{science} – Page 70 – { feuilleton }

Reasons to be cheerful

Forty-six percent of white evangelical Christians believe it’s at least somewhat likely that Jesus Christ will return in 2007, while 22 percent believe it’s very likely. Thirty-four percent of Protestants say it’s at least somewhat likely, compared with 17 percent of Catholics. Ten percent of those with no religion believe that Christ is at least somewhat likely to return in 2007.

Er, okay…. That paragraph should have the word “American” in it, of course.

If you’d like some prognostication from Americans (and others) with brains, the essential Edge.org has unveiled its annual question to scientists, philosophers and futurologists, the subject this time being “What are you optimistic about? Why?”. Lots of juicy speculation from people whose thoughts and opinions are a deal more informed than the usual gaggle of pundits. “The future may be a bit more like Sweden and a bit less like America,” says Brian Eno. Looking at the statistics above, let’s hope so.

The Jantar Mantar

Fran Pritchett’s site has a wealth of photos of Indian architecture, including many old views of temples and a substantial section devoted to Jaipur’s fascinating Jantar Mantar.

The Jantar Mantar is a collection of architectural astronomical instruments, built by Maharaja Jai Singh II at his then new capital of Jaipur between 1727 and 1733. It is modelled after the one that he had built for him at the then Mughal capital of Delhi. He had constructed a total of five such observatories at different locations, including the ones at Delhi and Jaipur. The Jaipur observatory is the largest of these.

The name is derived from yantra, instrument, and mantra, for chanting; hence the ‘the chanting instrument’. It is sometimes said to have been originally yantra mantra, mantra being translated as formula, although there is limited justification for this since in traditional spoken Jaipur language, the locals obfuscate the written Y syllable as J.

The observatory consists of fourteen major geometric devices for measuring time, predicting eclipses, tracking stars in their orbits, ascertaining the declinations of planets, and determining the celestial altitudes and related ephemerides. Each is a fixed and ‘focused’ tool. The Samrat Jantar, the largest instrument, is 90 feet high, its shadow carefully plotted to tell the time of day. Its face is angled at 27 degrees, the latitude of Jaipur. The Hindu chhatri (small domed cupola) on top is used as a platform for announcing eclipses and the arrival of monsoons.

Built of local stone and marble, each instrument carries an astronomical scale, generally marked on the marble inner lining; bronze tablets, all extraordinarily accurate, were also employed. Thoroughly restored in 1901, the Jantar Mantar was declared a national monument in 1948.

An excursion through Jai Singh’s Jantar is the singular one of walking through solid geometry and encountering a collective weapons system designed to probe the heavens.

The instruments are in most cases huge structures. They are built on a large scale so that accuracy of readings can be obtained. The samrat yantra, for instance, which is a sundial, can be used to tell the time to an accuracy of about a minute. Today the main purpose of the observatory is to function as a tourist attraction.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Garden of Instruments

The glass menagerie

Not the play by Tennessee Williams, rather the glass sculptures of sea creatures by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka.

Leopold (1822–1895) and Rudolf (1857–1939) Blaschka were a father and son partnership, originally from Bohemia. Their work making spectacular glass models of natural history objects began in 1857, in Germany. Rudolf joined his father in business in 1876 and after 1880 there were so many orders for their glass models that this became their sole business.

The Blaschkas are best known for their glass flowers, made from 1886 to 1936. Many of these are now displayed in the Botanical Museum of Harvard University. After his father’s death in 1895, Rudolf continued to make glass flowers. However, during their lifetimes they also made many accurate models of mainly marine animals. Dying with no children, their glass-working secrets were not passed on.

(More photos like this here.)

Looking at these sculptures I was curious to know whether they worked from real specimens or not. They may have used some for reference but I suspected many of their works were based on the famous colour plates of sea creatures, radiolaria, and so on, in Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur (1899–1904). A quick search confirms this, Haeckel was consulted, as were earlier scientific studies such as Philip Gosse’s Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast (1853) and GB Sowerby’s Popular History of the Aquarium of Marine and Fresh-Water Animals and Plants (1857).

(More photos like this here.)

Nancy Marie Brown writes about the Blaschka’s glass flowers (and what’s known of their working methods) here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Bowes Swan

The birds and the bees (and the higher primates)

The Natural History Museum of Oslo University has opened an exhibition dedicated to homosexuality in the animal kingdom.

Today we know that homosexuality is a common and widespread phenomenon in the animal world. Not only short-lived sexual relationships, but even long-lasting partnerships; partnerships that may last a lifetime.

The exhibit puts on display a small selection among the more than 1500 species where homosexuality have been observed. This fascinating story of the animals’ secret life is told by means of models, photos, texts and specimens. The visitor will be confronted with all sorts of creatures from tiny insects to enormous spermwhales.

How can we know that an animal is homosexual? How can homosexual behaviour be consistent with what we have learned about evolution and Darwinism?

Sadly, most museums have no traditions for airing difficult, concealed, and possibly controversial questions. Homosexuality is certainly such a question. We feel confident that a greater understanding of how extensive and common this behaviour is among animals, will help to de-mystify homosexuality among people. At least, we hope to reject the all too well known argument that homosexual behaviour is a crime against nature.

Naturally (ahem), this has attracted the ire of the usual god-botherers who are happy to ignore inconvenient Scriptural declarations about loving your neighbour when sending the museum directors hate mail. Unfortunately for the bigots, evidence about homosexuality being very much a part of the natural world continues to mount (pardon the pun again…), as shown in an article in US science magazine, Seed, earlier this year. That won’t convince the American (and other) Talibans, of course, but then if it was up to them we’d still be burning witches and thinking that the sun orbited the earth.

Why doesn’t America believe in evolution?

Could it be something to do with invisible men in the sky? And apes in the White House?
New Scientist reports.

19 August 2006
New Scientist
Jeff Hecht

HUMAN BEINGS, AS WE KNOW THEM, developed from earlier species of animals: true or false? This simple question is splitting America apart, with a growing proportion thinking that we did not descend from an ancestral ape. A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.

Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. “The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicised,” he says. “Republicans have clearly adopted this as one of their wedge issues. In most of the world, this is a non-issue.”

Miller’s report makes for grim reading for adherents of evolutionary theory. Even though the average American has more years of education than when Miller began his surveys 20 years ago, the percentage of people in the country who accept the idea of evolution has declined from 45 in 1985 to 40 in 2005 (Science, vol 313, p 765). That’s despite a series of widely publicised advances in genetics, including genetic sequencing, which shows strong overlap of the human genome with those of chimpanzees and mice. “We don’t seem to be going in the right direction,” Miller says.

There is some cause for hope. Team member Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, finds solace in the finding that the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution has dropped from 48 to 39 in the same time. Meanwhile the fraction of Americans unsure about evolution has soared, from 7 per cent in 1985 to 21 per cent last year. “That is a group of people that can be reached,” says Scott.

The main opposition to evolution comes from fundamentalist Christians, who are much more abundant in the US than in Europe. While Catholics, European Protestants and so-called mainstream US Protestants consider the biblical account of creation as a metaphor, fundamentalists take the Bible literally, leading them to believe that the Earth and humans were created only 6000 years ago.

Ironically, the separation of church and state laid down in the US constitution contributes to the tension. In Catholic schools, both evolution and the strict biblical version of human beginnings can be taught. A court ban on teaching creationism in public schools, however, means pupils can only be taught evolution, which angers fundamentalists, and triggers local battles over evolution.

These battles can take place because the US lacks a national curriculum of the sort common in European countries. However, the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind act is instituting standards for science teaching, and the battles of what they should be has now spread to the state level.

Miller thinks more genetics should be on the syllabus to reinforce the idea of evolution. American adults may be harder to reach: nearly two-thirds don’t agree that more than half of human genes are common to chimpanzees. How would these people respond when told that humans and chimps share 99 per cent of their genes?

New Scientist magazine, issue 2565.