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| Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1816) |
Thursday of the week is devoted to airing out religion and religions. The column's title, "Thor's Day," comes from the etymology of the word Thursday, literally "Thor's Day."In one version of an exchange between the Emperor Napoleon and the French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace, in which Napoleon asked LaPlace why there was no mention of God in his five-volume Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics) (1799–1825) and Laplace replied that he had no need of that hypothesis, Napoleon told another mathematician/astronomer (Joseph-Louis Lagrange) what Laplace had said, and Lagrange commented, "Ah! c'est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses." (Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.)
Well, let's see. What can we find that this "fine hypothesis" explains? Does it explain why people suffer and die? Why bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad people? Why the Universe exists, or how it came into being? How life arose on Planet Earth and why most of the species that ever existed have perished? Why there's a food chain, with its endless repetition of eat or be eaten? Why electricity, gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces? Why some babies grow up to become serial killers, stock brokers, bankers, politicians, while others become volunteer firefighters, field workers, soldiers, elementary school teachers? Why the pronounced partisanship in the United States today? Why global warming?
I can't think of a single thing that God explains that wasn't simply included in the definition of "God."
I have to suppose that the man whose "treatise on analytical mechanics (Mécanique Analytique, 1888–89) offered the most comprehensive treatment of classical mechanics since Newton and formed a basis for the development of mathematical physics in the nineteenth century" [Wikipedia] was being ironic, having a little joke with the emperor.
It seems that Yale has betrayed its historical values and those of the culture it's embedded in. Is there another way to slice it?
ReplyDeleteTo other readers, Ken's comment goes with the "fish" about Yale in Friday's column
DeleteAs for what Yale's action amounts to, how it's sliced depends on who's slicing. In 2006, I vehemently objected (in a letter to Yale President Richard Levin) to Yale's granting George W. Bush an honorary degree at its 2001 commencement. While Levin didn't explicitly contradict me, he did (of course?) support Yale's conferring the degree. That is, I'm sure that Levin and the Yale Corporation would slice (and have already sliced) the fruit for optimal presentation on the plate.