The End of the Rainbow

Oh life seems so rosy in the cradle
But I'll be a friend, I'll tell you what's in store
There's nothing at the end of the rainbow
There's nothing to grow up for any more

These words come from End of the Rainbow, a song of Richard Thompson. I find them remarkable, the songs on those 1970s LPs with his wife Linda; that clear-eyed gaze at the starkest realities of life. We go on:

Tycoons and barrow boys will rob you
And throw you on the side
And all because they love themselves sincerely
And the man holds a bread knife
Up to your throat is four feet wide
And he's anxious just to show you what it's for

We look out at a sea of faces. Every one of them hates us, terrified that we might prosper only at their expense. Might we find common ground, work together so that both of us might flourish? Well, maybe, but they've never even been introduced to that possibility. Control of our world has been snaffled by people determined they should keep thinking this way.

Our own perceptions are poisoned:

And every loving handshake
Is just another man to beat
How your heart aches just to cut him to the core

When we deal with others we're changed, we 'grow up'; possibly even in respectful disagreement. There can still be something at the end of the rainbow. A country that believes "there's no such thing as scociety" is doomed because it stifles its citizens. Richard Sennett wrote, 'I do know a regime which provides human beings no deep reasons to care about one other cannot long preserve its legitimacy.'

What a great song! Maybe it's TOO bleak, others let the protagonists assert themselves more. Still worth your time.

Greenock

Greenock, a town of 42,000 people, lies on the south side of the Clyde estuary, we might say on the corner where it opens out to the sea. Initially a small fishing town, Greenock grew rapidly in the 18th and 19th centuries through shipbuilding and merchant shipping. It was the birthplace of the engineer James Watt whose surname is commemorated in the SI unit of power.

It is no surprise to learn of small observatories in Greenock, chronometers, a time gun (like the one o'clock gun still fired ceremonially every day in Edinburgh); the apparatus of Astronomy as applied to navigation. Nevertheless just one article in all of the Astronomy bibliographic database ADS refers to "Greenock" in the title. It was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1874 by J W L Glaisher and goes by the title, Account of a MS. table of twelve-figure logarithms of numbers from 1 to 120,000, calculated by the late Mr. John Thomson, of Greenock, and recently presented to the Royal Astronomical Society by his sister, Miss Catherine Thomson; severe but accurate. After some very brief biography of Mr Thomson, deceased since 1855, the article gives a detailed discussion of the tables of logarithms he had compiled and assesses their accuracy and value in comparison with other known tables.

Logarithms are, amongst other things, an aid to rapid computation. To multiply two numbers together we look up their logarithms, add them together, then consult the tables again to find out the number whose logarithm we now have. Addition is easier and faster than multiplication so logarithms were an invaluable tool for complicated arithmetic in the centuries before electronic calculators and computers. Few people would ever have needed logarithms precise to twelve decimal places but some sorts of astronomer might on occasion have been among them.

If I want to know the logarithm of a number to some number of decimal places I only need a computer and appropriate software. In the era of the internet this software doesn't even need to be installed on my own computer. For example, Wolfram Alphaa very quickly and easily tells me - or you - that the logarithm of 3, to 12 decimal places, is 0.477121254720 (to base 10, as were Thomson's). The same number will be given in John Thomson's tables but it is the result of many minutes' calculation, by hand with pencil and paper. No electronic calculating machines - indeed, no mains electricity or electric light! - for him. He worked as a clerk, and later as an accountant, and the completion of these tables must have been a spare-time activity for many years, incredibly tedious for my tastes but requiring continual, fastidious attention (I used Mathematica on my laptop to calculate a table of the logs of the first 120,000 whole numbers, to 12 decimal places, in less than a minute). Other tables existed which he could have consulted, at least as starting points, but it seems clear that he calculated everything from scratch himself, either having no access to these other documents or simply preferring to rely solely on his own efforts. There are very few discrepancies between his tables and the others. Glaiser comments that, 'It is not uncommon for persons with a taste for mathematics to devote their leisure to the formation of logarithmic tables, though most likely there is no case in which so extensive a table as Mr Thomson's has ever thus been produced.' It was judged valuable for confirming or correcting the other, existing tables.

Mr Thomson was born in Strachur in 1782, the second of eleven children of Dougal Thomson, a farmer, and his wife Margaret. At the age of 12 he was sent to Greenock for continued schooling - for a farming family to do this suggests he had already shown significant academic talent. He was taught by Colin Lamont (1764 - 1851), a man renowned for promoting the use of Astronomy in navigation, 'from whom he imbibed a taste for mathematical studies'. He started working in Greenock as a clerk and spent the rest of his life there. He never married and was buried in an unmarked grave. The sister, Catherine, who gifted his tables to the Royal Astronomical Society was 20 years younger than him. We have the sense she didn't really know him very well. Glaisher says, 'The work undertaken by Mr Thomson, and the manner in which he has performed it, testify more clearly than could anything else to his steady and methodical habits.'

I'm struck by the singular person glimpsed in this story: a farmer's son, labouring in professional roles in a town very different from the circumstances of his youth. Nights spent under candles or oil lamp on steady, fastidious, anonymous effort; years devoted to the construction of his remarkable tables, all to some unknown private end. A Milton of computation, mute and inglorious until after his death. Was there a courtship that came to nought? Did he sing in the church choir? Was he insular, uncommunicative, or quiet but charming? His tables are still retained in the RAS Library but their numerical purity won't touch on such questions.

Greenock is out of sight downhill from this picture, looking roughly west from a rough wee road south of Port Glasgow.

Eddington; Daedalus and Icarus

The basic ideas needed to understand the stars have been in place for 100 years. They were first brought together, I believe, in Sir Arthur Eddington's book, The Internal Constitution of the Stars. This magnum opus was published in 1926 but based on papers he'd written in the preceding decade or so. In an article of his in The Observatory from 1920 I found this paragraph:

In ancient days two aviators procured to themselves wings. Daedalus flew safely through the middle air across the sea, and was duly honoured on his landing. Young Icarus soared upwards towards the Sun till the wax melted which bound his wings, and his flight ended in fiasco. In weighing their achievements perhaps there is something to be said for Icarus. The classic authorities tell us that he was only "doing a stunt," but I prefer to think of him as the man who certainly brought to light a constructional defect in the flying-machines of his day. So, too, in Science. Cautious Daedalus will apply his theories where he feels most confident they will safely go; but by his excess of caution their hidden weaknesses cannot be brought to light. Icarus will strain his theories to the breaking-point till the weak joints gape. For a spectacular stunt? Perhaps partly; he is often very human. But if he is not yet destined to reach the Sun and solve for all time the riddle of its constitution, yet he may hope to learn from his journey some hints to build a better machine.

Towards the end of his life Eddington worked on a strange, doomed attempt to unify quantum mechanics, relativity and particle physics. Summarised in a book called just, Fundamental Theory these efforts have not had any lasting impact on science. I wonder if he thought of Icarus as he worked on that book.

Nobody asked for this

Nobody asked for this. Consciousness, the most unwished for of gifts. What are we going to do with it? All those decisions, what a burden.

We'd prefer not to exist. We can't quite take the necessary action - perhaps some revelation still lies in our futures - but we desire annihilation nonetheless. Can we find it?

Here are some words from an employee of a big company:

'...when you are on the job, it is almost impossible not to become this instrumentally rational person and that is how you get things done, and you get into this very structured way of thinking and it is not just doing it, it's you are totally engrossed in this instrumental process. It's like I am not really there.'

(from Work, Self and Society by Catherine Casey)

'I am not really here.' That sounds brilliant. That's what we're looking for. Annihilation while conscious, complete incorporation in something bigger, no burdensome 'self' to manage. No need to worry for myself about right and wrong. Let's go.

'A lot went out with the horse'

I've been reading Poacher's Pilgrimage, Alastair McIntosh's reflective account of a walk through Lewis and Harris. I enjoyed a voice rooted in the Hebrides that also references Fromm, Fanon and Freire. Lots to think about! In particular I was reminded again of our tiny moment of COP26 cycling activism.

For many people, mention of the Outer Hebrides conjures up visions of seascapes, beaches and mountains, possibly all the more so in the age of Instagram. Alastair McIntosh enjoys these vistas, of course, but finds the deepest value in the people who live there. As he makes his way across the island he has many conversations, sometimes lengthy meetings with old friends and comrades, other times just a few, telling words exchanged with strangers. During one of the former he unearths an island saying: A lot went out with the horse. His friend expands on this theme: 'People thought they'd just exchange the horse for the tractor. They never realised all the linkages they'd lose. They'd get a loan to buy the tractor. Then a job to pay the loan. And now we're wondering why we've no longer got the same time for each other.' The tractor is a trojan horse - so to speak! - in the life of the islander. It lets something alien sneak into his life, something that undermines his autonomy, supplants his relation with his neighbours, enveigles him into a state of dependency; dependency on a machine he could not construct himself, and on the global supply chains that keep it working. He just wants a machine that will lighten his load and, maybe, enhance his productivity, but the price he pays is subtle and far-reaching.

No surprise to see the same sorts of agent lean in to government in the matter of climate change, doing their best to keep dependency central in whatever ways forward are adopted. A lot went out with the horse indeed; but a lot can come back with the bicycle.

Electric cars

For most people, COP26 is receding into memory. It has influenced the landscape to be negotiated by activists and politicians but it no longer claims the headlines. This week's Bluestocking brought back memories with its amusing opening salvo on electric car manufacturers: 'Utterly cynical? Yes. Probably a net benefit to the planet? Also yes.' The 'cynical' comment refers to the grotesque advertising that attended, particularly the Superbowl(!) and the attempt we're seeing now to normalise electric cars, to sell them to people with celebrities, mafiosi, evil geniuses - miscellaneous American archetypes. Should it apply more broadly, to the whole electric car industry? Well, probably, yes, because corporations are by their essential natures infinitely cynical. We've seen this already. What about 'the planet'? Well, I'm an astronomer so I should like planets. Anyway we'll come back to that.

Wednesday November 10 was COP "Transport Day". My wife and I joined a pro-cycling demonstration, about 150 of us gathering with our bikes as delegates arrived for the day's deliberations. Transport Day, astonishingly, was only about electric cars, no mention of active travel (i.e. cycling, walking) or public transport. Only at the last minute was a statement added about active travel and public transport (that's us, by the way, in the photo at the top of that article - unidentified, thank goodness!).

Imagine a world in which millions more people are able to move around on their own as they go about their lives, without the aid of an expensive mechanical device and a global fuel supply apparatus. Of course the oil companies and the car manufacturers are going to work against that possibility. Why on earth would they want to see their role in people's lives diminished? Of course they're going to put their friendly, benign arm round the shoulders of the our governments: "we care about this net zero stuff too, you know. We'll work with you. Electric cars, they're the future." A future in which the car companies don't lose their centrality in our lives.

What about 'the planet'? Well, our planet is much nicer than the others in our solar system, or any other planet we know of. It suits us very well - but that's why it matters. You occasionally see people say things like, "Earth would be much better off without humans". But then there wouldn't be humans, so what, for us, would be the point of that? We want to see a world in which as many people as possible can flourish. To that end we need a stable planet with a healthy ecosystem, sure, but we also need a world in which the flourishing of all humans, rather than of the nonhuman corporations, is given top priority in the arrangements of our lives.