When doing my Master's Degree, I used to weight cement samples and proper amounts of tap water and cast them in cylindrical cans of coke, manually cut -I think I have mentioned it before-. I did not like much doing so, because I did not expect seriously to get relevant results from there and, most importantly, because I suspected my advisor was not taking my research too seriously.
I was surely wrong.
As today, I have changed my mind respect to simple, bare experiments, as seen before-hand, or not-looking-cool nor too-new nor too-modern experiments. As oppose as before, I find simple experiments fascinating; I see them as moulds where the naked beauty of nature manifests itself and on which the illustrious mind can expand at its best.
Of course, all of the fields in Science and Technology has reached such level of complexity that sophisticated pieces of equipment, large clusters of processing computers, cumbersome data analysis and profuse and deep mathematics are needed. However, simple experiments are an inexpensive, magnificent way for a superb insighful refresh. They can make the essentials matter; have us escape our overcrowded minds and help us get rid of the excessive dependence of software, which is the best way of doing things without knowing how.
**
I finished this evening in my way home in the bus Conversacion en la Catedral. I think that the novel could have gone on and on forever, like one of those serial melodramas, culebrones, telenovelas that spur the South American culture. It's been a long time already since I read Cien Anos de Soledad but, as far as I can remember, the development of the narrative follows a similar pattern in their extension: it stretches a big deal in Conversacion, for over a decade or slightly more, without reaching the biblical time-frame of Cien Anos.
Nevertheless, Vargas Llosa put an end to the story. After spreading on the table the lives, miseries and desires of a large number of characters, as cards showed in a fan-shaped array on the baize, he collects the terrible, dark message of the whole story by returning to the beginning: the hopeless tragedy of human life. Santiago and Ambrosio, drink as madmen and talk to the end their conversation in La Catedral, the tavern, one mediocre fonda in Lima. They met accidentally; Santiago is looking for his dog, stolen by men asked to do so in a systematic attempt to stop a rabies epidemic outburst; Ambrosio, now without ID, nor certificates of any type, works provisionally to survive: today he does steal dogs; tomorrow, whatever. So, they met and get in the tavern, after some time without news of each other. And the whole story pops in your life!
The novel is a master piece and contents unforgettable episodes page after page. The last 50 are breathtaking. The way Vargas Llosa narrates the last hours of Amalia, so terrible!; the way he tells about Carlitos incapacity of overcoming alcohol; the way he describes the feelings of Ambrosio talking about Fermin; the way he conveys the frictions and quarrels in Santiago family; the way he depictures the brothel, the fall of Queta, Ivonne, the murder of Hortensia... And so much more. It is so vivid and powerful that I was on the verge of dropping tears, I swear! It was like an oppression, a choking pressure in my stomach and chest. I suppose the crowdy bus also accounted for that, anyhow... .
**
I have started now the Faraday's Lectures on the Chemical History of a Candle, which he delivered to kids in the summer of 1860, I think. Farady was already 70 years old. He was a unique experimentalist, a finder of the fundamentals. "Now the greatest mistakes and faults with regard to candles, as in many other things, often bring with them instruction which we should not receive if they had not occurred. We come here to be philosophers, and I hope you will always remember that whenever a result happens, especially if it be new, you should say, 'what is the cause? Why does it occur?', and you will, in the course of time, find out the reason", Faraday says to the boys and girls of the Royal Institution of London.
Prandtl tells the story of those water pumps in the 18th century which created a water column by means of vacuum. The axiom was that "Nature abhors vacuum", and everybody was happy with that. However, everybody failed to wonder: "why does Nature abhor vacuum?; How big is the Nature abhorrence of vacuum?" And so, here you have a prestigious Florentine manufacture trying to create a huge, expensive 33ft-column of water, without success. After that, there it came Evangelista Torricelli and Vincezo Viviani who solved the enigma by filling a 4 ft-long tube with mercury up to the top, closing the open end with one finger, and inverting the tube into a bath of mercury.
Oh, simplicity: how beautiful, how complex!
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