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Ulysses, the groundbreaking modernist novel by James Joyce, celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. First published on February 2, 1922. Poet T.S. Eliot declared the novel to be “the most important expression that modernity has discovered.” Ulysses Since then, it has won many fans. Among its fans is Harry Manos, an English professor at Los Angeles City University. Manos is also a fan of physics. He wrote his December 2021 paper, published in The Physics Teacher, detailing how Joyce interspersed multiple examples of classical physics throughout his novel.
“fact Ulysses Joyce’s friend Eugene Joras said: [Joyce] Enjoyed the discussion was wide… [including] Certain sciences, especially physics, geometry and mathematics. Knowing the physics adds to the overall understanding of this novel and enhances its entertainment value. Ulysses It illustrates what physics students (science and non-science majors) and physics teachers should be aware of: physics and literature are not mutually exclusive. ”
Ulysses It chronicles the life of an ordinary Dublin man named Leopold Bloom throughout the day of June 16, 1904 (now celebrated worldwide as Bloomsday). Although the novel may seem unstructured and chaotic, Joyce modeled the story on Homer’s epic. Odysseyits 18 “episodes” correspond roughly to the 24 books of Homer’s epic. Bloom represents Odysseus. His wife Molly Bloom is Penelope’s equivalent.Aspiring Writer Stephen Daedalus — Protagonist in Joyce’s Semi-Autobiographical Work portrait of a young artist (1916)—Represents Telemachus, son of Odysseus and Penelope.
In his paper, Manos states that the fictional Bloom considers himself to be a man well versed in science, while Joyce portrays his protagonist as a man whose knowledge was largely available at the time. She slyly shows that she is a dilettante who comes from a scientific book. For example, when Bloom invited Dedalus to his home, the young man declared that the observer “can see the Milky Way during the day if placed at the lower end of a five-thousand-foot cylindrical vertical shaft.” Try to impress men. [sic] It sinks deep from the surface to the center of the earth. “
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Of course this is wrong. Manos wrote that Rayleigh scattering obscures stars. Even from the bottom of a cylindrical vertical shaft or a tall chimney. Where did Bloom get this misunderstanding? Manos says that Sir Robert Ball, who was director of the Dunsink Observatory just north of Dublin, published two popular books. Daedalus found one of which he story of heavenin the Blooms library, the other called star landwhich speaks of being able to see the stars in daylight from the bottom of a mine shaft or tall chimney. star land— hence his misunderstanding.
Other physics examples reflect the then-accepted science, even though subsequent advances have made that science inaccurate. For example, Blum mentions how the sun’s radiant heat is “transmitted through the ubiquitous luminous diathermanos ether”, and while boiling water for tea, convection, conduction, and and how heat is transferred by radiation. At the time, some physicists still believed in the existence of luminous ethers that acted as a medium for light to pass through. His famous Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 and the development of the special theory of relativity by Albert Einstein and his paper on the photoelectric effect in 1905 (his Anus Mirabilis). However, Manos points out that the novel’s 1904 setting and contemporary high school textbooks still refer to ether as a scientific fact.
In Chapter 15 (“Circe”), one of the characters says, “You can always call me on Sanfon.” This is a phrase that also appears in Joyce’s handwritten notes in this chapter. Manos was unable to trace the specific source of the term, but there was a similar device invented some 20 years earlier. Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, invented in collaboration with his assistant Charles Sumner his tainter.
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Unlike telephones, which rely on electricity, photophones transmitted sound with beams of light. Bell’s voice was projected through the instrument onto the mirror, causing a similar vibration in the mirror. When he directed sunlight onto a mirror, the reflection captured and projected the mirror’s vibrations, converting them into sound at the receiving end of the projection. Bell’s device had no immediate application, but is undoubtedly the progenitor of modern fiber optic communications.
There are several other instances (both correct and incorrect/outdated) of physics mentioned in Ulysses, including Bloom, who, according to Manos, misunderstands the science of X-rays. His confusion about parallax. I’m trying to figure out what causes the Dead Sea’s buoyancy. Reminiscing about Archimedes’ “Burning Glass”. See the rainbow colors in the splash. And I wonder why I can hear the ocean when I hold a seashell to my ear.Manos believes that introducing literature such as Ulysses Enrolling in a physics course may not only be a boon for non-major students, but may encourage physics and engineering students to learn more about literature.
In fact, Manos notes that his pre-1995 paper introduced useful introductory physics problems related to distance, velocity, and time. Ulysses begins with Stephen Dedalus and his roommate, Buck Mulligan, standing in the Martello Tower overlooking the bay in Sandy Cove. Mulligan shaves his beard and is cunning and performs “obvious miracles.” When Mulligan whistles, a passing mail ship immediately whistles back. Through a shaving mirror, Mulligan spotted a mail boat making two normal explosions about a mile away at that time in the morning.
Using a simple expression (t = d/v), “Students can easily calculate that at the speed of light, Mulligan would have seen 5.4 x 10 steam.-6 Manos writes: “At 1100 feet per second, the sound would have traveled a mile to Martello Tower in 4.8 seconds and Mulligan would have been given time to whistle skyward (“pause”) and wait. He responded to the heavens (the departure whistle of the mail boat) and accomplished his apparent miracle. “
DOI: The Physics Teacher, 2021. 10.1119/5.0028832 (About DOI).
