Burning Libraries

Famous libraries are frequently famous because of their destruction. Consider the burning of Alexandria, the book-burning of Qin Shihuang, and the bonfires of the Spanish conquistadors of the New World. In fiction, too, libraries are frequently burned at the end of the story, cf. The Name of the Rose, The Rule of Four, Auto-da-Fe etc. Aside from the conventional symbolism of wilfully destroyed knowledge or wisdom, I think bibliographical immolations also represent attempts to control, through destruction, things that we cannot possess or understand. Fascists, for instance, are often associated with book-burning, because their political ideology brooks no opposition nor subtlety of expression.

The sheer vastness of the modern library humbles us, and reminds us of the even greater magnitude of human knowledge. The impossibility of digesting and comprehending even a portion of that quantity can be debilitating, especially when confronting the library for the first time. A scholar set loose in a library feels, at best, mild discomfort on contemplating this fact. At worst, psychosis becomes total, all-consuming. The inadequacy he first feels gradually escalates to despair, then turns on its head and becomes into jealousy, hatred, resentment. Resentment that human output could be so prodigious as to make the individual become so very small indeed. Resentment burns yet more when he realises that the great majority of the texts are doggerel, repetitions, corruptions, irrelevances. Fragments rile him, because not only does the library extend in space, it extends in time, and gradually disappears into the irretrievable past. The library is too vast to be understood, it has outgrown its purpose because its purported masters are little more than custodians who dust the shelves and shelve the books. This uselessness from sheer bulk makes the library dangerous, parasitical. To start anew, the library must burn; rid the world of its lies and half-truths, and start again. No matter, the few precious truths which burn with it will be discovered again in due time: if they should be real truths. Only fire can kill this plague.

Two Quotes

Two quotes from two scientists about two situations which are analogous:

"I often listened to my roommates--they were both seniors--studying for their theoretical physics course. One day they were working pretty hard on something that seemed prety clear to me, so I said, 'Why don't you use the Baronallai's equation?'

'What's what!' they exclaimed. 'What are you talking about!'

I explained to them what I meant and how it worked in this case, and it solved the problem. It turned out it was Bernoulli's equation that I meant, but I had read all this stuff in the encyclopedia without talking to anybody about it, so I didn't know how to pronounce anything."

-- Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! pg. 34


"When I first started in biology all my knowledge came from reading, and for years I pronounced their name incorrectly as 'sea ani-moans.' This s till seems to me a more reasonable pronunciation."

-- JT Bonner, Life Cycles, pg. 37

Five Language Facts

1. The word 'bonfire' is derived from 'bone' and 'fire', literally a burning of bones.


2. 'Admiral' is derived from the Arabic 'emir' (prince, ruler), reflected in the following quotation from Milton "... to be the Mast/ Of some great Ammiral, were but a wand" (Paradise Lost I: 293-4).


3. Arabic and Hebrew both belong to the Semitic language family, and share many features in common. Compare, for instance, the letters 'aleph' (Heb) and 'alif' (Ar), 'koph' (Heb) and 'qaf' (Ar).


4. There is no exact equivalent of the verb 'to be' in the Malay language.


5. 'Hwaet', the first word of Beowulf, has no modern derivative in the English language.

Five Fantastic Facts

Perhaps I should re-title this blog 'Facts in Multiples of Five.' But that would limit my scope of writing, somewhat.

1. Language. The letter 'Þ' in Old English is known as the 'thorn', and is responsible for the 'th' sound. Later texts transliterated it as 'y' because they lacked the 'Þ' character in their typesets. Hence 'the' was spelt 'Þe' and printed as 'ye' so those faux-archaic signs which read 'ye olde...' should be read 'the'.


2. Botany. The term 'gynoecium', referring to the female reproductive parts of a flower, in classical Latin meant a woman's apartment.


3. Food. Termites can eat wood only because of symbiotic microorganisms in their gut which help them digest cellulose. If these are killed, the termite starves.


4. Literature. The Chinese Shi Jing (Book of Odes) has 39222 words.


5. Chemistry. Hydrofluoric acid (aqueous HF) dissolves glass but can be kept safely in polythene containers.