Transcript
Science: Human Behavior and the Antikythera Mechanism
Monday, December 11, 2006; 12:00 PM
Washington Post science writer Shankar Vedantam, who also writes the Department of Human Behavior column, was online to discuss his Monday Science Page feature story about the Antikythera Mechanism on Monday, Dec. 11 at Noon ET.
He also discussed his Human Behavior column about how subtle cues can influence students' academic performance and which courses they say they prefer.
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The transcript follows.
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Shankar Vedantam: Thanks so much for joining this online chat. We will be talking primarily about the science page article I wrote today about the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek computer that calculated the trajectories of the earth, sun and moon, among other things.
I would also be glad to take questions on my regular Monday Department of Human Behavior column that runs on Page 2. Today's column was about the power of subtle stereotypes on academic performance, but we could also chat about earlier columns. Last Monday's column was about the war in Iraq and the risk of psychological entrapment, and the week before was about the role that shame played in getting rid of the (shameless) OJ Simpson book project. I would be glad to receive feedback and suggestions for future columns at my regular email address, which is vedantams@washpost.com
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Fairfax, Va.: Your writing is a credit -- the topics and the quality -- to your paper! From the story of the Antikythera Mechanism, I am struck by the idea of humanity having gained, lost and regained rich knowledge. What other examples come to mind of knowledge and technology that has been gained, then lost for long periods of time and regained?
Also, I have some thoughts you may find worth considering for future writing, as I am sure do others. Can you provide us with an e-mail address by which we can send them to you?
Shankar Vedantam: Thank you so much for the lovely feedback. (Editors take note when it comes time to write my performance review!)
I had exactly the same feeling as I reported this story. There is a tremendous sense of loss at the idea that something as beautiful as the Antikythera Mechanism was lost to humanity for so many hundreds of years, not just the device, but the knowledge that built the device.
I am no historian, and would welcome comments from others who can point to similar examples, but one example that does come to mind is the burning of the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, which once held much of the knowledge in the world. There are apparently multiple theories as to why the library was destroyed. Besides science and technology, which can at least be reinvented, the destruction of the library also lost an immense amount of cultural knowledge, literature and art. Those have been lost forever. When you destroy a Shakespeare, it is not like someone else can come along in a thousand years and write all those plays again ...
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Ocala, Fla.: If this mechanism is 2100 years old, then why have we not seen anything like this since. Also, did this machine help with the location of latitude and longitude? If so, then they solved the problem of longitude early. thank you
Shankar Vedantam: I should say that the loss of the mechanism doesn't mean that astronomers did not know how to compute the movement of the sun and moon without it. As mathematics and astronomy progressed, ever more sophisticated models of the universe were developed in the centuries after this mechanism was built; but nothing as technologically sophisticated as the Antikythera Mechanism seems to have been built for a long time thereafter.
No one really knows why the knowledge that built this machine was lost. As the historian Francois Charette told me, history is very messy. It doesn't follow neat laws, and it rarely progresses in linear ways. It could be that there were only a handful of people who knew how to build the mechanism and disease or harsh economic conditions could have wiped them out. It could be that this was part of a local tradition that slowly eroded because there were not enough young people to be apprentices to learn from the older masters. It could be that building this required craftspeople and engineers and astronomers to work together, and some part of that chain may have gotten broken. But this is all pure speculation. No one knows why the knowledge was lost, and essentially had to be reinvented many centuries later.
Also, to clarify, we obviously have instruments that are far more complex today. The story does not say nothing of this complexity has ever been built for 2100 years; it says the mechanism probably dates back 2100 years, but nothing of this complexity has been discovered for the next ten centuries ...
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Centrevile, Va.: Is the device believed to be an astronomy tool?
Shankar Vedantam: Yes, I think there is little doubt that the instrument was used for astronomy. Some people have argued that it may have been used for astrology or navigation, but both those theories have problems. For one thing, you didn't really need this machine for either of those. This was really on the order of a super cool gizmo; it had practical value for sure, but it probably made for a very cool mantelpiece item, assuming those rich Romans had mantelpieces!
(Of course, if the theory about the device being a luxury item built for a rich Roman is true, we can safely infer that there was at least one Roman who was really upset when that ship went down with his very expensive toy!)
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Columbia, Tenn.: The loss of the technology might have something to do with the fact that it had to be scientifically accurate and so, when the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, it was politically incorrect. Everyone had to profess that the sun revolved around the earth. Or else!
Shankar Vedantam: Another theory. Comments or responses?
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ogden, utah: not to get too political, but your musing on why the library of alexandria was burned is not with subsequent precedent (to coin a concept) -- any time there's been a mass burning of intellectual matter it is because of some idiological belief that feels threatened by intellectual knowledge -- look at how "intellectuals" were attacked during China's "Great Leap Forward" which was more of a leap backwards. Look, if you will, at the current anti-intellectual movement in our own country by certain political groups whose beliefs are threatened by scientific knowledge.
Shankar Vedantam: Another comment about the consequences of anti-intellectualism ... any reaction and comments?
(Book burning has a long and sorry history, but I can't resist this. Who was the wit, when asked by an aspiring author whether he should put more fire into his books, advised the author to put more of his books into the fire?)
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Alexandria, Va.: Is our amazement at this device a form of patronizing disrespect for the ancients? I mean look what they accomplished!! I'm not amazed in the least that they were capable of it's conception and creation. I also venture to guess that since it wasn't replicated on mass by the people who made it that it was a solution without a problem. Clever, but not necessary. That doesn't diminish it's genius or significance as an archeological artifact, but perhaps it wasn't the technological sensation it's claimed to be?
Shankar Vedantam: An interesting comment that I will toss out there, since I am falling far behind on the questions. On the question of being patronizing, at least in this instance, I think it is revising history in the opposite direction. The Greeks were clearly not airy thinkers who would not deign to muddy their hands with technology ...
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Arlington, Va.: Do enough fragments exist to create a modern copy of the device?
Shankar Vedantam: Yes indeed. the researchers used some pretty amazing imaging technology to essentially reconstruct the device. (This would not be a functioning device, of course, just a way for us to understand how the device worked.)
What was difficult was to visualize how the different fragments fit together, because there were many parts that are missing. The article in the Nov 30 issue of the journal Nature, if you want to look it up at a library, has some very cool pictures, including one showing a reconstruction of the device with both the existing fragments and the missing parts that would have had to be present.
I understand that filmmakers are working on a documentary about the device that will have a very cool computer simulation of how it would have worked.
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Newton, Mass.: This is such a fascinating discovery, advanced technology 1000 years ahead of previous understanding! Who is thought to have designed and built the mechanism, what group, what culture? Is there no instance of this sort of machine being discussed in the historical record? Was there some sort of anti-technology revolution that wiped the historical record of examples like this and discussion of their existence?
Shankar Vedantam: we've touched on some of these points, but I would like to put some comments out there for the general conversation ...
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Tucson, Ariz.: Would the device have had to be cranked every day in order to keep it in calibration? If not, wouldn't a long table of positions have resulted in the same information, without the extreme difficulty involved in making the gears?
Shankar Vedantam: another comment.
As I said earlier, this device was not the only way that the ancients could have known the answers to their questions. Astronomers would certainly have been able to compute the answers without the device. If you will it was like a calculator; you can multiple two six digit numbers on a piece of paper, but the calculator sure makes it easier!
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Williamsburg, Va.: The Antikythera Mechanism is indeed very impressive...but the real question is: will it run World of Warcraft?
Shankar Vedantam: more comments and questions for the general conversation ...
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Washington, D.C.: Obviously, the technology was introduced by aliens and then sadly lost for centuries...
Shankar Vedantam: another one ..
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Weaverville, N.C.: It would appear that the dating of the device was its association with a shipwreck that was scientifically dated more than 200 years old. Isn't it possible that the device was actually a later device that was associated with another period where another ship/boat sank, disintegrated and left that device on the older wreck which eventually was integrated into the wreck. Did they actually carbon date the device parts?
Shankar Vedantam: wow, this is a pretty wild theory. a shipwreck on top of another shipwreck, leaving behind a device from the later shipwreck on the earlier one, with no trace of the second boat. Short answer is yes, the device has been dated.
Larger point is that, Hollywood notwithstanding, good science usually seeks the simplest and most parsimonious explanation for a phenomenon! If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck etc ...
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Rockville, Md.: The amount of knowledge lost and regained between the Roman Empire and the renaissance is astonishing. There are numerous examples, particularly in engineering and architecture. Consider that the Pantheon was built 27 and 25 BC. The size of the dome was not surpassed until 1436 when the duomo was built in Florence. The knowledge of how to build such a structure was simply lost. It makes you realize how close people in the ancient past have come to our own intellectual accomplishments today, only to have them wiped out. Human progress is a fragile thing.
Shankar Vedantam: thanks for the comment. I agree with you completely. Makes you think about knowledge in our current time as well, and the ways it could be lost to future generations ...
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I-270 Exit 1: Unfortunately, if I throw my Blackberry in the ocean, my company would assign me a new one. Some technologies cannot be lost. RE: The demise of the technology correlating with the Holy Roman Empire. The HRE existed centuries after this particular device was lost. There would have been ample time to make many more and pass down the knowledge. However, it is possible that another regime suppressed the technology, such as we do for national security reasons.
Shankar Vedantam: another comment from a blackberry user with sore thumbs.
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Penn Laird, Va.: If a calculator is a lazy man's way to do math, maybe this machine is a lazy man's way to predict star movements?
Shankar Vedantam: yes, I would agree.
But I think this is less about the rich guy who bought this device and more about the smart people who invented it!
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Tallahassee, Fla.: A note on dates in your article: B.C. dates go backwards, i.e. 300-100 B.C., not 100-300 B.C., which just doesn't make sense if you think of history as a progressive continuum. And no, the Romans did not have mantlepieces -- they used portable braziers.
Shankar Vedantam: Good points both! Thank you for setting me right.
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Falls church, Va.: Maybe the device was used to multiply and divide in roman numerals! Is this device available for public viewing? If so, where and when. Thanks for reporting on this discovery.
Shankar Vedantam: The Antikythera Device is available for public viewing at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. (I should have tried to pitch my editors about sending me to Greece to do some live reporting.)
Also, check out http:/
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Columbus, Ohio: What? No mention of Derk J. de Solla Price in the article. Surely he was far ahead of of other scholars who have now entered the game with the advent of high-tech tools.
Shankar Vedantam: Thank you for this reminder. Derek Price was a remarkable historian who spend many many years at Yale and Princeton, studying the Antikythera Mechanism. Without his insights and work, the more recent findings would probably not have happened.
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Finksburg, Md.: I'm coming into the chat late, but to answer the first poster's question about discoveries, knowledge, etc. that were lost and then refound - a great story of this is in Winston Churhill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples". In the first volume he describes all the advances that the Romans brought to Britain - and then were lost during the Dark Ages. One such example are the baths at well, Bath. Once the Romans left Britain, Churchill said Britons would have to wait more than a thousand years for their next hot bath. Amusing, but poignant.
Shankar Vedantam: more comments
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Denver, Colo.: There's a wonderful children's book called The Librarian Who Measured The Earth", the story of Eratosthenes who calculated the measurement of the earth in the third century BC.
Shankar Vedantam: and another one ..
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Washington, D.C.: Do you have links of where we could see animations or drawings of what scientists believe the device may have looked like?
Shankar Vedantam: Try to track down a copy of the Nov 30 journal Nature. Or try to track down a hard copy of today's Washington Post, and look at the illustrations on Page 8. We can also look into whether we can link online to the illustrations in the paper done by the my talented colleague, Patterson Clark. They are really terrific.
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Tampa, Fla.: As I understand antiquity, including the Hellenistic Age, the ancient Greeks did not view experimental science and engineering as worthy of the same respect as "pure" disciplines such as philosophy and mathematics. I think this attitude may have helped prevent a Hellenistic industrial revolution (along with cheap, abundant labor through slavery). The Hellenistic Greeks also invented the steam engine, came close to inventing calculus, just to name a few. But they never followed up on them, especially commercially. It's interesting to think how human history had developed if the Hellenistic Greeks had undergone an industrial revolution 1900 years before the it actually happened.
Shankar Vedantam: another interesting comment ...
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Finsburg, Md.: Another great example of something that was lost, and then refound was the harbor of Narbonne, in France. The Romans dredged what was a swamp, and turned it into one of their most profitable harbors. Once the Empire collapsed, the technology collapsed with it, and soon the harbor filled in until it was over three miles from the sea. It was only three hundred years ago that it was finally dredged and reopened - after a hiatus of over 1200 years.
Shankar Vedantam: and another one ...
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washingtonpost.com: Graphic: An Astronomical Calculator
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Arlington, Va.: Despite the evidence, the conclusions seem counterintuitive in various ways! For example, if even the presence of an American flag has a subliminal impact, I'd think that being in a woman-only group would already provide as much subliminal consciousness of their sex as could be induced by any questions a roomful of female students might be asked. In contrast, I wouldn't expect 5- to 7-year-old Asian girls to be aware of prevailing conceptions relating math aptitude to either ethnicity or sex, so I don't see how subliminal messages relating to those characteristics could affect their performance. What do you think about this?
Shankar Vedantam: Speaking of complex gears, I am going to switch gears to talk briefly about my other story today, the column on how subtle cues can influence behavior and academic performance.
On your first question, I should have perhaps made clear that although all the people in the study I refer to were women, they were not all brought in together to a room where, as you say, the issue of gender would have been made obvious without any other questions. They were brought into a laboratory one by one, and they had no idea who the other participants would be.
On the question of the Asian girls, I think we often confuse the things that we learn explicitly from the things we learn implicitly. Would a 5-7 year old girl be able to tell you about math stereotypes? Maybe, maybe not. But has she already been exposed to stereotypes linking mathematics with men? Probably. In some ways, the question of how these stereotypes are learned is a secondary question. As the research shows, these stereotypes have an effect even at this early age, an effect that is measurable. Asking whether subtle stereotypes SHOULD have an effect is almost pointless when the experimental research shows that they DO have an effect.
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Bowie: In your behavior column, you describe the results of the "reminded of gender - changed behavior in a certain way" as acting on stereotypes. How can one tell if they acted based on a stereotype; or if it's an accurate reflection of female attitudes toward math and music?
Shankar Vedantam: Thanks for the question, Bowie. The interesting thing about the experiment is that women were assigned to the two groups at random. So the question is not what women have about math and music in general, but why there would be a difference in one group relative to the other, after the issue of gender has been subtly activated. The study was not saying that women should have a 50-50 preference for math and music. So let us assume what you say is true and that women really do have a preference for music over math. Let's say the ratio is 70 percent music and 30 percent math. Why would the group primed with the gender issue show 80 percent music and 20 percent math? (I am making up the numbers obviously, in order to explain the conceptual point.)
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New Orleans, La.: It reminds me of the Stonehenge. Stonehenge was built in several stages from 2800 - 1800 BC,designed to allow for observation of astronomical phenomena - summer and winter solstices, eclipses, and more.
Shankar Vedantam: OK, wrapping up now, but would like to post several more comments on the Antikythera Mechanism story ...
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Alabama: "Columbia, Tenn.: The loss of the technology might have something to do with the fact that it had to be scientifically accurate and so, when the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, it was politically incorrect. Everyone had to profess that the sun revolved around the earth. Or else!"
No. 1, the Roman Empire did not "become" the Holy Roman Empire. It fell in 476; the Holy Roman Empire was a name given to the German Empire of the Middle Ages (and it was never contemporaneous).
No. 2, the mechanism is a beautiful piece of technology, but like so much of classical civilization, its benefits were enjoyed by the elites. What we think of the glory that was Greece and grandeur that was Rome was in fact the very, very upper class of those two societies that had some impressively advanced learning but never bothered to share it with the masses, who led their short lives hungry and ill-clothed. Technology on its own is nothing; it takes the transformation of a whole society to make it wondrous.
Shankar Vedantam: another one ...
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Montgomery, Ala.: In the article the statement was made that there had to have been more than one of these mechanisms built. I will concede the complexity of the "Mechanism" is such that prototypes were probably made and tested. But it's that very complexity that most likely kept more from being made. I mean, this little "doo-dad" is not something that just any person on a street corner could whip out in an afternoon on some remote Greek Isle. It's highly likely that the builder wasn't the astronomical expert but just a highly skilled artisan who was just "hired" to implement someone else's idea. Given the time it probably took to build the device, lack of actual utility, cost, and the lifespan of either the conceptualizer and/or builder I feel that it's most probably a "one-of-a-kind" device. But I do hope I'm wrong! What are your thoughts? Ron
Shankar Vedantam: and another one ...
I suppose it would be fair to say that these mechanisms were not made by the boatload; they would have been the equivalent of supercomputers today. But I find it hard to believe that this was the only one ever made. As Charette told me, these kinds of things are not popped out of the mind of some genius. You don't have a high speed train in the 21st century without a steam engine before it!
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Shankar Vedantam: It's been a stimulating and busy conversation. Sorry I could not get to all the questions and comments; if anyone would like to email me directly later on, the address is vedantams@washpost.com
Have a good day and join us next monday to talk to the science pod about the weekly science page story.
