IF I were asked to describe the world as I see it today, I would readily give this answer: it has hardly changed since 2,200 years ago when Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and physicist, was said to have bragged that he could move the world if only he had the lever to lift it. For all his ingenuity and imagination, however, Archimedes was dead wrong on this count. He knew the power of the lever like the back of his hand, assiduously applying this knowledge to design military catapults and grappling irons; he figured out with stunning accuracy the mathematical properties of circles and spheres, including the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or what we now know as pi (3.14159265...); he began the science of hydrostatics, or the forces that govern stationary fluids, after discovering the now familiar Archimedes Principle; and he even invented the Archimedes screw, an ingenious water-raising machine still used today to irrigate fields in Egypt.<\/p>\r\r\r<\/figcaption>\r<\/figure>\r\r
But on hindsight, we know now that Archimedes obviously exceeded his mind's grasp when he thought of lifting the world with a plank. It wouldn't have been possible even if a suitable fulcrum could be found. The world was actually (and still is) an ovaloid sphere 12,760 km in diameter, one rotating on its axis in 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds and revolving around a much bigger sphere \u2014 the sun \u2014 in 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.6 seconds. The object Archimedes had bragged of lifting actually has a mass in tons of about 5.98 x 10 raised to the 21st power, and a volume in cubic meters of about 1.08 x 10 raised to the 21st power \u2014 quantities too big and too mind-boggling to even think about, much less to trifle with.<\/p>\r\r
These elemental things obviously went beyond the ken of Archimedes' overarching genius. It was only 1,750 years later, in fact, that the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was to make the startling, heretical thesis that Earth was not the center of the universe at all but simply one of the planets orbiting the bigger, stationary sun. But on this even Copernicus, who began the scientific reawakening that came to be known as the Copernican Revolution, was only partly right. The sun, it turned out centuries later, was not stationary in the heavens at all. It was rotating on its own axis in a perpetually moving spiral arm of the galaxy that we now call the Milky Way.<\/p>\r\r
All of these facts about our world are now well-established certainties. Despite this accumulated knowledge, however, mankind still acts more primitively and more irrationally than its ancestors before the time of Archimedes. Humanity is still as mired as ever in superstition and religious fundamentalism. Organized religion, superstition, and nationhood have no doubt been great civilizing forces, instilling fear, awe, faith, and patriotism in man, and marshaling both the motive and creative energies for such architectural marvels as the Stonehenge in England, the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the stately cathedrals in Europe, the great mosques in the Middle East and in Asia, the Borobodur temples in Cambodia, and the huge statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. Yet these very same forces \u2014 organized religion, superstition, and nationhood \u2014 are now methodically destroying not only human lives by the thousands but even the physical, social, and cultural legacies humanity had accumulated in the interim.<\/p>\r\r
Intolerance on the religious, political, or ideological plane has always plagued mankind through the centuries, of course, both long before and long after the time of Archimedes. It brought about so many of the horrible depredations on either side of the major religious or geopolitical divides, from the time of the Crusades \u2014 those armed Christian expeditions to the Holy Lands and Constantinople in the 11th century \u2014 to the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. But more deeply disturbing is the fact that this intolerance and bloodshed have persisted even with the civilizing influence of the Age of Reason and Scientific Enlightenment. Today, people in many parts of the world are still murderously lunging at each other's throats, intolerant of one another's religious beliefs, disdainful of one another's politics and ideology, and covetous of one another's personal or national possessions. Humanity obviously has not learned its lessons well up to now.<\/p>\r\r
Thus, the great flowering of scientific knowledge and rational thinking that began with Archimedes and pursued with vigor by such great scientific minds as Copernicus, Galileo Galilee, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein \u2014 not to mention Charles Darwin \u2014 seems not to have really amounted to much. Our mindsets and dispositions as a species have remained largely primitive \u2014 there are disturbing signs, in fact, that we have deteriorated as social and reasoning animals, perhaps irreversibly. It is therefore not at all surprising that today, on a shocking improvement on Archimedes' claim that he could lift the world with a lever, people by the thousands could think and claim that they could move the world simply on pure belief \u2014 no lever, no fulcrum, no hands or physical effort even \u2014 just belief and absolutely nothing else.<\/p>\r\r
This essay, which first appeared in my weekly column \"English Plain and Simple\" in The Manila Times, subsequently became Chapter 154 of my book Giving Your English the Winning Edge, 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\r\r
Read this essay and listen to its voice recording in The Manila Times: \"Retrospective: The world in 854 words\"<\/em><\/p>\r\r
Next week, Oct. 10, 2024: \"Aiming for euphony in our English prose\"<\/em><\/p>\r\r
Visit Jose Carillo's English Forum, http:\/\/josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and X (Twitter) and email me at [email protected].<\/em><\/p>","article_custom_fields":"{\"\":[\"\",\"\"],\"seo_meta_keywords\":[\"\"],\"seo_meta_description\":[\"\"],\"seo_meta_title\":[\"\"],\"sponsored_flag\":[\"\"],\"offer_flag\":[\"off\"],\"featured_article_flag\":[\"\"],\"drupal_json\":[\"{\\\"type\\\":null,\\\"properties\\\":{\\\"PUBLISHED\\\":0,\\\"PROMOTED\\\":0,\\\"STICKY\\\":0},\\\"fields\\\":[]}\"],\"wp_custom_json\":[\"{\\\"type\\\":\\\"\\\",\\\"fields\\\":[]}\"],\"article_tags\":[\"\"],\"show_image\":[\"off\"],\"Disable_Ad\":[\"off\"],\"disable_player\":[\"off\"],\"column\":[\"\"],\"kicker\":[\"\"],\"edel\":[\"\"],\"delu\":[\"\"],\"delt\":[\"Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.\"],\"premium\":[\"off\"],\"Redirect_URL\":[\"\"],\"Registration_required\":[\"off\"],\"background_image\":[\"off\"],\"page_number\":\"0\",\"initial_publication\":\"The Manila Times\",\"date_created\":\"2024-10-02 23:18:00\",\"date_modified\":\"2024-10-02 23:18:00\",\"last_modified_user\":\"Sherwin Arnaiz\",\"section_color\":\"#FD06C5\",\"target_page\":\"0\",\"cxense_metatags\":null}","cms_type":"live","author_id":11,"section_id":5,"seo_meta_keywords":"Retrospective:,The,world,in,854,words","seo_meta_description":"","seo_meta_title":"Retrospective: The world in 854 words","publish_time":"2024-10-03 00:06:00","related_articles_ids":"","article_tags":"","sub_section_id":0,"visit_count":0,"sponsored_flag":0,"offer_flag":0,"featured_article_flag":0,"media_gallery_flag":0,"video_gallery_flag":0,"highlight_flag":0,"top_story_flag":0,"is_updated":0,"is_old_article":0,"old_article_id":0,"article_byline":"Jose A. Carillo","ts":"2024-10-02 23:18:11","last_edited":"2024-10-02 23:18:00","alt_publish_time":"2024-10-02 23:18:05","image_path":"{\\\"image_path\\\":\\\"manilatimes\\\\\/uploads\\\\\/images\\\\\/2024\\\\\/10\\\\\/02\\\\\/426476.png\\\",\\\"cms_type\\\":\\\"live\\\",\\\"small_image\\\":\\\"\\\",\\\"is_updated\\\":\\\"0\\\",\\\"image_cropping\\\":\\\"{\\\\\\\"original_image\\\\\\\":{\\\\\\\"image_original_width\\\\\\\":572,\\\\\\\"image_original_height\\\\\\\":377,\\\\\\\"icd_image_type\\\\\\\":\\\\\\\"original_image\\\\\\\"},\\\\\\\"main_image\\\\\\\":{\\\\\\\"image_main_width\\\\\\\":1200,\\\\\\\"image_main_height\\\\\\\":790,\\\\\\\"icd_image_type\\\\\\\":\\\\\\\"main_image\\\\\\\"}}\\\",\\\"is_copied\\\":\\\"0\\\",\\\"media_type\\\":\\\"0\\\",\\\"image_caption\\\":\\\"FROM http:\\\\\/\\\\\/josecarilloforum.com\\\",\\\"image_alt_text\\\":\\\"\\\",\\\"image_count\\\":1}","author_name":"Jose A. Carillo","section_name":"Campus Press","sub_section_name":"","slide_show":0,"breaking_news":0,"visit_count_update_date":null,"old_cms_article_id":null,"permalink":"2024\/10\/03\/campus-press\/retrospective-the-world-in-854-words\/1978277","show_image_in_thumb":0,"api_status":2,"a_custom_data":"{\"exclude_from_gallery\":null,\"lead_image_id\":null}","publication_id":2,"max_publish_time":"2024-10-03 00:06:00","page_number":"0","homepage_article_flag":0,"article_shortlink":null,"cropped_image":0};
IF I were asked to describe the world as I see it today, I would readily give this answer: it has hardly changed since 2,200 years ago when Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and physicist, was said to have bragged that he could move the world if only he had the lever to lift it. For all his ingenuity and imagination, however, Archimedes was dead wrong on this count. He knew the power of the lever like the back of his hand, assiduously applying this knowledge to design military catapults and grappling irons; he figured out with stunning accuracy the mathematical properties of circles and spheres, including the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or what we now know as pi (3.14159265...); he began the science of hydrostatics, or the forces that govern stationary fluids, after discovering the now familiar Archimedes Principle; and he even invented the Archimedes screw, an ingenious water-raising machine still used today to irrigate fields in Egypt.
But on hindsight, we know now that Archimedes obviously exceeded his mind's grasp when he thought of lifting the world with a plank. It wouldn't have been possible even if a suitable fulcrum could be found. The world was actually (and still is) an ovaloid sphere 12,760 km in diameter, one rotating on its axis in 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4.09 seconds and revolving around a much bigger sphere — the sun — in 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9.6 seconds. The object Archimedes had bragged of lifting actually has a mass in tons of about 5.98 x 10 raised to the 21st power, and a volume in cubic meters of about 1.08 x 10 raised to the 21st power — quantities too big and too mind-boggling to even think about, much less to trifle with.
