stars turn into white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes - well - you will still have all these stellar remnants part of the universe - forever! Not to mention that even after all the stars are dead in the universe and there are no new stars forming (don't worry, that will not happen for a very very very long time), there will still be unused low density gas clouds, orphaned planets and moons, and comets and astroids, floating in such an inert universe. I think it is quite permanent.

This is just fun nit-picking. The essay is wonderful and you can read the full article here. 

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A fantastic new initiative in Pakistan: Eqbal Ahmad Centre for Public Education

by Salman Hameed

Pervez Hoodbhoy has launched a new project for public equation in Pakistan. It hosts essays, short videos about science, documentaries, and videos on physics concepts, and many of the videos are both in Urdu and english. Here is the goal of Eqbal Ahmad Centre for Public Education (EACPE): 

EACPE seeks to foster the use of science and reason to understand nature and society and so better enable citizens of Pakistan to participate fully in the political, social, economic, and cultural life of their society; to exercise their democratic rights and responsibilities; to value human rights, democracy and the rule of law; to promote cultural and religious diversity; to raise awareness of global issues and the natural environment; and to advance the goals of international peace and justice.

The immediate aim is to produce and promote, equally in Urdu and English, 6-10 minute videos on important social, political, and scientific issues. One new video will be uploaded every week (see website).

Interviews of prominent Pakistani scholars and commentators will be undertaken at the next step.  

Of additional note, Eqbal Ahmad taught at Hampshire College. I did not get a chance to meet him (he died in 1999, and I joined Hampshire in 2005), but I have had the opportunity to learn about him through other faculty members (and with Pervez) who knew him well. And of course, through his writings. The most prestigious lecture at Hampshire College is named after him: Eqbal Ahmad Annual Lecture Series. The vision of this new project fits neatly with the views of Eqbal Ahmad.

Lets make EACPE a success!

Here is a sample video in Urdu: How will our universe end?: 

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IVF centers flourishing in Iran

by Salman Hameed

A year ago, I had posted about the stunning decline in fertility rates in much of the Muslim world. This will have a profound social impact in the next few decades. But in the article, Iran was singled out as its birth rate has now fallen below the level it requires to replace its current population. With that in context, here is a Foreign Policy article on the growing number of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) centers in Iran. The article is interesting and yet the tagline unnecessarily brings up the fear factor of neighboring Sunni Muslims. Here is the title: How the supreme leader's revolutionary acceptance of 
cutting-edge fertility treatments 
is changing lives in Iran -- and unsettling the deeply conservative 
Sunni Middle East. Can we talk about Iran as Iran or do we always have to place it in a Sunni vs Shia context?

In any case, the interesting point here is not that IVF is popular and that it is allowed within a religious framework. Numerous Muslim countries have IVF centers and - even if the topic is considered a bit taboo - couples have been using the technique. But it is the permissibility of third-party egg or sperm donation in Iran that is pleasantly surprising. It is only a matter of time when it will be widely accepted, but Iran is certainly leading the Muslim world on this front. One of the reasons for that is a 1999 fatwa from Ayatollah Khamenei that gave green light to third party donations. From the article:

Iran's first in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic opened up in Yazd, a desert city in central Iran, more than 20 years ago. It immediately found itself inundated with clients. By the mid-2000s, it was so popular that lines stretched out the door. Couples who had traveled from rural areas would camp outside in hopes of getting an appointment. More clinics soon

opened in Tehran and across the country. 

IVF quickly gained acceptance in other parts of the Middle East, but physicians ran into religious restrictions prohibiting more advanced forms of fertility treatment. Standard IVF involves fertilizing an egg with sperm in a laboratory and then returning the embryo into the womb, a process requiring that both the egg and sperm of the respective partners be viable, which is not always the case. The next step in treating infertility requires a third party -- that is, an egg or sperm donor from outside the couple. In Islam, the ethics of such treatment are murky: Patients initially worried they might be committing adultery or that children born of such unions would be illegitimate.  

But childless couples continued to demand a way to conceive. In Iran, medical specialists set about finding a religious solution, seeking the support of sympathetic mujtahids (clerics qualified to read and interpret the Quran). The Shiite tradition of reinterpreting Islamic law was central to the clerics' willingness to go along -- in stark contrast to Sunni jurisprudence's focus on scholarly consensus and literal readings of the Quran, which has meant few fresh legal rulings on modern matters. Although, to Westerners, Iran's Shiite clerics might appear reactionary, they are downright revolutionary when it comes to bioethics. In recent years, they have handed down fatwas allowing everything from stem-cell research to cloning.  

And here is the bit about the 1999 fatwa:

In 1999, Khamenei issued his landmark fatwa making third-party sperm and egg donation permissible. "Both the egg donor and the infertile mother must abide by the religious codes regarding parenting," the ayatollah decreed, setting out the various conditions that made the act permissible before God. Through Khamenei's edict, the Islamic Republic had made clear at the highest level that the state was ready to sanction Iranians' efforts to make babies -- whatever it took. 

But here is a fascinating bit. Even though Khamenei issued the fatwa, Iranian legislators overruled him. This is interesting as Iran is often presented as 1-dimensional country under the sole dictates of the Supreme Ayatollah. Again from the article:

In some ways, fertility treatment may be the rare area where the Iranian regime has moved forward before society is ready. Although legislators approved embryo donation, they overruled Khamenei on sperm donation, banning the procedure in 2003. As a result, the practice was pushed underground, and those clinics that quietly offer the treatment are vulnerable to prosecution. Sara Bamdad, a researcher in Shiraz who conducted a survey on public attitudes about assisted reproduction, found that only 34 percent of respondents approved of egg donation. "Lawmakers should be thinking about the future and what is going to happen to these children when they're older," says Bamdad. "If a society can't accept a child that's born of assisted reproduction, then there'll be so many problems in the future."

And this plays into the issue of family law:

Iran's legal system has yet to catch up with the implications of third-party fertility treatments. Under Iran's Islamic family law, babies born of sperm or egg donation fall into the legal category of adopted children and stepchildren, who are not permitted to inherit property from non-biological parents. Couples thus must find alternative ways to put aside assets to provide for these kids, and the rights and responsibilities of biological parents (the egg or sperm donors, who are meant to remain confidential but whose identities are sometimes disclosed in practice) remain unclear. 

Read the full article here. Also see this article on IVF clinics in Pakistan and a health tourism IVF ad for Turkey. 

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The problem of camels in the book of Genesis

by Salman Hameed

It seems that camels pose a historical problem for some of the accounts in the book of Genesis. It seems that camels were domesticated in the region decades/years after some of the Biblical events involving camels were supposed to have taken place. Is it a big deal? It depends on how you use Genesis. The creation accounts in Genesis often show up in evolution debates. Critics point to the contradictory stories in Genesis 1 and 2. I think such criticism misses the point - and just like the anachronism of camels in Genesis, such criticism tries to read the Genesis account of creation as if it is a scientific description. But far more embarrassingly, people like Ken Ham and his organization, Answers in Genesis, indeed read Genesis as a scientific book and make a mockery of common sense by claiming that the universe/world is 6000 years old.

The camel story, however, has to do with more immediate historical events. Again, if your emphasis is on the larger message of Genesis, then this should not matter to you as well. Nevertheless, this is an intriguing connection of science and religion:

There are too many camels in the Bible, out of time and out of place.

Camels probably had little or no role in the lives of such early Jewish patriarchs as Abraham, Jacob and Joseph, who lived in the first half of the second millennium B.C., and yet stories about them mention these domesticated pack animals more than 20 times. Genesis 24, for example, tells of Abraham’s servant going by camel on a mission to find a wife for Isaac. 

These anachronisms are telling evidence that the Bible was written or edited long after the events it narrates and is not always reliable as verifiable history. These camel stories “do not encapsulate memories from the second millennium,” said Noam Mizrahi, an Israeli biblical scholar, “but should be viewed as back-projections from a much later period.”
Dr. Mizrahi likened the practice to a historical account of medieval events that veers off to a description of “how people in the Middle Ages used semitrailers in order to transport goods from one European kingdom to another.” 

For two archaeologists at Tel Aviv University, the anachronisms were motivation to dig for camel bones at an ancient copper smelting camp in the Aravah Valley in Israel and in Wadi Finan in Jordan. They sought evidence of when domesticated camels were first introduced into the land of Israel and the surrounding region. 

The archaeologists, Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen, used radiocarbon dating to pinpoint the earliest known domesticated camels in Israel to the last third of the 10th century B.C. — centuries after the patriarchs lived and decades after the kingdom of David, according to the Bible. Some bones in deeper sediments, they said, probably belonged to wild camels that people hunted for their meat. Dr. Sapir-Hen could identify a domesticated animal by signs in leg bones that it had carried heavy loads. 

The findings were published recently in the journal Tel Aviv and in a news release from Tel Aviv University. The archaeologists said that the origin of the domesticated camel was probably in the Arabian Peninsula, which borders the Aravah Valley. Egyptians exploited the copper resources there and probably had a hand in introducing the camels. Earlier, people in the region relied on mules and donkeys as their beasts of burden.

Read the full story here.

On a similar note, also check out this NOVA episode from a few years ago on The Bible's Buried Secrets. It does a nice job of highlighting research methodologies in history and archaeology that are finding accuracies and inaccuracies in the Biblical accounts. The ending is a bit bleh….but the beginning is good, and then there are some excellent segments on the Exodus, the Canaanite cities, and the search for the YHWH. Here is the whole show - almost two hours: 

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Hitler taken down by Lollywood Heroes - Pakistani Science Fiction Week

by Salman Hameed

I have previously pointed to this excellent Islam and Science Fiction website run by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad (who is also responsible for designing the Irtiqa banner). His website is celebrating Pakistani science fiction, and started off with a Lollywood alternative history movie where Hitler not only survives World War II, but escapes to Pakistan, gets married there, and even ends up having a son.   I have not seen the film, though now I'm quite tempted by it. Here is the description from the Islam and Science Fiction website:

Lets start the first day of Pakistani Science Fiction with alternate history. There are movies

which are bizarre and then there are movies which lie at the border of being bizarre and being socially conscious.  The film was released in 1986 and starred leading actors of Pakistani Cinema at the time: Mustafa Qureshi, Sultan Rahi and Anjuman. It was directed by Idrees Khan who was otherwise known to have mostly made movies with socially conscious theme. The premise of the movie is that after his defeat in the Second World War Hitler did not commit suicide but disguised himself and fled to Pakistan. Hitler married a local Pakistani woman and has a son. Not only that but the United States was not responsible for using atomic weapons against Japan but rather it was Germany under Hitler that used these weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although it is never explained why would Germany want to do that.

Now how can you go wrong with that. Check out this and other entries as part of Pakistani Science Fiction week. 

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Syrian Science Refugees

by Salman Hameed

There is no end in sight for the conflict in Syria. The scale of displacement of people both within Syria and outside is enormous. Not surprisingly, the academic community has also been impacted by the civil war. A recent news item in the journal Science that suggests that there is a concerted effort to provide a year-long fellowships to several of the Syrian scientists:

As violence in Syria escalates and the regime increasingly targets academics, an international effort to support Syria's beleaguered scholars with visas, fellowships, and guest appointments is gaining momentum. The Institute of International Education (IIE) in

New York City has handed out 43 yearlong academic fellowships to displaced Syrians since the current conflict began. Now, it is appealing for funds, and for safe havens to step forward. Several hundred European universities have pledged to take at least one student, and the philanthropic Carnegie Corporation of New York has chipped in $500,000 for fellowships, which provide up to $25,000 to scholars. But "the need is 10 or 100 times what any of us are able to raise," says IIE President Allan Goodman. 

As Syria's civil war drags into a third year, reports of interrogations and torture of professors are becoming commonplace. Dozens have been kidnapped for ransom or assassinated. University students are detained at checkpoints and conscripted to fight for the regime or for rebel groups. About 30% of Syria's professors have left the country, including many of the best, says Amal Alachkar, a neurobiologist from the University of Aleppo now at the University of California, Irvine. Some have ended up in refugee camps, while others have vanished. "Higher education, especially research, is collapsing," she says.   

…

Many professors and students flee without passports across the porous borders to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, where they often end up in refugee camps. That poses a fresh challenge for IIE: "How do you deal with professors in camps who can't travel to another country?" Goodman asks. To keep the intellectual fires burning, IIE is exploring how to provide materials for 3-week courses that could be taught by scholars in the camps while they await placement in Europe or the United States, Goodman says: "Something they can do other than sit in their tent and worry about how bad things are." 

The attack on academics, it seems, was quick:

Conditions in Syria deteriorated much faster than they did in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, Goodman says. "What's different about Syria is that universities were targeted right away, professors were threatened right away. The regime knew who their opponents were and instantly targeted them," he says. "The immediacy of attacking education really hasn't happened in any other place." 

In some ways, Syrian academia had thrived under President Bashar Assad, who took power following his father's death in 2000. University enrollments rose and professors were encouraged to set up labs. But campuses have always been infested with security and intelligence agents, and "informers are everywhere," Alachkar says. Regime loyalty, evidenced by membership in the ruling Ba'ath Party and overt patriotism, became the litmus test for faculty advancement, Alachkar says.  

Students were taught to not question authority, but in the spring of 2011 they started to protest openly on many campuses. Alachkar says she encouraged her students to express themselves peacefully. "I was not brave enough to ignite it, but I was waiting for that moment," she says. Syrian intelligence caught wind of her activism and interrogated her that March. It was early in the uprising, and "they didn't want to make a big fuss," she says. "They said, 'We'll let it go this time, but be careful.' " 

That July, however, a fellow Aleppo professor, Jamal Tahhan, was arrested and detained for 5 months after forming a committee to document peaceful protests; Alachkar says he was tortured. She got the message. Less than a year after getting her neuroscience lab in Aleppo up and running, she shuttered it and left Syria. Aleppo's cancer research unit, which Al-Mayhani had helped found, also closed after his departure. In mid-2012, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas pulled out of Aleppo, its former grounds looted and "now a war zone," says Ahmad Sadiddin, an agricultural economist from Damascus who with an IIE grant found refuge at the University of Florence in Italy. 

Read the full article here (you may need subscription to access the full text).

If you want to follow what is happening in Syria, follow this link to Jadaliyya's page on Syria.

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