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Acropolis of Athens
The Acropolis of Athens or Citadel of Athens is the best known acropolis (Gr. akros, akron, edge, extremity + polis, city, pl. acropoleis) in the world. Although there are many other acropoleis in Greece, the significance of the Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as The Acropolis without qualification. The Acropolis was formally proclaimed as the pre-eminent monument on the European Cultural Heritage list of monuments on 26 March 2007. The Acropolis is a flat-topped rock that rises above sea level in the city of Athens, with a surface area of about 3 hectares. It was also known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man, Cecrops, the first Athenian king.
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Aegean Sea
The Aegean Sea (, Egeo Pelagos ; ) is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus. The Aegean Islands are within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The Aegean Region consists of nine provinces in southwestern Turkey, in part bordering on the Aegean sea.
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Alexandria
http://wn.com/Alexandria -
Antioch
http://wn.com/Antioch -
Areopagus
:This article concerns the place where a classical judicial body met. It is also the term for the judicial body which met there. For the 16th century literary movement, see Areopagus (poetry). For the regional government during the Greek War of Independence, see Areopagus of Eastern Continental Greece. For the modern Greek Supreme Court, see Court of Cassation (Greece).
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Attalid dynasty
The Attalid dynasty was a Hellenistic dynasty that ruled the city of Pergamon after the death of Lysimachus, a general of Alexander the Great. The Attalid kingdom was the rump state left after the collapse of the Lysimachian Empire. One of Lysimachus' officers, Philetaerus, took control of the city in 282 BC. The later Attalids were descended from his father, and they expanded the city into a kingdom. Attalus I proclaimed himself King in the 230s BC, following his victories over the Galatians. The Attalids ruled Pergamon until Attalus III bequeathed the kingdom to the Roman Republic in 133 BC to avoid a likely succession crisis.
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Canary Islands
http://wn.com/Canary_Islands -
Cape Verde
The Republic of Cape Verde (; , ; ) is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 15 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa. The islands, covering a combined area of slightly over , are of volcanic origin and while three of them (Sal, Boa Vista and Maio) are fairly flat, sandy and dry, the remaining ones are generally rockier and have more vegetation. Due to the infrequent occurrence of rainfall the overall landscape is not particularly green, as the country's name suggests (verde is Portuguese for "green"). The name of the country stems instead from the nearby Cap Vert, on the Senegalese coast.
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China
China is seen variously as an ancient civilization extending over a large area in East Asia, a nation and/or a multinational entity.
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Classical Athens
The city of Athens during the classical period of Ancient Greece (508-322 BC) was a notable polis (city-state) of Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Hippias. This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in place for 180 years, until 322 BC (aftermath of Lamian War) . The peak of Athenian hegemony was achieved in the 440s to 430s BC, known as the Age of Pericles.
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Crete
http://wn.com/Crete -
Cyprus
http://wn.com/Cyprus -
Cyrene, Libya
http://wn.com/Cyrene_Libya -
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles (, ), formerly known as the Hellespont
http://wn.com/Dardanelles -
Egypt
http://wn.com/Egypt -
Ephesus
http://wn.com/Ephesus -
Ionian Sea
The Ionian Sea is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy including Calabria, Sicily and the Salento peninsula to the west, and by southwestern Albania, including Saranda and Himara, and a large number of Greek islands, including Corfu, Zante, Kephalonia, Ithaka, and Lefkas to the east. The islands are collectively referred to as the Ionian Islands, and other islands include the Strophades, Sphagia, Schiza, Sapientza and Kythira. The sea is one of the most seismic areas in the world.
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Malay Peninsula
The Malay Peninsula or Thai-Malay Peninsula (, ) is in Southeast Asia. The land mass runs approximately north-south and, at its teminus, is the southern-most point of the Asian mainland. The area contains territories of Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
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Miletus
http://wn.com/Miletus -
Parthenon
The Parthenon (Ancient Greek: ) is a temple in the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their protector. Its construction began in 447 BCE and was completed in 438 BCE, although decorations of the Parthenon continued until 431 BCE. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered to be the culmination of the development of the Doric order. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece and of Athenian democracy and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a programme of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure.
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Peloponnese
http://wn.com/Peloponnese -
Pergamon
http://wn.com/Pergamon -
Persian Empire
http://wn.com/Persian_Empire -
Platonic Academy
http://wn.com/Platonic_Academy -
Ptolemais Hermiou
Ptolemais Hermiou was a city in Greco-Roman Egypt, established on the west bank of the Nile by Ptolemy I Soter to be the capital of Upper Egypt. Today, the city of Al Manshah in the Sohag Governorate is located where the ancient city used to be.
http://wn.com/Ptolemais_Hermiou -
Shetland
Shetland (from etland; Old Norse) is an archipelago in Scotland, off the northeast coast. The islands lie to the northeast of Orkney, from the Faroe Islands and form part of the division between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east. The total area is approximately . Administratively, the area is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland for which the now-archaic spelling Zetland was used until 1970. The islands' administrative centre and only burgh is Lerwick.
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Sparta
http://wn.com/Sparta -
Sri Lanka
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (commonly known as Sri Lanka (, , or ); ; , ) is a country and a sovereign state off souther coast of the Indian subcontinent. A island nation in South Asia, it was till 1972 known as Ceylon (, , or ). Sri Lanka is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait.
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Temple of Hephaestus
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Temple of Zeus
The Temple of Zeus at Olympia, was an ancient Greek temple in Olympia, Greece, dedicated to the chief of the gods, Zeus. It was the very model of the fully-developed classical Greek temple of the Doric order. The temple, built between 472 and 456 BC, stood in the most famous sanctuary of Greece, which had been dedicated to local and Pan-Hellenic deities and had probably been established towards the end of the Mycenaean period. The Altis, the enclosure with its sacred grove, open-air altars and the tumulus of Pelops, was first formed during the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, when the cult of Zeus was joined the already establish cult here of Hera.
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Thermopylae
http://wn.com/Thermopylae -
Troy
http://wn.com/Troy
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4001 Ptolemaeus
4001 Ptolemaeus (1949 PV) is a main-belt asteroid discovered on August 2, 1949 by K. Reinmuth at Heidelberg.
http://wn.com/4001_Ptolemaeus -
Aeschylus
http://wn.com/Aeschylus -
Aesop
http://wn.com/Aesop -
Aglaonike
Aglaonike (Gr. , fl. 2nd century BC), also known as Aganice of Thessaly is cited as the first female astronomer in ancient Greece. She is mentioned in the writings of Plutarch and Apollonius of Rhodes as the daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly. She was regarded as a sorceress for her ability to make the moon disappear from the sky, which has been taken to mean she could predict the time and general area where a lunar eclipse would occur.
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Agrippa (astronomer)
Agrippa (unkn-fl. 92 AD) was a Greek astronomer. The only thing that is known about him regards an astronomical observation that he made in 92 AD, which is cited by Ptolemy (Almagest, VII, 3). Ptolemy writes that in the twelfth year of the reign of Domitian, on the seventh day of the Bithynian month Metrous, Agrippa observed the occultation of a part of the Pleiades by the southernmost part of the Moon.
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Alcaeus of Mytilene
http://wn.com/Alcaeus_of_Mytilene -
Alcibiades
http://wn.com/Alcibiades -
Alexander the Great
http://wn.com/Alexander_the_Great -
Alhazen
http://wn.com/Alhazen -
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras (, "lord of the assembly"; c. 500 BC – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese. He was accused of contravening the established religion and was forced to flee to Lampsacus.
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Anaximander
http://wn.com/Anaximander -
Anthemius of Tralles
Anthemius of Tralles (c. 474 – before 558) (Greek ) was a Greek professor of Geometry in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul in Turkey) and architect, who collaborated with Isidore of Miletus to build the church of Hagia Sophia by the order of Justinian I. Anthemius came from an educated family, one of five sons of Stephanus of Tralles, a physician. Of his brothers, Dioscorus followed his father's profession in Tralles; Alexander became at Rome one of the most celebrated medical men of his time; Olympius was deeply versed in Roman jurisprudence; and Metrodorus was a distinguished grammarian in Constantinople.
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Antisthenes
Antisthenes (; c. 445-c. 365 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and a pupil of Socrates. Antisthenes first learned rhetoric under Gorgias before becoming an ardent disciple of Socrates. He adopted and developed the ethical side of Socrates' teachings, advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue. Later writers regarded him as the founder of Cynic philosophy.
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Aphex Twin
Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is an electronic musician described by The Guardian newspaper in 2001 as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music." He founded the record label Rephlex Records in 1991 with associate, Grant Wilson-Claridge.
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Aratus
http://wn.com/Aratus -
Archilochus
:For the hummingbird genus, see ''Archilochus.
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Archimedes
http://wn.com/Archimedes -
Archytas
http://wn.com/Archytas -
Aristaeus the Elder
Aristaeus the Elder (active 370 BC-300 BC) was a Greek mathematician who worked on conic sections. He was a contemporary of Euclid, though probably older. We know practically nothing of his life except that the mathematician Pappus of Alexandria refers to him as Aristaeus the Elder which presumably means that Pappus was aware of another later mathematician also named Aristaeus. Pappus gave Aristaeus great credit for a work entitled Five Books concerning Solid Loci which was used by Pappus but has been lost. He may have also authored the book Concerning the Comparison of Five Regular Solids. This book has also been lost; we know of it through a reference by the Greek mathematician Hypsicles.
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Aristarchus of Samos
http://wn.com/Aristarchus_of_Samos -
Aristillus
:For the crater, see Aristillus (crater).
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Aristophanes
http://wn.com/Aristophanes -
Aristotle
http://wn.com/Aristotle -
Aristoxenus
Aristoxenus (; fl. 335 BC) of Tarentum was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, Elements of Harmony, survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and meter.
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Asger Aaboe
http://wn.com/Asger_Aaboe -
Aspasia
Aspasia (ca. 470 BC–ca. 400 BC, Greek: ) was a Milesian woman who was famous for her involvement with the Athenian statesman Pericles. Very little is known about the details of her life. She spent most of her adult life in Athens, and she may have influenced Pericles and Athenian politics. She is mentioned in the writings of Plato, Aristophanes, Xenophon, and other authors of the day.
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Attalus of Rhodes
Attalus of Rhodes was an ancient Greek grammarian, astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Rhodes in the 2nd century BC, and was a contemporary of Hipparchus. He wrote a commentary on the Phaenomena of Aratus. Although this work is lost, Hipparchus cites him in his Commentary on the Phaenomena of Eudoxus and Aratus. Attalus sought to defend both Aratus and Eudoxus against criticisms from contemporary astronomers and mathematicians.
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Autolycus of Pitane
http://wn.com/Autolycus_of_Pitane -
Bacchylides
Bacchylides () (5th century BC) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets which included his uncle Simonides. The elegance and polished style of his lyrics have been a commonplace of Bacchylidean scholarship since at least Longinus (De Sublimitate 33,5). Some scholars however have associated these qualities with superficial charm. He has often been compared unfavourably with his contemporary, Pindar, as "a kind of Boccherini to Pindar's Haydn", yet the differences in their styles doesn't allow for easy comparison and "to blame Bacchylides for not being Pindar is as childish a judgement as to condemn...Marvel for missing the grandeur of Milton." His career coincided with the ascendency of dramatic styles of poetry, as embodied in the works of Aeschylus or Sophocles, and he is in fact one of the last poets of major significance within the more ancient tradition of purely lyric poetry. The most notable features of his lyrics are their clarity in expression and simplicity of thought, making them an ideal introduction to the study of Greek lyric poetry in general and to Pindar's verse in particular.
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Boethius
http://wn.com/Boethius -
Bryson of Heraclea
Bryson of Heraclea (late 5th-century BCE) was an ancient Greek mathematician and sophist who contributed to solving the problem of squaring the circle and calculating pi.
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China
China is seen variously as an ancient civilization extending over a large area in East Asia, a nation and/or a multinational entity.
http://wn.com/China -
Chrysippus
Chrysippus of Soli (Ancient Greek: , ; c. 279–c. 206 BC) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of Cleanthes in the Stoic school. When Cleanthes died, around 230 BC, Chrysippus became the third head of the school. A prolific writer, Chrysippus expanded the fundamental doctrines of Zeno of Citium, the founder of the school, which earned him the title of Second Founder of Stoicism.
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Claudius
http://wn.com/Claudius -
Cleostratus
:This article concerns the Greek astronomer. For the article on the lunar crater named for him, see Cleostratus (crater).
http://wn.com/Cleostratus -
Conon of Samos
Conon of Samos (ca. 280 BC - ca. 220 BC) was a Greek astronomer and mathematician. He is primarily remembered for naming the constellation Coma Berenices.
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Ctesibius
http://wn.com/Ctesibius -
Democritus
http://wn.com/Democritus -
Demosthenes
http://wn.com/Demosthenes -
Dicaearchus
http://wn.com/Dicaearchus -
Dinostratus
Dinostratus (, ca. 390 BCE - ca. 320 BCE) was a Greek mathematician and geometer, and the brother of Menaechmus. He is known for using the quadratrix to solve the problem of squaring the circle.
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Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope ( Diogenes ho Sinopeus), was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes the Cynic, he was born in Sinope (modern-day Sinop, Turkey) in 412 or 404 BCE
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Diophantus
Diophantus of Alexandria (Greek: . b. between 200 and 214 CE, d. between 284 and 298 CE), sometimes called "the father of algebra", was an Alexandrian Greek mathematician and the author of a series of books called Arithmetica. These texts deal with solving algebraic equations, many of which are now lost. In studying Arithmetica, Pierre de Fermat
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Empedocles
http://wn.com/Empedocles -
Epaminondas
Epaminondas (Greek: ) (ca. 410 BC – 362 BC) or Epameinondas was a Theban general and statesman of the 4th century BC who transformed the Ancient Greek city-state of Thebes, leading it out of Spartan subjugation into a preeminent position in Greek politics. In the process he broke Spartan military power with his victory at Leuctra and liberated the Messenian helots, a group of Peloponnesian Greeks who had been enslaved under Spartan rule for some 230 years, having been defeated in the Messenian War ending in 600 BC. Epaminondas reshaped the political map of Greece, fragmented old alliances, created new ones, and supervised the construction of entire cities. He was militarily influential as well, inventing and implementing several major battlefield tactics.
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Epicurus
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Eratosthenes
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Euclid
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Euctemon
Euctemon (unknown-fl. 432 BC) was an Athenian astronomer. He was a contemporary of Meton and worked closely with this astronomer. Little is known of his work apart from his partnership with Meton and what is mentioned by Ptolemy. With Meton, he made a series of observations of the solstices (the points at which the sun is at greatest distance from the equator) in order to determine the length of the tropical year. Geminus and Ptolemy quote him as a source on the rising and setting of the stars. The lunar crater Euctemon is named after him.
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Eudemus of Rhodes
:Eudemus is also the name of a general of Alexander the Great (died 316 BC).
http://wn.com/Eudemus_of_Rhodes -
Eudoxus of Cnidus
Eudoxus of Cnidus (410 or 408 BC – 355 or 347 BC) was a Greek astronomer, mathematician, scholar and student of Plato. Since all his own works are lost, our knowledge of him is obtained from secondary sources, such as Aratus's poem on astronomy. Theodosius of Bithynia's Sphaerics may be based on a work of Eudoxus.
http://wn.com/Eudoxus_of_Cnidus -
Eugene of Palermo
http://wn.com/Eugene_of_Palermo -
Euripides
http://wn.com/Euripides -
Geminus
Geminus of Rhodes (), was a Greek astronomer and mathematician, who flourished in the 1st century BC. An astronomy work of his, the Introduction to the Phenomena, still survives; it was intended as an introductory astronomy book for students. He also wrote a work on mathematics, of which only fragments quoted by later authors survive.
http://wn.com/Geminus -
George Sarton
George Sarton (1884-1956) was a Belgian historian who is considered to have founded the discipline of science history. He left Belgium because of the First World War and settled in the United States. He spent the rest of his life researching and writing about the history of the sciences.
http://wn.com/George_Sarton -
Gorgias
Gorgias (, ca. 485-c.380 BCE) "the Nihilist", Greek sophist, pre-socratic philosopher and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger. "Like other Sophists he was an itinerant, practicing in various cities and giving public exhibitions of his skill at the great pan-Hellenic centers of Olympia and Delphi, and charged fees for his instruction and performances. A special feature of his displays was to invite miscellaneous questions from the audience and give impromptu replies."
http://wn.com/Gorgias -
Greeks
Ethnic group
http://wn.com/Greeks -
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ancient Greek: — ; c. 535–c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the riddling nature of his philosophy and his contempt for humankind in general, he was called "The Obscure," and the "Weeping Philosopher."
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Hero of Alexandria
http://wn.com/Hero_of_Alexandria -
Herodotus
http://wn.com/Herodotus -
Hesiod
http://wn.com/Hesiod -
Hicetas
Hicetas ( or ; ca. 400 BC – ca. 335 BC) was a Greek philosopher of the Pythagorean School. He was born in Syracuse. Like his fellow Pythagorean Ecphantus and the Academic Heraclides Ponticus, he believed that the daily movement of permanent stars was caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis.
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Hipparchus
http://wn.com/Hipparchus -
Hippasus
http://wn.com/Hippasus -
Hippias
Hippias of Elis (; late 5th century BCE) was a Greek Sophist, and a contemporary of Socrates. With an assurance characteristic of the later sophists, he claimed to be regarded as an authority on all subjects, and lectured on poetry, grammar, history, politics, mathematics, and much else. Most of our knowledge of him is derived from Plato, who characterizes him as vain and arrogant.
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Hippocrates
http://wn.com/Hippocrates -
Hippocrates of Chios
Hippocrates of Chios was an ancient Greek mathematician, (geometer), and astronomer, who lived c. 470 – c. 410 BCE.
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Hipponax
Hipponax of Ephesus was an Ancient Greek iambic poet.
http://wn.com/Hipponax -
Homer
http://wn.com/Homer -
Hypatia
http://wn.com/Hypatia -
Hypsicles
This article is about Hypsicles of Alexandria. For the historian, see Hyspicrates (historian).
http://wn.com/Hypsicles -
Ibycus
Ibycus (Ancient Greek: ) (6th century BC), was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. He was included in the canonical list of nine lyric poets by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria. The extant fragments of his work contain the earliest-known example of the triadic choral lyric and epinician poetry.
http://wn.com/Ibycus -
Isidore of Miletus
http://wn.com/Isidore_of_Miletus -
J.H. Parry
http://wn.com/JH_Parry -
Leonidas I
http://wn.com/Leonidas_I -
Leucippus
http://wn.com/Leucippus -
Lycurgus of Sparta
http://wn.com/Lycurgus_of_Sparta -
Lysander
http://wn.com/Lysander -
Marinus of Neapolis
http://wn.com/Marinus_of_Neapolis -
Martin Bernal
Martin Gardiner Bernal (born 1937) is a Professor Emeritus of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is a scholar of modern Chinese political history. He is best known for his work Black Athena, a controversial work which re-examines the origins of Ancient Greek culture and language.
http://wn.com/Martin_Bernal -
Maximus Planudes
http://wn.com/Maximus_Planudes -
Milo of Croton
http://wn.com/Milo_of_Croton -
Nero
http://wn.com/Nero -
Nicoteles of Cyrene
Nicoteles of Cyrene (c. 250 BCE) was a Greek mathematician from Cyrene.
http://wn.com/Nicoteles_of_Cyrene -
Oenopides
:Oenopides is also the name of a lunar crater
http://wn.com/Oenopides -
Pappus of Alexandria
Pappus of Alexandria (Greek ) (c. 290 – c. 350) was one of the last great Greek mathematicians of Antiquity, known for his Synagoge or Collection (c. 340), and for Pappus's Theorem in projective geometry. Nothing is known of his life, except (from his own writings) that he had a son named Hermodorus, and was a teacher in Alexandria.
http://wn.com/Pappus_of_Alexandria -
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea (Greek: ; fl. early 5th century BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In The Way of Truth (a part of the poem), he explains how reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging. In The Way of Opinion, he explains the world of appearances, which is false and deceitful. These thoughts strongly influenced Plato, and through him, the whole of Western philosophy.
http://wn.com/Parmenides -
Patrick Moore
http://wn.com/Patrick_Moore -
Pausanias (general)
http://wn.com/Pausanias_(general) -
Pei Xiu
Pei Xiu (224–271 AD) was a minister, geographer, and cartographer of the Kingdom of Wei during the Three Kingdoms Period of China, as well as the subsequent Jin Dynasty. Pei Xiu was very much trusted by Sima Zhao, and participated in the suppression of Zhuge Dan's coup. Following Sima Yan taking the throne of the newly established Jin Dynasty, he and Jia Chong had Cao Huang deprived of his position to accord to the will of heaven. In the year 267, Pei was appointed as the Minister of Works for the Jin Dynasty.
http://wn.com/Pei_Xiu -
Pericles
http://wn.com/Pericles -
Perseus (geometer)
Perseus (c. 150 BC) was an ancient Greek geometer, who invented the concept of spiric sections, in analogy to the conic sections studied by Apollonius of Perga.
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Persian people
Ethnic group|group = Persian Speakers
http://wn.com/Persian_people -
Philip II of Macedon
http://wn.com/Philip_II_of_Macedon -
Philon
Philon, Athenian architect of the 4th century BC, is known as the planner of two important works: the portico of the great Hall of the Mysteries at Eleusis and an arsenal at Athens. Of the last we have exact knowledge from an inscription. E. A. Gardner observes that it "is perhaps known to us more in detail than any other lost monument of antiquity." It was to hold the rigging of the galleys; and was so contrived that all its contents were visible from a central hall, and so liable to the inspection of the Athenian democracy. He is known to have written books on the Athenian arsenal and on the proportions of temple buildings, but these are now lost.
http://wn.com/Philon -
Pindar
http://wn.com/Pindar -
Plato
:For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation) and Platon (disambiguation).
http://wn.com/Plato -
Plutarch
http://wn.com/Plutarch -
Polybius
http://wn.com/Polybius -
Posidonius
http://wn.com/Posidonius -
Proclus
http://wn.com/Proclus -
Protagoras
Protagoras (Greek: ) (ca. 490– 420 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue. He is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that man is the measure of all things. This idea was very revolutionary for the time and contrasting to other philosophical doctrines that claimed the universe was based on something objective, outside the human influence.
http://wn.com/Protagoras -
Ptolemy
http://wn.com/Ptolemy -
Ptolemy I Soter
:For the astronomer, see Ptolemy; for others named "Ptolemy" or "Ptolemaeus", see Ptolemy (disambiguation).
http://wn.com/Ptolemy_I_Soter -
Pyrrhus of Epirus
Pyrrhus or Pyrrhos (, Pyrros; 319-272 BC) was a Greek general of the Hellenistic era. He was king of the Greek tribe of Molossians, of the royal Aeacid house (from ca. 297 BC), and later he became King of Epirus (306-302, 297-272 BC) and Macedon (288-284, 273-272 BC). He was one of the strongest opponents of early Rome. Some of his battles, though successful, cost him heavy losses, from which the term "Pyrrhic victory" was coined. He is the subject of one of Plutarch's Parallel Lives.
http://wn.com/Pyrrhus_of_Epirus -
Pythagoras
Pythagoras of Samos (, O Pythagoras o Samios, "Pythagoras the Samian", or simply ; c. 570-c. 495 BC) was an Ionian Greek philosopher and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of our information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, thus very little reliable information is known about him. He was born on the island of Samos, and may have travelled widely in his youth, visiting Egypt and other places seeking knowledge. Around 530 BC, he moved to Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy, and there set up a religious sect. His followers pursued the religious rites and practices developed by Pythagoras, and studied his philosophical theories. The society took an active role in the politics of Croton, but this eventually led to their downfall. The Pythagorean meeting-places were burned, and Pythagoras was forced to flee the city. He is said to have ended his days in Metapontum.
http://wn.com/Pythagoras -
Pytheas
http://wn.com/Pytheas -
Sappho
Sappho ( in English; Attic Greek ' , Aeolic Greek ' ) was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.
http://wn.com/Sappho -
Seleucus of Seleucia
Seleucus (or Seleukos) of Seleucia (born c. 190 BC, fl. 150s BC) was a hellenized Babylonian astronomer and philosopher who stood in the tradition of Hellenistic astronomy.Chaldaean/Babylonian astronomer:William P. D. Wightman (1951, 1953), The Growth of Scientific Ideas, Yale University Press p. 38, where Wightman calls him "Seleukos the Chaldean"; : Greek astronomer:[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000eaa..bookE3998. The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)]: [http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Seleucus.html ScienceWorld]: Coming from Seleucia on the Tigris, the capital of the Seleucid empire, or, alternatively, Seleukia on the Red Sea, he is best known as a proponent of heliocentrism and for his theory of the origin of tides.
http://wn.com/Seleucus_of_Seleucia -
Seres
http://wn.com/Seres -
Simonides of Ceos
http://wn.com/Simonides_of_Ceos -
Socrates
http://wn.com/Socrates -
Solon
Solon (ancient Greek: , c. 638 BC–558 BC) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in archaic Athens. His reforms failed in the short term yet he is often credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy.
http://wn.com/Solon -
Sophocles
http://wn.com/Sophocles -
Stesichorus
Stesichorus (Ancient Greek: , circa 640 - 555 BC) was the first great poet of the Greek West. He is best known for telling epic stories in lyric metres but he is also famous for some ancient traditions about his life, such as his opposition to the tyrant Phalaris, and the blindness he is said to have incurred and cured by composing verses first insulting and then flattering to Helen of Troy. He was ranked among the nine lyric poets esteemed by the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria and yet his work attracted relatively little interest among ancient commentators, which in turn left a disproportionate number of gaps in the modern record as one scholar observed in 1967: "Time has dealt more harshly with Stesichorus than with any other major lyric poet." Recent discoveries, recorded on Egyptian papyrus (notably and controversially, the Lille papyrus, in 1974), have enhanced modern understanding of his work, confirming his role as a link between Homer's epic narrative and the lyric narrative of poets like Pindar.
http://wn.com/Stesichorus -
Strabo
http://wn.com/Strabo -
Thales
http://wn.com/Thales -
Thales of Miletus
http://wn.com/Thales_of_Miletus -
Theano (philosopher)
Theano (; 6th-century BC) was a Pythagorean philosopher. She was said by many to have been the wife of Pythagoras, although others made her the wife of Brontinus. A few fragments and letters ascribed to her have survived which are of uncertain authorship. She is believed by some historians to have been a student of Pythagoras and later a teacher in the Pythagorean school, which had 28 female Pythagoreans participating in it .
http://wn.com/Theano_(philosopher) -
Themistocles
Themistocles (Greek: ; "Glory of the Law"); c. 524–459 BC, was an Athenian politician and general. He was one of a new breed of politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy, along with his great rival Aristides. As a politician, Themistocles was a populist, having the support of lower class Athenians, and generally being at odds with the Athenian nobility. Elected archon in 493 BC, he took steps to increase the naval power of Athens, which would be a recurring theme in his political career. During the first Persian invasion of Greece, he fought at the Battle of Marathon, and was possibly one of the 10 Athenian strategoi (generals) in that battle.
http://wn.com/Themistocles -
Theodorus of Cyrene
Theodorus of Cyrene () was a Greek mathematician of the 5th century BC. The only first-hand accounts of him that we have are in two of Plato's dialogues: the Theaetetus and the Sophist. In the former, his student Theaetetus attributes to him the theorem that the square roots of the non-square numbers up to 17 are irrational:
http://wn.com/Theodorus_of_Cyrene -
Theon of Alexandria
Theon (, ca. 335 - ca. 405 AD) was a GreekTihon, Anne, "Theon of Alexandria and Ptolemy's Handy Tables", In Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination. Dibner Institute studies in the history of science and technology. Edited by N.M. Swerdlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, p. 357.
http://wn.com/Theon_of_Alexandria -
Theon of Smyrna
Theon of Smyrna (fl. 100 CE) was a Greek philosopher and mathematician, whose works were strongly influenced by the Pythagorean school of thought. His surviving On Mathematics Useful for the Understanding of Plato is an introductory survey of Greek mathematics.
http://wn.com/Theon_of_Smyrna -
Thucydides
http://wn.com/Thucydides -
Thymaridas
Thymaridas of Paros (ca. 400 BCE - ca. 350 BCE) was an ancient Greek mathematician and Pythagorean noted for his work on prime numbers and simultaneous linear equations.
http://wn.com/Thymaridas -
Timocharis
Timocharis of Alexandria (ca. 320 BC - 260 BC) was a Greek astronomer and philosopher. Likely born in Alexandria, he was a contemporary of Euclid.
http://wn.com/Timocharis -
Timocreon
Timocreon, of Ialysus in Rhodes, was a Greek lyric poet who flourished about 480 BC.
http://wn.com/Timocreon -
Xenophon
http://wn.com/Xenophon -
Zeno of Citium
http://wn.com/Zeno_of_Citium -
Zeno of Elea
http://wn.com/Zeno_of_Elea -
Zhang Heng
http://wn.com/Zhang_Heng
karaoke
People at the city say he's buried underground
They're turning over the stones but there's nothing
here to be found
Looking to the desert in a cool moonlight
Nobody watching, there is no one out tonight
Standing in the shadow there's a real mean guy
And I don't know if I'll make it and I don't know if
I'm gonna die tonight
Take a caravan to the limit of the city
Smoke the hookah pipes where the people have no pity
Ptolemy
The dogs will howl in the market square
You'll bargain for your life but you leave their
treasures there
Don't you go astray on the wrong side of the city
Fighting for your life where the people have no pity
Ptolemy
I wish I'd never listened
To that old high priest
He told me of the riches
They buried beneath
Down in the crypt where the men fear to tread
She danced the seven veils and the boy was nearly dead
Don't you go astray on the wrong side of the city
Fighting for your life where the people have no pity
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Carl Sagan on Epicycles, Ptolemy, and Kepler
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:33
- Published: 21 Feb 2008
- Updated: 15 Oct 2012
Carl Sagan on Epicycles, Ptolemy, and Kepler
http://wn.com/Carl_Sagan_on_Epicycles,_Ptolemy,_and_Kepler
Ptolemy - Aphex Twin
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:14
- Published: 08 Jan 2008
- Updated: 20 Oct 2012
Selected Ambient Works 85-92
http://wn.com/Ptolemy_Aphex_Twin
Airedale Terrier and baby - Ear scratches with Ptolemy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:15
- Published: 28 Apr 2009
- Updated: 19 Oct 2012
Ptolemy - 6 months old - realxing with Gertrude and Molly, his two Airedale Terriers. He loves her ears! This is as good as any teddy bear! I must add that my camera battery kept running out so I was running back and forward to the charger to get a few more precious seconds of them all together, which explains why it is a little stilted. I also missed an awful lot of cuteness, typical!!
http://wn.com/Airedale_Terrier_and_baby_Ear_scratches_with_Ptolemy
Ptolemy, Molly & Gertrude, MINI-EPIC PART A!!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 25:44
- Published: 17 Sep 2011
- Updated: 16 Oct 2012
A jumbled mixture of clips from February-August 2011, in no particular order! PART A of a true Mini-epic full of clips of cuteness, innocence and the world seen through the eyes of a child and our two Airedale terriers. Created for my family and friends who are all so far away, but also for everyone else who likes to follow the adventures of Ptolemy, Molly & Gert! Thank you all for watching! including: Singing lots of songs to Gertrude, saying goodbye to poor wombat, aslepp with Gerta, imaginative games, telling The Three Bears story, triking through the bush and lots more! Ptolemy, aged between 2 years 4 months - 2 years 10 months Molly aged 6 and Gert aged 4!
http://wn.com/Ptolemy,_Molly_Gertrude,_MINI-EPIC_PART_A!!
Ptolemaic Planetary model
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:13
- Published: 26 Jul 2008
- Updated: 15 Oct 2012
This model originated over 2000 years ago to account for the various 'wanderers' in the sky. These wanderers were of course the planets - our solar systems other local worlds. Hope u like the music too.
http://wn.com/Ptolemaic_Planetary_model
Ptolemy's Solar Hypotheses
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:00
- Published: 15 Sep 2009
- Updated: 15 Oct 2012
An illustration of Ptolemy's two hypotheses presented in Book III, Chapter 3 of the Almagest. Music: Múm - Green Grass Of Tunnel Video by Noah Litvin noahlitvin.com
http://wn.com/Ptolemy's_Solar_Hypotheses
Ptolemy's Solar System
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:59
- Published: 23 Oct 2007
- Updated: 15 Sep 2012
Simplified (and obviously not to scale) animation of the best explanation Europeans had of how the planets moved for over 1000 years. Equants are also not shown (or even considered). Created in povray.
http://wn.com/Ptolemy's_Solar_System
4 The Universe Aristotle and Ptolemy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:53
- Published: 01 Jan 2011
- Updated: 03 Sep 2012
Ptolemy and Homer (Simpson)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:50
- Published: 11 Jul 2008
- Updated: 07 Oct 2012
Reconstruction of a planet's bizarre orbit with Ptolemy's system of epicycles and deferents.
http://wn.com/Ptolemy_and_Homer_Simpson
Geocentric and Heliocentric Theories
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:53
- Published: 30 Jan 2010
- Updated: 11 Oct 2012
This video explains the geocentric and heliocentric theories. It was used for Greek Fest at our school.
http://wn.com/Geocentric_and_Heliocentric_Theories
Ptolemy's universe (aka Claudius Ptolemaeus' model)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:52
- Published: 19 Oct 2010
- Updated: 04 Oct 2012
clip from "The Universe -- Infinite Frontier" about astronomer/geographer/mathematician Ptolemy
http://wn.com/Ptolemy's_universe_aka_Claudius_Ptolemaeus'_model
Rome - Pompey's head.mp4
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:43
- Published: 30 Jun 2010
- Updated: 18 Oct 2012
Airedale: The All-New Adventures of Ptolemy Molly & Gertrude Part 3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:25
- Published: 26 Feb 2011
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
Part 3 of 3: A montage of cute clips showing the antics of our little boy (just turned 2) with his two best friends - Airedale Terriers Molly & Gertrude. October 2010 - February 2011
http://wn.com/Airedale_The_All-New_Adventures_of_Ptolemy_Molly_Gertrude_Part_3
Bartimaeus: Ptolemy's Gate (Animated) HD
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:22
- Published: 30 Oct 2010
- Updated: 20 Oct 2012
Read Jonathan Stroud's response to this video!! bartiforums.com As a tribute to Jonathan Stroud's amazing fantasy series, I present a slightly edited adaptation of the opening chapter of book 3 in the Bartimaeus Trilogy: "Ptolemy's Gate". If you want more, I suggest you read the books - they're excellent. The music track samples work predominantly by Rebecca Kneubuhl and Gabriel Mann, as well as musical cues from the works of John Williams, Graeme Revell, Mark Eteson and Zirenz. I hope they don't mind. Don't forget to rate, comment and subscribe! whitepandamedia.com http twitter.com
http://wn.com/Bartimaeus_Ptolemy's_Gate_Animated_HD
TEDxManhattanBeach - Barry Ptolemy - Transcendent Man
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:40
- Published: 08 Nov 2011
- Updated: 15 Sep 2012
Talk title: Transcendent Man: a documentary about inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil To understand the future of education - indeed the future of anything - we must understand the role that technology will play in our future. Barry's film Transcendent Man explores the ideas of Ray Kurzweil, who offers us the law of "accelerating returns." Throughout history, each new technology has been built upon previous ones, and each new wave of ideas has been accepted more rapidly than the last. From the Gutenberg printing press to the telephone to the massive early computers, to the PC and on to the iPhone, we're headed for a world of artificial intelligence, in which computers will one day be small enough to fit inside a red blood cell. We must embrace change, or be swept away by it. As publishing, music, health and manufacturing industries have radically changed, so will education. We can pair every student with a computer tablet, an object we ought to call a "gateway to all human knowledge." At age twelve, Barry Ptolemy worked and studied closely alongside director Steven Spielberg on the set of ET, The Extra Terrestrial and became a filmmaker himself. After attending USC film school, Barry's interest in the sciences led him to read Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near, upon which he based his first feature film, Transcendent Man. He also directed the commercial "We Are The World 25 For Haiti" featuring Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones -- the commercial aired during the Vancouver <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/TEDxManhattanBeach_Barry_Ptolemy_Transcendent_Man
The Ocean - Heliocentric - 04 Ptolemy Was Wrong
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:32
- Published: 08 Apr 2010
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
The Ocean song "Ptolemy Was Wrong" from the Heliocentric album.
http://wn.com/The_Ocean_Heliocentric_04_Ptolemy_Was_Wrong
The Ocean "Ptolemy Was Wrong"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:03
- Published: 11 Apr 2010
- Updated: 07 Sep 2012
Order at: www.indiemerch.com Robin Staps discusses the song "Ptolemy Was Wrong" from their "Heliocentric" album.
http://wn.com/The_Ocean_Ptolemy_Was_Wrong
Aphex Twin - Ptolemy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:14
- Published: 08 Apr 2009
- Updated: 20 Oct 2012
Title: Ptolemy Artist: Aphex Twin Album: Selected Ambient Works 85-92 Released: February 1992
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Ptolemy
How to Pronounce Ptolemy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:08
- Published: 15 Jul 2012
- Updated: 12 Sep 2012
This video shows you how to pronounce Ptolemy. Learn the correct American English pronunciation of the Greek-Roman citizen of Egypt. In this lesson, you will learn three English phrases: - I read Ptolemy under the southern stars. - A: I hear they're transferring Ptolemy to the Malibu office. - B: Ptolemy requested that transfer himself, Brian.
http://wn.com/How_to_Pronounce_Ptolemy
interview - Ray Kurzweil and Barry Ptolemy - Transcendent Man Australia Premiere
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 29:07
- Published: 05 Aug 2011
- Updated: 27 Aug 2012
Ray Kurzweil and Barry Ptolemy - Transcendent Man Australia Premiere (Aug 19th 2011 at Cinema Nova), the second Singularity Summit Australia (Aug 20-21st 2011), accelerating returns, and other stuff. Interviewed by Adam A. Ford
http://wn.com/interview_Ray_Kurzweil_and_Barry_Ptolemy_Transcendent_Man_Australia_Premiere
Digital Frontiers - Barry Ptolemy on "Transcendent Man"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:34
- Published: 17 Mar 2011
- Updated: 09 Sep 2012
Inventor, author and futurist Ray Kurzweil has some controversial predictions about the future. Among them: by 2029, he says, computers will be so advanced that their thinking will be indistinguishable from that of humans. This moment, which Kurzweil calls "the Singularity", will change every aspect of our lives, and likely lead to humans and machines fusing together. Kurzweil's ideas are explored in the new documentary "Transcendent Man." Producer and director Barry Ptolemy sat down with VOA to explain just what Kurzwei's predictions mean for humanity.
http://wn.com/Digital_Frontiers_Barry_Ptolemy_on_Transcendent_Man
Ptolemy and Gertrude
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:45
- Published: 27 Nov 2009
- Updated: 21 Sep 2012
Ptolemy, now 13 months old - he still has a great bond with his Airedale Gertrude.
http://wn.com/Ptolemy_and_Gertrude
Interview with Robert Barry Ptolemy
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:37
- Published: 03 Aug 2011
- Updated: 27 Aug 2012
Interview with Robert Barry Ptolemy director of Transcendent Man
http://wn.com/Interview_with_Robert_Barry_Ptolemy
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Aphex Twin Live Warehouse Project Manchester
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:56
- Published: 24 Apr 2008
- Updated: 13 Oct 2012
Filmed for Chair TV by Richard Ramchurn with one camera. Algorythmic editing. 7th December 2007.
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_Warehouse_Project_Manchester
Aphex Twin @ Lowlands 21-08-2011
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 13:28
- Published: 22 Aug 2011
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
video playlist: 0:17 Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (Aggro Mix) 2:08 Underground Resistance - Method of Force 3:30 Aphex Twin - Fingerbib 3:53 Aphex Twin - On 4:59 AFX - W32.Aphex@mm 5:29 Spectral Emotions - Kaleidosphere 6:42 Current Value - 60 000 thoughts 8:10 Hellfish -- Gettin' Paid For Doing Shit 10:32 Hellfish - Rude Attitude 10:50 Hellfish - Ultraviolence 11:35 Hellfish - The Anti-Citizen (not complete yet) Live visuals by Weirdcore www.weirdcore.tv
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_@_Lowlands_21-08-2011
Aphex Twin - Live at the Future Music Festival 2012 - Sydney 10 March 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 30:03
- Published: 10 Mar 2012
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
An amazing performance.
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_at_the_Future_Music_Festival_2012_Sydney_10_March_2012
Aphex Twin Live @ Summersonic 10th Anniversary 2009-08-07 Part 1/6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:00
- Published: 09 Aug 2009
- Updated: 17 Sep 2012
Due to popular demand, I've ripped the audio of the video seperately - download available at: hotfile.com Also, if anyone can identify the playlist, please let me know!
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_@_Summersonic_10th_Anniversary_2009-08-07_Part_1_6
Aphex Twin Complete Live Set - Future Music Festival, Perth, 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 70:02
- Published: 21 Mar 2012
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
This is Aphex Twin's entire 70 minute DJ set, recorded at Future Music Festival, 4th March 2012. Aphex himself was hidden behind three large LED screens for the entire performance. He did pop his head over the screens and gave a quick wave after the show, but I'd stopped recording by then. Cameras filmed the audience during the show (you can see the cameramen walking back and forth), and the visuals were fed back and processed before being displayed on the screens. The visuals, lighting and lasers were almost overwhelming, but suited the music perfectly. There is a slight jump in the video at the 60 minute mark as my camera has a maximum recording time of an hour. There are also a few pops in the audio likely due to a failing mic on the camera (I don't think it likes sweat and high decibels). I would've liked to record at a higher res, but wouldn't have been able to capture the whole set otherwise. Enjoy! Some of the tracks in the mix are listed below. Please post any others you may recognise! 14:00 - Autechre - VLetrmx21 26:00 - AFX - PWSteal.Ldpinch.D 32:00 - DHS - House of God 41:10 - Aphex Twin - Vordhosbn 46:00 - AFX - Where's Your Girlfriend 54:15 - Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy (Remix?) 108:20 - AFX - Ktpa1 (It was pretty much noise at this point, so it's hard to say)
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Complete_Live_Set_Future_Music_Festival,_Perth,_2012
Aphex Twin - Live in Melbourne 1997 (Complete Set)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 29:57
- Published: 05 Sep 2012
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
Live at the Big Day Out, Melbourne, Australia, 25.01.97.
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_in_Melbourne_1997_Complete_Set
Aphex Twin live in Paris 1993
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:55
- Published: 01 Nov 2008
- Updated: 07 Oct 2012
Aphex Twin live in Paris 1993
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_live_in_Paris_1993
Aphex Twin Live @ Summersonic 10th Anniversary 2009-08-07 Part 2/6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:56
- Published: 09 Aug 2009
- Updated: 16 Sep 2012
Due to popular demand, I've ripped the audio of the video seperately - download available at: hotfile.com Also, if anyone can identify the playlist, please let me know!
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_@_Summersonic_10th_Anniversary_2009-08-07_Part_2_6
Aphex Twin live in Rome 2002
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:42
- Published: 17 Jan 2007
- Updated: 15 Oct 2012
Rephlex disco assoult 2002
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_live_in_Rome_2002
Aphex Twin live in Rome 2002 - part 2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:34
- Published: 17 Jan 2007
- Updated: 25 Jul 2012
Rephlex disco assoult 2002
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_live_in_Rome_2002_part_2
Aphex Twin - Live in Sydney 02/03/12
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 21:51
- Published: 03 Mar 2012
- Updated: 24 Sep 2012
Last 20 minutes of Aphex Twin's show at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, 02/03/12
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_in_Sydney_02_03_12
Die Antwoord & Aphex Twin live @ LED Festival
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:28
- Published: 28 Aug 2010
- Updated: 16 Oct 2012
clockworkshorts.com tune played is apparently : soundcloud.com Enjoy!
http://wn.com/Die_Antwoord_Aphex_Twin_live_@_LED_Festival
Aphex Twin - Flim *Live Duet* Guitar+Drums
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:00
- Published: 10 Sep 2010
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
Here's my rendition of the fantastic Aphex Twin tune "Flim" off the 'Come to Daddy' album. I was accompanied on guitar and based my playing on about 90% of the original tune. It's not a note for note cover, but my part uses a lot of the original playing. This video was taken from my 2009 TAFE college recital. In the video i'm using a converted 16" Pearl Export tom as a kick a 10x5" ddrum Diablo snare. (Probably the ugliest snare -ever-) 20" Dream Bliss prototype ride 14" Trash Hats (Kingo crash over Pearl Wild crash. Trashy!) Brodie Wedding - Guitar Eli Green - Drums This video is for educational purposes only, 'Flim' is the copyrighted wok of it's owners. I do not own this tune, this is just my arrangement.
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Flim_*Live_Duet*_Guitar+Drums
Aphex Twin - Torino Festival Live 2005
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:41
- Published: 25 Feb 2007
- Updated: 02 Oct 2012
by zmin
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Torino_Festival_Live_2005
Aphex Twin Live @ Warehouse Project Manchester 5
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:02
- Published: 20 Dec 2007
- Updated: 18 May 2012
Aphex Twin @ Manchester Warehouse project
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_@_Warehouse_Project_Manchester_5
Aphex Twin live in Barcelona "Windowlicker"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:09
- Published: 12 Dec 2010
- Updated: 13 Oct 2012
performing at Sala Razzmatazz on December 11, 2010, with opening acting DJ Rephlex Records, DMX Krew, and Luke Vibert
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_live_in_Barcelona_Windowlicker
#33 Bouncing Ball :: Ableton Live :: Aphex Twin / Autechre
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:17
- Published: 14 Dec 2010
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
ABLETONDAILY.COM Ableton Live Tutorial :: How to make the bouncing ball sound as herd on older Aphex Twin. Then later an Autechre sound.
http://wn.com/_33_Bouncing_Ball_Ableton_Live_Aphex_Twin_Autechre
Aphex Twin Live - Esplanade Singapore - 19 March 2011 - 1/2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 14:11
- Published: 19 Mar 2011
- Updated: 12 Oct 2011
Aphex Twin Live at Mosaic Music Festival - Singapore
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Live_Esplanade_Singapore_19_March_2011_1_2
Aphex Twin AFX Live RDJ Backstage Coachella 2008-04-25
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:42
- Published: 07 May 2008
- Updated: 12 Oct 2012
Aphex Twin AFX Live RDJ Backstage Coachella 2008-04-25 tuss richard d james april 25th live
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_AFX_Live_RDJ_Backstage_Coachella_2008-04-25
APHEX TWIN - LIVE 1 @ COACHELLA 08
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:58
- Published: 30 Apr 2008
- Updated: 05 Aug 2012
www.glenjamn.com presents APHEX TWIN - LIVE @ COACHELLA. Finally showed up!
http://wn.com/APHEX_TWIN_LIVE_1_@_COACHELLA_08
Aphex Twin & Chris Cunningham Live Set
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:16
- Published: 11 Dec 2006
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
from zupamen enjoy it
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Chris_Cunningham_Live_Set
Aphex Twin Paris festival Pitchfork 2011
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 23:57
- Published: 26 Feb 2012
- Updated: 17 Oct 2012
Aphex Twin Paris festival Pitchfork 2011, recorded 2011 October 28th in La Grande Halle de La Villette.
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Paris_festival_Pitchfork_2011
Aphex Twin - Future Music Festival Melbourne 2012 Live Full Set
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 71:00
- Published: 13 Mar 2012
- Updated: 16 Oct 2012
Aphex Twin - Future Music Festival - Melbourne Australia 11/03/2012
http://wn.com/Aphex_Twin_Future_Music_Festival_Melbourne_2012_Live_Full_Set
4:56
Aphex Twin Live Warehouse Project Manchester
Filmed for Chair TV by Richard Ramchurn with one camera. Algorythmic editing. 7th December...
published: 24 Apr 2008
Author: albinomosquitofilms
Aphex Twin Live Warehouse Project Manchester
Filmed for Chair TV by Richard Ramchurn with one camera. Algorythmic editing. 7th December 2007.
13:28
Aphex Twin @ Lowlands 21-08-2011
video playlist: 0:17 Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (Aggro Mix) 2:08 Underground R...
published: 22 Aug 2011
Author: owencrap
Aphex Twin @ Lowlands 21-08-2011
video playlist: 0:17 Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (Aggro Mix) 2:08 Underground Resistance - Method of Force 3:30 Aphex Twin - Fingerbib 3:53 Aphex Twin - On 4:59 AFX - W32.Aphex@mm 5:29 Spectral Emotions - Kaleidosphere 6:42 Current Value - 60 000 thoughts 8:10 Hellfish -- Gettin' Paid For Doing Shit 10:32 Hellfish - Rude Attitude 10:50 Hellfish - Ultraviolence 11:35 Hellfish - The Anti-Citizen (not complete yet) Live visuals by Weirdcore www.weirdcore.tv
30:03
Aphex Twin - Live at the Future Music Festival 2012 - Sydney 10 March 2012
An amazing performance....
published: 10 Mar 2012
Author: Mark Pakula
Aphex Twin - Live at the Future Music Festival 2012 - Sydney 10 March 2012
An amazing performance.
10:00
Aphex Twin Live @ Summersonic 10th Anniversary 2009-08-07 Part 1/6
Due to popular demand, I've ripped the audio of the video seperately - download availa...
published: 09 Aug 2009
Author: shadow2XS
Aphex Twin Live @ Summersonic 10th Anniversary 2009-08-07 Part 1/6
Due to popular demand, I've ripped the audio of the video seperately - download available at: hotfile.com Also, if anyone can identify the playlist, please let me know!
70:02
Aphex Twin Complete Live Set - Future Music Festival, Perth, 2012
This is Aphex Twin's entire 70 minute DJ set, recorded at Future Music Festival, 4th M...
published: 21 Mar 2012
Author: fraganator
Aphex Twin Complete Live Set - Future Music Festival, Perth, 2012
This is Aphex Twin's entire 70 minute DJ set, recorded at Future Music Festival, 4th March 2012. Aphex himself was hidden behind three large LED screens for the entire performance. He did pop his head over the screens and gave a quick wave after the show, but I'd stopped recording by then. Cameras filmed the audience during the show (you can see the cameramen walking back and forth), and the visuals were fed back and processed before being displayed on the screens. The visuals, lighting and lasers were almost overwhelming, but suited the music perfectly. There is a slight jump in the video at the 60 minute mark as my camera has a maximum recording time of an hour. There are also a few pops in the audio likely due to a failing mic on the camera (I don't think it likes sweat and high decibels). I would've liked to record at a higher res, but wouldn't have been able to capture the whole set otherwise. Enjoy! Some of the tracks in the mix are listed below. Please post any others you may recognise! 14:00 - Autechre - VLetrmx21 26:00 - AFX - PWSteal.Ldpinch.D 32:00 - DHS - House of God 41:10 - Aphex Twin - Vordhosbn 46:00 - AFX - Where's Your Girlfriend 54:15 - Aphex Twin - Come To Daddy (Remix?) 108:20 - AFX - Ktpa1 (It was pretty much noise at this point, so it's hard to say)
29:57
Aphex Twin - Live in Melbourne 1997 (Complete Set)
Live at the Big Day Out, Melbourne, Australia, 25.01.97....
published: 05 Sep 2012
Author: WIltshireByways
Aphex Twin - Live in Melbourne 1997 (Complete Set)
Live at the Big Day Out, Melbourne, Australia, 25.01.97.
9:55
Aphex Twin live in Paris 1993
Aphex Twin live in Paris 1993...
published: 01 Nov 2008
Author: thebabatos
Aphex Twin live in Paris 1993
Aphex Twin live in Paris 1993
9:56
Aphex Twin Live @ Summersonic 10th Anniversary 2009-08-07 Part 2/6
Due to popular demand, I've ripped the audio of the video seperately - download availa...
published: 09 Aug 2009
Author: shadow2XS
Aphex Twin Live @ Summersonic 10th Anniversary 2009-08-07 Part 2/6
Due to popular demand, I've ripped the audio of the video seperately - download available at: hotfile.com Also, if anyone can identify the playlist, please let me know!
5:42
Aphex Twin live in Rome 2002
Rephlex disco assoult 2002...
published: 17 Jan 2007
Author: zupamen
Aphex Twin live in Rome 2002
Rephlex disco assoult 2002
3:34
Aphex Twin live in Rome 2002 - part 2
Rephlex disco assoult 2002...
published: 17 Jan 2007
Author: zupamen
Aphex Twin live in Rome 2002 - part 2
Rephlex disco assoult 2002
21:51
Aphex Twin - Live in Sydney 02/03/12
Last 20 minutes of Aphex Twin's show at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, 02/03/12...
published: 03 Mar 2012
Author: Bitsmasher
Aphex Twin - Live in Sydney 02/03/12
Last 20 minutes of Aphex Twin's show at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, 02/03/12
4:28
Die Antwoord & Aphex Twin live @ LED Festival
clockworkshorts.com tune played is apparently : soundcloud.com Enjoy!...
published: 28 Aug 2010
Author: orangewarrior
Die Antwoord & Aphex Twin live @ LED Festival
clockworkshorts.com tune played is apparently : soundcloud.com Enjoy!
3:00
Aphex Twin - Flim *Live Duet* Guitar+Drums
Here's my rendition of the fantastic Aphex Twin tune "Flim" off the 'Com...
published: 10 Sep 2010
Author: EliGreenDrums
Aphex Twin - Flim *Live Duet* Guitar+Drums
Here's my rendition of the fantastic Aphex Twin tune "Flim" off the 'Come to Daddy' album. I was accompanied on guitar and based my playing on about 90% of the original tune. It's not a note for note cover, but my part uses a lot of the original playing. This video was taken from my 2009 TAFE college recital. In the video i'm using a converted 16" Pearl Export tom as a kick a 10x5" ddrum Diablo snare. (Probably the ugliest snare -ever-) 20" Dream Bliss prototype ride 14" Trash Hats (Kingo crash over Pearl Wild crash. Trashy!) Brodie Wedding - Guitar Eli Green - Drums This video is for educational purposes only, 'Flim' is the copyrighted wok of it's owners. I do not own this tune, this is just my arrangement.
6:41
Aphex Twin - Torino Festival Live 2005
by zmin...
published: 25 Feb 2007
Author: flaviucomanescu
Aphex Twin - Torino Festival Live 2005
by zmin
Vimeo results:
6:01
Ptolemy Slocum: acting reel
it's an acting reel, for this guy Ptolemy Slocum! (6min)...
published: 19 Sep 2008
Author: ptolemy
Ptolemy Slocum: acting reel
it's an acting reel, for this guy Ptolemy Slocum! (6min)
4:10
The Skinny
cast: Shelly Slocum, Kevin Townley, Sarah Nowak, Jen Curran, Kevin Gottlieb, Rachel Mewb...
published: 07 May 2009
Author: ptolemy
The Skinny
cast: Shelly Slocum, Kevin Townley, Sarah Nowak, Jen Curran, Kevin Gottlieb, Rachel Mewbron, Jon Millheiser, Anthony Batista, Rob Stern, Steve Siddell, Ptolemy Slocum,
camera/lights/sound: Paul Rondeau (www.paulrondeau.com/)
second camera: Anthony Batista
lighting/production assistant: Steve Siddell
digital effects: Ed Mundy (www.edmundy.com/)
Youtube results:
4:02
Aphex Twin Live @ Warehouse Project Manchester 5
Aphex Twin @ Manchester Warehouse project...
published: 20 Dec 2007
Author: niqqadarshpolice
Aphex Twin Live @ Warehouse Project Manchester 5
Aphex Twin @ Manchester Warehouse project
6:09
Aphex Twin live in Barcelona "Windowlicker"
performing at Sala Razzmatazz on December 11, 2010, with opening acting DJ Rephlex Records...
published: 12 Dec 2010
Author: timstutts
Aphex Twin live in Barcelona "Windowlicker"
performing at Sala Razzmatazz on December 11, 2010, with opening acting DJ Rephlex Records, DMX Krew, and Luke Vibert
8:17
#33 Bouncing Ball :: Ableton Live :: Aphex Twin / Autechre
ABLETONDAILY.COM Ableton Live Tutorial :: How to make the bouncing ball sound as herd on o...
published: 14 Dec 2010
Author: abletondaily
#33 Bouncing Ball :: Ableton Live :: Aphex Twin / Autechre
ABLETONDAILY.COM Ableton Live Tutorial :: How to make the bouncing ball sound as herd on older Aphex Twin. Then later an Autechre sound.
14:11
Aphex Twin Live - Esplanade Singapore - 19 March 2011 - 1/2
Aphex Twin Live at Mosaic Music Festival - Singapore...
published: 19 Mar 2011
Author: 5t3f4n017
Aphex Twin Live - Esplanade Singapore - 19 March 2011 - 1/2
Aphex Twin Live at Mosaic Music Festival - Singapore
![Cathedral of Palencia´s apse. The fortified Celtiberian settlement is mentioned as Pallantia (Παλλαντία) by Strabo and Ptolemy,[2] a version possibly of the Celtic root pala (](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206im_/http://cdn7.wn.com/pd/23/94/6ab262a045dec417911e08d944b2_small.jpg "Cathedral of Palencia´s apse. The fortified Celtiberian settlement is mentioned as Pallantia (Παλλαντία) by Strabo and Ptolemy,[2] a version possibly of the Celtic root pala (")
Creative Commons / Fmanzanal
Creative Commons / Balaji191091
Creative Commons / Mincov
Creative Commons![Tribes of Ireland according to Ptolemy's Geographia.[32]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206im_/http://cdn7.wn.com/pd/cc/40/3e75f40560cdfb966435c541d1e0_small.jpg "Tribes of Ireland according to Ptolemy's Geographia.[32]")
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Public Domain / Jan Arkesteijn
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons
AP / Amr Nabil
Creative Commons / China Crisis![Ślęża [ˈɕlɛ̃ʐa] (German: Zobten or Zobtenberg, also Silingi) is a mountain in the Sudetes foothills (Pogórze Sudeckie) in Lower Silesia, southern Poland. This natural reserve built mostly of granite is 718 m high and covered with forests. The area was described by Ptolemy as Asciburgius in Magna Germania. The top of the mountain has a PTTK tourist hostel and a TV and radio mast. The mountain and its surrounding region form the protected area called Ślęża Landscape Park.](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206im_/http://cdn1.wn.com/pd/37/b4/fc5bc30bc0b32d93789ccaf1bee8_small.jpg "Ślęża [ˈɕlɛ̃ʐa] (German: Zobten or Zobtenberg, also Silingi) is a mountain in the Sudetes foothills (Pogórze Sudeckie) in Lower Silesia, southern Poland. This natural reserve built mostly of granite is 718 m high and covered with forests. The area was described by Ptolemy as Asciburgius in Magna Germania. The top of the mountain has a PTTK tourist hostel and a TV and radio mast. The mountain and its surrounding region form the protected area called Ślęża Landscape Park.")
Creative Commons / Julo
Creative Commons / Néfermaât![The Cup of the Ptolemies (Coupe des Ptolémées) is an onyx or chalcedony cameo two-handled cup (kantharos), now conserved in the Cabinet des Médailles at the Bibliothèque National, Paris.[1] Until September 1791 it formed part of the treasury of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. It was stolen in 1804, and recovered without its Carolingian gem-studded gold mountings.[2] It is 8.4 cm high with a diameter of 12.5 cm.](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206im_/http://cdn7.wn.com/pd/88/79/8b981b506ee117f3b8e9023d98c0_small.jpg "The Cup of the Ptolemies (Coupe des Ptolémées) is an onyx or chalcedony cameo two-handled cup (kantharos), now conserved in the Cabinet des Médailles at the Bibliothèque National, Paris.[1] Until September 1791 it formed part of the treasury of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. It was stolen in 1804, and recovered without its Carolingian gem-studded gold mountings.[2] It is 8.4 cm high with a diameter of 12.5 cm.")
Creative Commons / Clio20
GFDL / Rex
![Cathedral of Palencia´s apse. The fortified Celtiberian settlement is mentioned as Pallantia (Παλλαντία) by Strabo and Ptolemy,[2] a version possibly of the Celtic root pala (](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206/http://cdn1.wn.com/pd/23/94/6ab262a045dec417911e08d944b2_medium.jpg "Cathedral of Palencia´s apse. The fortified Celtiberian settlement is mentioned as Pallantia (Παλλαντία) by Strabo and Ptolemy,[2] a version possibly of the Celtic root pala (")
![Tribes of Ireland according to Ptolemy's Geographia.[32]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206/http://cdn1.wn.com/pd/cc/40/3e75f40560cdfb966435c541d1e0_medium.jpg "Tribes of Ireland according to Ptolemy's Geographia.[32]")
![Ślęża [ˈɕlɛ̃ʐa] (German: Zobten or Zobtenberg, also Silingi) is a mountain in the Sudetes foothills (Pogórze Sudeckie) in Lower Silesia, southern Poland. This natural reserve built mostly of granite is 718 m high and covered with forests. The area was described by Ptolemy as Asciburgius in Magna Germania. The top of the mountain has a PTTK tourist hostel and a TV and radio mast. The mountain and its surrounding region form the protected area called Ślęża Landscape Park.](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206/http://cdn5.wn.com/pd/37/b4/fc5bc30bc0b32d93789ccaf1bee8_medium.jpg "Ślęża [ˈɕlɛ̃ʐa] (German: Zobten or Zobtenberg, also Silingi) is a mountain in the Sudetes foothills (Pogórze Sudeckie) in Lower Silesia, southern Poland. This natural reserve built mostly of granite is 718 m high and covered with forests. The area was described by Ptolemy as Asciburgius in Magna Germania. The top of the mountain has a PTTK tourist hostel and a TV and radio mast. The mountain and its surrounding region form the protected area called Ślęża Landscape Park.")
![The Cup of the Ptolemies (Coupe des Ptolémées) is an onyx or chalcedony cameo two-handled cup (kantharos), now conserved in the Cabinet des Médailles at the Bibliothèque National, Paris.[1] Until September 1791 it formed part of the treasury of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. It was stolen in 1804, and recovered without its Carolingian gem-studded gold mountings.[2] It is 8.4 cm high with a diameter of 12.5 cm.](http://web.archive.org./web/20121021231206/http://cdn1.wn.com/pd/88/79/8b981b506ee117f3b8e9023d98c0_medium.jpg "The Cup of the Ptolemies (Coupe des Ptolémées) is an onyx or chalcedony cameo two-handled cup (kantharos), now conserved in the Cabinet des Médailles at the Bibliothèque National, Paris.[1] Until September 1791 it formed part of the treasury of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. It was stolen in 1804, and recovered without its Carolingian gem-studded gold mountings.[2] It is 8.4 cm high with a diameter of 12.5 cm.")
Photo: AP / Carolyn Kaster
19 Oct 2012
Iranian and U.S. negotiators have reached an agreement that calls for Iran to halt part of its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of many of the U.S. sanctions against the Islamic regime,...
Photo: AP / Geert vanden Wijngaert
21 Oct 2012
Related topics Royal WeddingsLuxembourg Royal WeddingCountess Stephanie de Lannoy Advertisement Prince Guillaume of Luxembourg and Countess Stephanie de Lannoy of Belgium were married earlier today in...
Photo: AP / Ahmad Omar
21 Oct 2012
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's political opposition has called for a mass turnout at Sunday's funeral for slain intelligence officer Wissam al-Hassan, turning the ceremony into a political rally against...
Photo: AP / Dan Steinberg
19 Oct 2012
Should Justin Timberlake have performed at his wedding?...
Photo: WN / RTayco
19 Oct 2012
BORACAY, Philippines, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Boracay Island in the central Philippine province of Aklan will likely achieve its target of one million tourist arrivals this month, an offical said Friday....
The New York Times
21 Oct 2012
The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless. Tags: Adam Smith, analytic philosophy, economics, Elections 2012 Much has been made of Paul Ryan’s devotion to,...
The Independent
21 Oct 2012
The award for the most eccentric and wonderful book launch party of the year so far goes to Carlton Books' The Cosmic Tourist: The 100 Most Awe-Inspiring Destinations in the Universe (£25) by Chris...
The Guardian
19 Oct 2012
We chart how maps have transformed the way we look at the world with Simon Garfield and Jerry Brotton...
At ease with the seen and the unseen
18 Oct 2012
Gulf News
Mohammad Ibn Mohammad Ibn Al Hassan Al Tusi, or Nasir Al Deen Al Tusi, stood out among Persian scholars. While true philosophical activities almost ceased after Ibn Rushd, at the end of the 12th century, a renewal occurred in Persia through the intellectual efforts and political involvement of Al...(size: 28.9Kb)
Maple Star in good shape
18 Oct 2012
The Hindu
Maple Star, who is in good shape as evidenced by her track movements, may win the Ashwamedha Plate, the chief event of the races to be held here on Friday (Oct. 19). 1. DESERT CARNIVAL PLATE DIV.II (1,000m), Cl. V, rated 01 to 26, 1-30 p.m: 1. Prince (7) T.Nemane 59, 2. Heavenly Prize (4) Kavraj...(size: 3.8Kb)
The Florida Times Union
“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” — Mark Twain. Tomorrow is Oct. 14, but I plan to celebrate Sept. 5, Be Late for Something Day, ... if I get around to it. Whoever invented the unofficial holiday had a good idea. If you’re a columnist or anyone with deadlines,...(size: 10.5Kb)
The Golden Age of Islam
12 Oct 2012
Huffington Post
"In case of differences, provided scriptural language does not violate the principles of reason, that is, it does not commit a contradiction, science should give way." -- Ibn Rushd (Averroes) There was a Golden Age to Islam once -- a Muslim Renaissance so magnificent, famous, cosmopolitan and...(size: 9.7Kb)
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For others with "Ptolemy..." names, and history of those names, see Ptolemy (name).
| Ptolemy | |
|---|---|
 An early Baroque artist's rendition of Claudius Ptolemaeus |
|
| Born | c. AD 90 Egypt |
| Died | c. AD 168 (aged 77–78) Alexandria, Egypt |
| Occupation | mathematician, geographer, astronomer, astrologer |
Claudius Ptolemy (
/ˈtɒləmi/; Greek: Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος, Klaudios Ptolemaios; Latin: Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. AD 90 – c. AD 168), was a Greek-Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek.[1] He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology.[2][3] He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the Thebaid. This theory, proposed by Theodore Meliteniotes, could be correct, but it is late (ca. 1360) and unsupported.[4] There is no reason to suppose that he ever lived anywhere else than Alexandria,[4] where he died around AD 168.[5]
Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, at least three of which were of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest (in Greek, Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, "The Great Treatise", originally Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, "Mathematical Treatise"). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise known sometimes in Greek as the Apotelesmatika (Ἀποτελεσματικά), more commonly in Greek as the Tetrabiblos (Τετράβιβλος "Four books"), and in Latin as the Quadripartitum (or four books) in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day.
Contents |
Background[link]
The name Claudius is a Roman nomen; the fact that Ptolemy bore it indicates he lived under the Roman rule of Egypt with the privileges and political rights of Roman citizenship. It would have suited custom if the first of Ptolemy's family to become a citizen (whether he or an ancestor) took the nomen from a Roman called Claudius who was responsible for granting citizenship. If, as was common, this was the emperor, citizenship would have been granted between AD 41 and 68 (when Claudius, and then Nero, were emperors). The astronomer would also have had a praenomen, which remains unknown. It may have been Tiberius, as that praenomen was very common among those whose families had been granted citizenship by these emperors.[citation needed]
Ptolemaeus (Πτολεμαῖος – Ptolemaios) is a Greek name. It occurs once in Greek mythology, and is of Homeric form.[6] It was common among the Macedonian upper class at the time of Alexander the Great, and there were several of this name among Alexander's army, one of whom made himself King of Egypt in 323 BC: Ptolemy I Soter. All the kings after him, until Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC, were also Ptolemies.
Perhaps for no other reason than the association of name, the 9th century Persian astronomer Abu Ma'shar assumed Ptolemy to be member of Egypt's royal lineage, stating that the ten kings of Egypt who followed Alexander were wise "and included Ptolemy the Wise, who composed the book of the Almagest". Abu Ma'shar recorded a belief that a different member of this royal line "composed the book on astrology and attributed it to Ptolemy". We can evidence historical confusion on this point from Abu Ma'shar's subsequent remark “It is sometimes said that the very learned man who wrote the book of astrology also wrote the book of the Almagest. The correct answer is not known”.[7] There is little evidence on the subject of Ptolemy's ancestry, apart from what can be drawn from the details of his name (see above); however modern scholars refer to Abu Ma’shar’s account as erroneous,[8] and it is no longer doubted that the astronomer who wrote the Almagest also wrote the Tetrabiblos as its astrological conterpart.[9]
Beyond his being considered a member of Alexandria's Greek society, few details of Ptolemy's life are known for certain. He wrote in Ancient Greek and is known to have utilized Babylonian astronomical data.[10][11] He was a Roman citizen, but most scholars conclude that Ptolemy was ethnically Greek,[12][13][14] although some suggest he was a Hellenized Egyptian.[13][15][16] He was often known in later Arabic sources as "the Upper Egyptian",[17] suggesting he may have had origins in southern Egypt.[18] Later Arabic astronomers, geographers and physicists referred to him by his name in Arabic: بطليموس Batlaymus.[19]
Astronomy[link]
Further information: Almagest
The Almagest is the only surviving comprehensive ancient treatise on astronomy. Babylonian astronomers had developed arithmetical techniques for calculating astronomical phenomena; Greek astronomers such as Hipparchus had produced geometric models for calculating celestial motions. Ptolemy, however, claimed to have derived his geometrical models from selected astronomical observations by his predecessors spanning more than 800 years, though astronomers have for centuries suspected that his models' parameters were adopted independently of observations.[20] Ptolemy presented his astronomical models in convenient tables, which could be used to compute the future or past position of the planets.[21] The Almagest also contains a star catalogue, which is an appropriated version of a catalogue created by Hipparchus. Its list of forty-eight constellations is ancestral to the modern system of constellations, but unlike the modern system they did not cover the whole sky (only the sky Hipparchus could see). Through the Middle Ages it was spoken of as the authoritative text on astronomy, with its author becoming an almost mythical figure, called Ptolemy, King of Alexandria.[22] The Almagest was preserved, like most of Classical Greek science, in Arabic manuscripts (hence its familiar name). Because of its reputation, it was widely sought and was translated twice into Latin in the 12th century, once in Sicily and again in Spain.[23] Ptolemy's model, like those of his predecessors, was geocentric and was almost universally accepted until the appearance of simpler heliocentric models during the scientific revolution.
His Planetary Hypotheses went beyond the mathematical model of the Almagest to present a physical realization of the universe as a set of nested spheres,[24] in which he used the epicycles of his planetary model to compute the dimensions of the universe. He estimated the Sun was at an average distance of 1210 Earth radii while the radius of the sphere of the fixed stars was 20,000 times the radius of the Earth.[25]
Ptolemy presented a useful tool for astronomical calculations in his Handy Tables, which tabulated all the data needed to compute the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets, the rising and setting of the stars, and eclipses of the Sun and Moon. Ptolemy's Handy Tables provided the model for later astronomical tables or zījes. In the Phaseis (Risings of the Fixed Stars) Ptolemy gave a parapegma, a star calendar or almanac based on the hands and disappearances of stars over the course of the solar year.
Geography[link]
Main article: Geographia (Ptolemy)
Ptolemy's other main work is his Geographia. This also is a compilation of what was known about the world's geography in the Roman Empire during his time. He relied somewhat on the work of an earlier geographer, Marinos of Tyre, and on gazetteers of the Roman and ancient Persian Empire, but most of his sources beyond the perimeter of the Empire were unreliable.[citation needed]
The first part of the Geographia is a discussion of the data and of the methods he used. As with the model of the solar system in the Almagest, Ptolemy put all this information into a grand scheme. Following Marinos, he assigned coordinates to all the places and geographic features he knew, in a grid that spanned the globe. Latitude was measured from the equator, as it is today, but Ptolemy preferred in book 8 to express it as the length of the longest day rather than degrees of arc (the length of the midsummer day increases from 12h to 24h as one goes from the equator to the polar circle). In books 2 through 7, he used degrees and put the meridian of 0 longitude at the most western land he knew, the "Blessed Islands", probably the Cape Verde islands (not the Canary Islands, as long accepted) as suggested by the location of the six dots labelled the "FORTUNATA" islands near the left extreme of the blue sea of Ptolemy's map here reproduced.
Ptolemy also devised and provided instructions on how to create maps both of the whole inhabited world (oikoumenè) and of the Roman provinces. In the second part of the Geographia he provided the necessary topographic lists, and captions for the maps. His oikoumenè spanned 180 degrees of longitude from the Blessed Islands in the Atlantic Ocean to the middle of China, and about 80 degrees of latitude from Shetland to anti-Meroe (east coast of Africa); Ptolemy was well aware that he knew about only a quarter of the globe, and an erroneous extension of China southward suggests his sources did not reach all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
The maps in surviving manuscripts of Ptolemy's Geographia, however, date only from about 1300, after the text was rediscovered by Maximus Planudes. It seems likely that the topographical tables in books 2–7 are cumulative texts – texts which were altered and added to as new knowledge became available in the centuries after Ptolemy (Bagrow 1945). This means that information contained in different parts of the Geography is likely to be of different date.
Maps based on scientific principles had been made since the time of Eratosthenes (3rd century BC), but Ptolemy improved projections. It is known that a world map based on the Geographia was on display in Augustodunum, Gaul in late Roman times. In the 15th century Ptolemy's Geographia began to be printed with engraved maps; the earliest printed edition with engraved maps was produced in Bologna in 1477, followed quickly by a Roman edition in 1478 (Campbell, 1987). An edition printed at Ulm in 1482, including woodcut maps, was the first one printed north of the Alps. The maps look distorted as compared to modern maps, because Ptolemy's data was inaccurate. One reason is that Ptolemy estimated the size of the Earth as too small: while Eratosthenes found 700 stadia for a great circle degree on the globe, in the Geographia Ptolemy uses 500 stadia. It is highly probable that these were the same stadion since Ptolemy switched from the former scale to the latter between the Syntaxis and the Geographia, and severely readjusted longitude degrees accordingly. If they both used the Attic stadion of about 185 meters, then the older estimate is 1/6 too large, and Ptolemy's value is 1/6 too small, a difference explained as due to ancient scientists' use of simple methods of measuring the earth, which were corrupted either high or low by a factor of 5/6, due to air's bending of horizontal light rays by 1/6 of the Earth's curvature.[citation needed] See also Ancient Greek units of measurement and History of geodesy.
Because Ptolemy derived many of his key latitudes from crude longest day values, his latitudes are erroneous on average by roughly a degree (2 degrees for Byzantium, 4 degrees for Carthage), though capable ancient astronomers knew their latitudes to more like a minute. (Ptolemy's own latitude was in error by 14'.) He agreed (Geographia 1.4) that longitude was best determined by simultaneous observation of lunar eclipses, yet he was so out of touch with the scientists of his day that he knew of no such data more recent than 500 years before (Arbela eclipse). When switching from 700 stadia per degree to 500, he (or Marinos) expanded longitude differences between cities accordingly (a point first realized by P.Gosselin in 1790), resulting in serious over-stretching of the Earth's east-west scale in degrees, though not distance. Achieving highly precise longitude remained a problem in geography until the invention of the marine chronometer at the end of the 18th century. It must be added that his original topographic list cannot be reconstructed: the long tables with numbers were transmitted to posterity through copies containing many scribal errors, and people have always been adding or improving the topographic data: this is a testimony to the persistent popularity of this influential work in the history of cartography.
Astrology[link]
Main article: Tetrabiblos
Ptolemy has been referred to as “a pro-astrological authority of the highest magnitude”.[26] His astrological treatise, a work in four parts, is known by the Greek term Tetrabiblos, or the Latin equivalent Quadripartitum: ‘Four Books’. Ptolemy's own title is unknown, but may have been the term found in some Greek manuscripts: Apotelesmatika, roughly meaning 'Astrological Outcomes,' 'Effects' or ‘Prognostics’.[27][28]
As a source of reference the Tetrabiblos is said to have "enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more".[29] It was first translated from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli (Tiburtinus) in 1138, while he was in Spain.[30] The Tetrabiblos is an extensive and continually reprinted treatise on the ancient principles of horoscopic astrology. That it did not quite attain the unrivaled status of the Almagest was perhaps because it did not cover some popular areas of the subject, particularly electional astrology (interpreting astrological charts for a particular moment to determine the outcome of a course of action to be initiated at that time), and medical astrology, which were later adoptions.
The great popularity that the Tetrabiblos did possess might be attributed to its nature as an exposition of the art of astrology and as a compendium of astrological lore, rather than as a manual. It speaks in general terms, avoiding illustrations and details of practice. Ptolemy was concerned to defend astrology by defining its limits, compiling astronomical data that he believed was reliable and dismissing practices (such as considering the numerological significance of names) that he believed to be without sound basis.
Much of the content of the Tetrabiblos was collected from earlier sources; Ptolemy's achievement was to order his material in a systematic way, showing how the subject could, in his view, be rationalized. It is, indeed, presented as the second part of the study of astronomy of which the Almagest was the first, concerned with the influences of the celestial bodies in the sublunar sphere. Thus explanations of a sort are provided for the astrological effects of the planets, based upon their combined effects of heating, cooling, moistening, and drying.
Ptolemy's astrological outlook was quite practical: he thought that astrology was like medicine, that is conjectural, because of the many variable factors to be taken into account: the race, country, and upbringing of a person affects an individual's personality as much if not more than the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets at the precise moment of their birth, so Ptolemy saw astrology as something to be used in life but in no way relied on entirely.
A collection of one hundred aphorisms about astrology called the Centiloquium, ascribed to Ptolemy, was widely reproduced and commented on by Arabic, Latin and Hebrew scholars, and often bound together in medieval manuscripts after the Tetrabiblos as a kind of summation. It is now believed to be a much later pseudoepigraphical composition. The identity and date of the actual author of the work, referred to now as Pseudo-Ptolemy, remains the subject of conjecture.
Music[link]
Ptolemy also wrote an influential work, Harmonics, on music theory and the mathematics of music. After criticizing the approaches of his predecessors, Ptolemy argued for basing musical intervals on mathematical ratios (in contrast to the followers of Aristoxenus and in agreement with the followers of Pythagoras) backed up by empirical observation (in contrast to the overly theoretical approach of the Pythagoreans). Ptolemy wrote about how musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations and vice versa in Harmonics. This is called Pythagorean tuning because it was first discovered by Pythagoras. However, Pythagoras believed that the mathematics of music should be based on the specific ratio of 3:2 whereas Ptolemy merely believed that it should just generally involve tetrachords and octaves. He presented his own divisions of the tetrachord and the octave, which he derived with the help of a monochord. Ptolemy's astronomical interests also appeared in a discussion of the "music of the spheres". See: Ptolemy's intense diatonic scale.
Optics[link]
His Optics is a work that survives only in a poor Arabic translation and in about twenty manuscripts of a Latin version of the Arabic, which was translated by Eugene of Palermo (c. 1154). In it Ptolemy writes about properties of light, including reflection, refraction, and colour. The work is a significant part of the early history of optics.[31] and influenced the more famous 11th century Optics by Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham). The work is also important for the early history of perception. Ptolemy combined the mathematical, philosophical and physiological traditions. He held an extramission-intromission theory of vision: the rays (or flux) from the eye formed a cone, the vertex being within the eye, and the base defining the visual field. The rays were sensitive, and conveyed information back to the observer’s intellect about the distance and orientation of surfaces. Size and shape were determined by the visual angle subtended at the eye combined with perceived distance and orientation. This was one of the early statements of size-distance invariance as a cause of perceptual size and shape constancy, a view supported by the Stoics.[32] Ptolemy offered explanations of many phenomena concerning illumination and colour, size, shape, movement and binocular vision. He also divided illusions into those caused by physical or optical factors and those caused by judgemental factors. He offered an obscure explanation of the sun or moon illusion (the enlarged apparent size on the horizon) based on the difficulty of looking upwards.[33][34]
Named after Ptolemy[link]
There are several characters or items named after Ptolemy, including:
- The crater Ptolemaeus on the Moon;
- The crater Ptolemaeus[35] on Mars;
- the asteroid 4001 Ptolemaeus;
- a character in the fantasy series The Bartimaeus Trilogy: this fictional Ptolemy is a young magician (from Alexandria) whom Bartimaeus loved; he made the journey into "the Other Place" being hunted by his cousin, because he was a magician;
- the name of Celestial Being's carrier ship in the anime Mobile Suit Gundam 00.
- track number 10 on Selected Ambient Works 85–92 by Aphex Twin.
- the Ptolemy Stone used in the mathematics courses at both St. John's College campuses.
- English astronomer and TV presenter Sir Patrick Moore has a cat named Ptolemy.
See also[link]
- Pei Xiu
- Ptolemy's Canon – a dated list of kings used by ancient astronomers.
- Ptolemy Cluster – star cluster described by Ptolemaeus
- Ptolemy's theorem – mathematical theorem described by Ptolemaeus
- Ptolemy's table of chords
- Ptolemy's world map – map of the ancient world as described by Ptolemaeus.
- Zhang Heng
Footnotes[link]
- ^ See 'Background' section on his status as a Roman citizen
- ^ Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology By John William Mackail Page 246 ISBN 14069229432007
- ^ Mortal am I, the creature of a day..
- ^ a b "Ptolemy (or Claudius Ptolemaeus). "Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 11 Sep. 2011.
- ^ Jean Claude Pecker (2001), Understanding the Heavens: Thirty Centuries of Astronomical Ideas from Ancient Thinking to Modern Cosmology, p. 311, Springer, ISBN 3-540-63198-4.
- ^ Πτολεμαῖος, Georg Autenrieth, A Homeric Dictionary, on Perseus
- ^ Abu Ma’shar, De magnis coniunctionibus, ed.-transl. K. Yamamoto, Ch. Burnett, Leiden, 2000, 2 vols. (Arabic & Latin text); 4.1.4.
- ^ Jones (2010) ‘Ptolemy’s Doctrine of the Terms and Its Reception’ by Stephan Heilen, p. 68.
- ^ Robbins, Ptolemy Tetrabiblos ‘Introduction’; p. x.
- ^ Asger Aaboe, Episodes from the Early History of Astronomy, New York: Springer, 2001, pp. 62–65.
- ^ Alexander Jones, "The Adaptation of Babylonian Methods in Greek Numerical Astronomy," in The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, p. 99.
- ^ Enc. Britannica 2007, "Claudius Ptolemaeus" Britannica.com
- ^ a b Victor J. Katz (1998). A History of Mathematics: An Introduction, p. 184. Addison Wesley, ISBN 0-321-01618-1.
- ^ "Ptolemy." Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2006. Answers.com 20 Jul. 2008.
- ^ George Sarton (1936). "The Unity and Diversity of the Mediterranean World", Osiris 2, p. 406–463 [429].
- ^ John Horace Parry (1981). The Age of Reconnaissance, p. 10. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-04235-2.
- ^ J. F. Weidler (1741). Historia astronomiae, p. 177. Wittenberg: Gottlieb. (cf. Martin Bernal (1992). "Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science", Isis 83 (4), p. 596–607 [606].)
- ^ Martin Bernal (1992). "Animadversions on the Origins of Western Science", Isis 83 (4), p. 596–607 [602, 606].
- ^ edited by Shahid Rahman, Tony Street, Hassan Tahiri. (2008). "The Birth of Scientific Controversies, The Dynamics of the Arabic Tradition and Its Impact on the Development of Science: Ibn al-Haytham’s Challenge of Ptolemy’s Almagest". The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition. 11. Springer Netherlandsdoi=10.1007/978-1-4020-8405-8. pp. 183–225 [183]. DOI:10.1007/978-1-4020-8405-8. ISBN 978-1-4020-8404-1.
- ^ "Dennis Rawlins". The International Journal of Scientific History. http://www.dioi.org/cot.htm#mjpg. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
- ^ Bernard R. Goldstein, "Saving the Phenomena: The Background to Ptolemy's Planetary Theory", Journal for the History of Astronomy, 28 (1997): 1–12
- ^ S. C. McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr. 1998, pp. 20–21.
- ^ Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in the History of Mediaeval Science, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1967, reprint of the Cambridge, Mass., 1927 edition
- ^ Dennis Duke, Ptolemy's Cosmology
- ^ Bernard R. Goldstein, ed., The Arabic Version of Ptolemy's Planetary Hypotheses, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 57, 4 (1967), pp. 9–12.
- ^ Jones (2010) ‘The Use and Abuse of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe’ by H. Darrel Rutkin, p. 135.
- ^ Robbins, Ptolemy Tetrabiblos, 'Introduction' p. x.
- ^ Jones (2010) p. xii.
- ^ Robbins, Ptolemy Tetrabiblos, 'Introduction' p. xii.
- ^ FA Robbins, 1940; Thorndike 1923)
- ^ Smith, A. Mark (1996). Ptolemy's Theory of Visual Perception– An English translation of the Optics. The American Philosophical Society. ISBN 0-87169-862-5. http://books.google.com/?id=mhLVHR5QAQkC&pg=PP1&dq=ptolemy+theory+of+visual+perception. Retrieved 27 June 2009.
- ^ Ross, H.E. and Plug, C. (1998) The history of size constancy and size illusions. In Walsh, V. & Kulikowski, J. (Eds) Perceptual constancy: Why things look as they do. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 499-528.
- ^ Ross, H.E. and Ross, G.M. (1976) Did Ptolemy understand the moon illusion? Perception, 5: 377-395.
- ^ Sabra, A. I. (1987) Psychology versus mathematics: Ptolemy and Alhazen on the moon illusion. In Grant, E. & Murdoch, J.E. (Eds) Mathematics and its application to science and natural philosophy in the Middle Ages (pp.217-247). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Mars Labs. Google Maps.
References[link]
Texts and translations[link]
- Bagrow, L. (January 1, 1945). "The Origin of Ptolemy's Geographia". Geografiska Annaler (Geografiska Annaler, Vol. 27) 27: 318–387. DOI:10.2307/520071. ISSN 16513215. JSTOR 520071.
- Berggren, J. Lennart, and Alexander Jones. 2000. Ptolemy's Geography: An Annotated Translation of the Theoretical Chapters. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01042-0.
- Campbell, T. (1987). The Earliest Printed Maps. British Museum Press.
- Hübner, Wolfgang, ed. 1998. Claudius Ptolemaeus, Opera quae exstant omnia Vol III/Fasc 1: ΑΠΟΤΕΛΕΣΜΑΤΙΚΑ (= Tetrabiblos). De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-598-71746-8 (Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana). (The most recent edition of the Greek text of Ptolemy's astrological work, based on earlier editions by F. Boll and E. Boer.)
- Lejeune, A. (1989) L'Optique de Claude Ptolémée dans la version latine d'après l'arabe de l'émir Eugène de Sicile. [Latin text with French translation]. Collection de travaux de l'Académie International d'Histoire des Sciences, No. 31. Leiden: E.J.Brill.
- Neugebauer, Otto (1975). A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy. I-III. Berlin and New York: Sprnger Verlag.
- Nobbe, C. F. A., ed. 1843. Claudii Ptolemaei Geographia. 3 vols. Leipzig: Carolus Tauchnitus. (The most recent edition of the complete Greek text)
- Ptolemy. 1930. Die Harmonielehre des Klaudios Ptolemaios, edited by Ingemar Düring. Göteborgs högskolas årsskrift 36, 1930:1. Göteborg: Elanders boktr. aktiebolag. Reprint, New York: Garland Publishing, 1980.
- Ptolemy. 2000. Harmonics, translated and commentary by Jon Solomon. Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava, Supplementum, 0169-8958, 203. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. ISBN 90-04-11591-9
- Robbins, Frank E. (ed.) 1940. Ptolemy Tetrabiblos. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library). ISBN 0-674-99479-5.
- Smith, A.M. (1996) Ptolemy's theory of visual perception: An English translation of the Optics with introduction and commentary. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 86, Part 2. Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society.
- Stevenson, Edward Luther (trans. and ed.). 1932. Claudius Ptolemy: The Geography. New York: New York Public Library. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1991. (This is the only complete English translation of Ptolemy's most famous work. Unfortunately, it is marred by numerous mistakes and the placenames are given in Latinised forms, rather than in the original Greek).
- Stückelberger, Alfred, and Gerd Graßhoff (eds). 2006. Ptolemaios, Handbuch der Geographie, Griechisch-Deutsch. 2 vols. Basel: Schwabe Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7965-2148-5. (Massive 1018 pp. scholarly edition by a team of a dozen scholars that takes account of all known manuscripts, with facing Greek and German text, footnotes on manuscript variations, color maps, and a CD with the geographical data)
- Taub, Liba Chia (1993). Ptolemy's Universe: The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy's Astronomy. Chicago: Open Court Press. ISBN 0-8126-9229-2.
- Ptolemy's Almagest, Translated and annotated by G. J. Toomer. Princeton University Press, 1998
External links[link]
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ptolemy |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ptolemy |
- Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries High resolution images of works by Ptolemy in .jpg and .tiff format.
Primary sources[link]
- Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos at LacusCurtius (English translation of a portion of the material, with introductory material)
- Entire Tetrabiblos of J.M. Ashmand's 1822 translation.
- Ptolemy's Geography at LacusCurtius (English translation, incomplete)
- Extracts of Ptolemy on the country of the Seres (China) (English translation)
- Geographia (the Balkan Provinces, with old maps) at Sorin Olteanu's LTDM Project (soltdm.com)
- Almagest books 1–13 The complete text of Heiberg's edition (PDF) Greek.
- Almagest books 1–6 (Greek) with preface (Latin) @ archive.org
Secondary material[link]
- Arnett, Bill (2008). "Ptolemy, the Man". obs.nineplanets.org. http://obs.nineplanets.org/psc/theman.html. Retrieved 2008-11-24.
- Danzer, Gerald (1988). "Cartographic Images of the World on the Eve of the Discoveries". The Newberry Library. http://www.newberry.org/smith/slidesets/ss08.html. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
- Haselein, Frank (2007). "Κλαυδιου Πτολεμιου: Γεωγραφικῆς Ύφηγήσεως (Geographie)" (in German and some English). Frank Haselein. http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~fhasele/ptolemaeus/index.html. Retrieved 2008-11-24.
- Houlding, Deborah (2003). "The Life & Work of Ptolemy". Skyscript.co. http://www.skyscript.co.uk/ptolemy.html. Retrieved 2008-11-24.
- Jones, Alexander (ed.) 2010. Ptolemy in Perspective: Use and Criticism of his Work from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. New York: Series: Archimedes, Vol. 23., ISBN 978-90-481-2787-0
- Toomer, Gerald J. (1970). "Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemæus)". In Gillispie, Charles. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 11. New York: Scribner & American Council of Learned Societies. pp. 186–206. ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aversa/scholastic/Dictionary%20of%20Scientific%20Biography/Ptolemy%20(Toomer).pdf.
- Sprague, Ben (2001–2007). "Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy): Representation, Understanding, and Mathematical Labeling of the Spherical Earth". Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/76. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
Animated illustrations[link]
- Java simulation of the Ptolemaic System – at Paul Stoddard's Animated Virtual Planetarium, Northern Illinois University
- Animation of Ptolemy's Two Solar Hypotheses
- Epicycle and Deferent Demo – at Rosemary Kennett's website at the University of Syracuse
- Flash animation of Ptolemy's universe. (best in Internet Explorer)
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Πτολεμαῖος, Κλαύδιος |
| Alternative names | Ptolemaeus, Claudius; Ptolemy |
| Short description | geographer, astronomer and astrologer |
| Date of birth | circa 90 |
| Place of birth | probably Egypt |
| Date of death | circa 168 |
| Place of death | Alexandria, Egypt |
http://wn.com/Ptolemy
Related pages:
http://de.wn.com/Claudius Ptolemäus
http://es.wn.com/Claudio Ptolomeo
http://ru.wn.com/Клавдий Птолемей
http://cs.wn.com/Klaudios Ptolemaios
http://pt.wn.com/Ptolemeu
http://pl.wn.com/Klaudiusz Ptolemeusz
http://hi.wn.com/क्लाडियस टॉलमी
http://it.wn.com/Claudio Tolomeo
http://id.wn.com/Claudius Ptolemaeus
http://nl.wn.com/Claudius Ptolemaeus
http://fr.wn.com/Ptolémée
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Carl Sagan | |
|---|---|
 Sagan in 1980 |
|
| Born | (1934-11-09)November 9, 1934 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | December 20, 1996(1996-12-20) (aged 62) Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Residence | United States[1] |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, astrobiology, space science, planetary science |
| Institutions | Cornell University Harvard University Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory University of California, Berkeley |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago (B.A.), (B.Sc.), (M.Sc.), (PhD) |
| Known for | Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Cosmos: A Personal Voyage Cosmos Voyager Golden Record Pioneer plaque Contact Pale Blue Dot |
| Notable awards | NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal (1977) Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (1978) Oersted Medal (1990) National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal (1994) |
Carl Edward Sagan ( /ˈseɪɡɪn/; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers[2] and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote.[3] The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.
Contents |
Early life[link]
Carl Sagan was born in Brooklyn, New York,[4] to a Ukrainian Jewish family. His father, Sam Sagan, was an immigrant garment worker from Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine;[5] his mother, Rachel Molly Gruber, a housewife. Carl was named in honor of Rachel's biological mother, Chaiya Clara, in Sagan's words, "the mother she never knew." Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1951.[6]
He had a sister, Carol, and the family lived in a modest apartment near the Atlantic Ocean, in Bensonhurst, a Brooklyn neighborhood. According to Sagan, they were Reform Jews, the most liberal of the three main Jewish groups. Both Sagan and his sister agree that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother "definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple ... and served only Kosher meat."[6]:12 During the height of the Depression, his father had to accept a job as a theater usher.
According to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagan's "inner war" was a result of his close relations with both his parents, who were in many ways "opposites." Sagan traced his later analytical urges to his mother, a woman who had known "extreme poverty as a child," and had grown up almost homeless in New York City during World War I and the 1920s.[6]:2 She had her own intellectual ambitions as a young woman, but they were blocked by social restrictions, because of her poverty, her being a woman and wife, and her Jewish ethnicity. Davidson notes that she therefore "worshiped her only son, Carl. He would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams."[6]:2
However, his "sense of wonder" came from his father, who was a "quiet and soft-hearted escapee from the Czar." In his free time, he gave apples to the poor, or helped soothe labor-management tensions within New York's "tumultuous" garment industry.[6]:2 Although he was "awed" by Carl's "brilliance, his boyish chatter about stars and dinosaurs," he took his son's inquisitiveness in stride, as part of his growing up.[6]:2 In his later years as a writer and scientist, Sagan would often draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.[6]:9 Sagan describes his parents' influence on his later thinking:
- My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me the two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method.[7]
1939 World's Fair[link]
Sagan recalls that one of his best experiences was when he was four or five years old, his parents took him to the 1939 New York World's Fair. The exhibits became a turning point in his life. He later recalled the moving map of the "America of Tomorrow" exhibit: "It showed beautiful highways and cloverleaves and little General Motors cars all carrying people to skyscrapers, buildings with lovely spires, flying buttresses—and it looked great!"[6]:14 At other exhibits, he remembered how a flashlight that shined on a photoelectric cell created a cracking sound, and how the sound from a tuning fork became a wave on an oscilloscope. He also witnessed the future media technology that would replace radio: television. Sagan wrote:
- Plainly, the world held wonders of a kind I had never guessed. How could a tone become a picture and light become a noise?[6]:14
He also saw one of the Fair's most publicized events, the burial of a time capsule at Flushing Meadows, which contained mementos of the 1930s to be recovered by Earth's descendants in a future millennium. "The time capsule thrilled Carl," writes Davidson. As an adult, Sagan and his colleagues created similar time capsules, but ones that would be sent out into the galaxy. These were the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record records, all of which were spinoffs of Sagan's memories of the World Fair.[6]:15
World War II[link]
During World War II, Sagan's family worried about the fate of their European relatives. Sagan, however, was generally unaware of the details of the ongoing war. He writes, "Sure, we had relatives who were caught up in the Holocaust. Hitler was not a popular fellow in our household ... But on the other hand, I was fairly insulated from the horrors of the war." His sister, Carol, said that their mother "above all wanted to protect Carl ... She had an extraordinarily difficult time dealing with World War II and the Holocaust."[6]:15 Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World (1996), included his memories of this conflicted period, when his family dealt with the realities of the war in Europe, but tried to prevent it from undermining his optimistic spirit.[7]
Inquisitiveness about nature[link]
Soon after entering elementary school, he began to express a strong inquisitiveness about nature. Sagan recalled taking his first trips to the public library alone, at the age of five, when his mother got him a library card. He wanted to learn what stars were, since none of his friends or their parents could give him a clear answer:
- I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars ... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light ... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me.[6]:18
About the time he was six or seven, he and a close friend took trips to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. While there, they went to the Hayden Planetarium and walked around the museum's exhibits of space objects, such as meteorites, and displays of dinosaurs and animals in natural settings. Sagan writes about those visits:
- I was transfixed by the dioramas—lifelike representations of animals and their habitats all over the world. Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice; ... a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest, ... an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye.[6]:18
His parents helped nurture his growing interest in science by buying him chemistry sets and reading materials.[8] His interest in space, however, was his primary focus, especially after reading science fiction stories by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, which stirred his imagination about life on other planets, such as Mars. According to biographer Ray Spangenburg, these early years as Sagan tried to understand the mysteries of the planets, became a "driving force in his life, a continual spark to his intellect, and a quest that would never be forgotten."[7]
Education and scientific career[link]
He attended the University of Chicago, where he participated in the Ryerson Astronomical Society,[9] received a bachelor of arts in self-proclaimed "nothing" with general and special honors in 1954, a bachelor of science in physics in 1955, and a master of science in physics in 1956 before earning a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960.[10][11][12] During his time as an honors program undergraduate, Sagan worked in the laboratory of the geneticist H. J. Muller and wrote a thesis on the origins of life with physical chemist H.C. Urey. From 1960 to 1962 Sagan was a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1962 to 1968, he worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Sagan lectured and did research at Harvard University until 1968, when he moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He became a full Professor at Cornell in 1971, and he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981, Sagan was the Associate Director of the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell.
Sagan was associated with the US space program from its inception. From the 1950s onward, he worked as an advisor to NASA, where one of his duties included briefing the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon. Sagan contributed to many of the robotic spacecraft missions that explored the solar system, arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. He conceived the idea of adding an unalterable and universal message on spacecraft destined to leave the solar system that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find it. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into space: a gold- anodized plaque, attached to the space probe Pioneer 10, launched in 1972. Pioneer 11, also carrying another copy of the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the Voyager Golden Record that was sent out with the Voyager space probes in 1977. Sagan often challenged the decisions to fund the Space Shuttle and Space Station at the expense of further robotic missions.[13]
Sagan taught a course on critical thinking at Cornell University until he died in 1996 from pneumonia, a few months after finding that he was in remission of myelodysplastic syndrome.
Scientific achievements[link]
Sagan's contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet Venus. In the early 1960s no one knew for certain the basic conditions of that planet's surface, and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report later depicted for popularization in a Time-Life book, Planets. His own view was that Venus was dry and very hot as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had investigated radio emissions from Venus and concluded that there was a surface temperature of 500 °C (900 °F). As a visiting scientist to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he contributed to the first Mariner missions to Venus, working on the design and management of the project. Mariner 2 confirmed his conclusions on the surface conditions of Venus in 1962.
Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn's moon Titan might possess oceans of liquid compounds on its surface and that Jupiter's moon Europa might possess subsurface oceans of water. This would make Europa potentially habitable.[14] Europa's subsurface ocean of water was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo. The mystery of Titan's reddish haze was also solved with Sagan's help. The reddish haze was revealed to be due to complex organic molecules constantly raining down onto Titan's surface.[15]
He further contributed insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter as well as seasonal changes on Mars. Sagan established that the atmosphere of Venus is extremely hot and dense with pressures increasing steadily all the way down to the surface. He also perceived global warming as a growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through a kind of runaway greenhouse effect. Sagan and his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter speculated about life in Jupiter's clouds, given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied the observed color variations on Mars' surface and concluded that they were not seasonal or vegetational changes as most believed but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms.
Sagan is best known, however, for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation.[16]
He is also the 1994 recipient of the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare."[17] He was denied membership in the Academy, reportedly because his media activities made him unpopular with many other scientists.[18]
Scientific advocacy[link]
Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to better understand the cosmos—simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the universe. He delivered the 1977 series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in London.[19] He hosted and, with Ann Druyan, co-wrote and co-produced the highly popular thirteen-part PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage modeled on Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man.
Cosmos covered a wide range of scientific subjects including the origin of life and a perspective of our place in the universe. The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, winning an Emmy and a Peabody Award. It has been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people,[3][20] making it the most widely watched PBS program in history.[21] In addition, Time magazine ran a cover story about Sagan soon after the show broadcast, referring to him as "creator, chief writer and host-narrator of the new public television series Cosmos, [and] takes the controls of his fantasy spaceship."[22]
Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals from potential intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms. Sagan was so persuasive that by 1982 he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the journal Science and signed by 70 scientists including seven Nobel Prize winners. This was a tremendous increase in the respectability of this controversial field. Sagan also helped Dr. Frank Drake write the Arecibo message, a radio message beamed into space from the Arecibo radio telescope on November 16, 1974, aimed at informing potential extraterrestrials about Earth.
Sagan was chief technology officer of the professional planetary research journal Icarus for twelve years. He co-founded the Planetary Society, the largest space-interest group in the world, with over 100,000 members in more than 149 countries, and was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society, as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
At the height of the Cold War, Sagan became involved in public awareness efforts for the effects of nuclear war when a mathematical climate model suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could upset the delicate balance of life on Earth. He was one of five authors—the "S" of the "TTAPS" report as the research paper came to be known. He eventually co-authored the scientific paper hypothesizing a global nuclear winter following nuclear war.[23] He also co-authored the book A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, a comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of nuclear winter.
Sagan also wrote books to popularize science which reflected and expanded upon some of the themes of A Personal Voyage, and became the best-selling science book ever published in English;[24] The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, which won a Pulitzer Prize; and Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel Contact in 1985, based on a film treatment he wrote with his wife in 1979, but he did not live to see the book's 1997 motion picture adaptation, which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Adaption.
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He wrote a sequel to Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by The New York Times. He appeared on PBS' Charlie Rose program in January 1995.[25] Sagan also wrote an introduction for the bestselling book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time. Sagan was also known for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience, such as his debunking of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, David Morrison, a former student of Sagan, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in Skeptical Inquirer.[26]
Sagan hypothesized in January 1991 that enough smoke from the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires "might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia ..." He later conceded in The Demon-Haunted World that this prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4°–6 °C over the Persian Gulf, but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared."[27] A 2007 study noted that modern computer models have been applied to the Kuwait oil fires, finding that individual smoke plumes are not able to loft smoke into the stratosphere, but that smoke from fires covering a large area, like some forest fires or the burning of cities that would be expected to follow a nuclear strike, would loft significant amounts of smoke into the stratosphere.[28][29][30][31]
In his later years Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for near Earth objects that might impact the Earth.[32] When others suggested creating large nuclear bombs that could be used to alter the orbit of a NEO that was predicted to hit the Earth, Sagan proposed the Deflection Dilemma: If we create the ability to deflect an asteroid away from the Earth, then we also create the ability to deflect an asteroid towards the Earth—providing an evil power with a true doomsday bomb.[33][34]
Billions and billions[link]
From Cosmos and his frequent appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Sagan became associated with the catchphrase "billions and billions". Sagan stated that he never actually used the phrase in the Cosmos series.[35] The closest that he ever came was in the book Cosmos, where he talked of "billions upon billions":[36]
A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars—billions upon billions of stars.
However, his frequent use of the word billions, and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with a 'b'", in order to distinguish the word from "millions" in viewers' minds),[35] made him a favorite target of comic performers, including Johnny Carson,[38] Gary Kroeger, Mike Myers, Bronson Pinchot, Penn Jillette, Harry Shearer, and others. Frank Zappa satirized the line in the song "Be In My Video", noting as well "atomic light". Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was entitled Billions and Billions, which opened with a tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catchphrase, observing that Carson was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science.[35]
Similarly he is also known for expressing wonderment at the vastness of space and time, as in his phrase "The total number of stars in the Universe is larger than all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet Earth."
Sagan units[link]
As a humorous tribute to him, a sagan has been defined as a unit of measurement equal to at least four billion, since the smallest number that may be described as billions and billions must be two billion plus two billion.[39][40]
Social concerns[link]
Sagan believed that the Drake equation, on substitution of reasonable estimates, suggested that a large number of extraterrestrial civilizations would form, but that the lack of evidence of such civilizations highlighted by the Fermi paradox suggests technological civilizations tend to self-destruct. This stimulated his interest in identifying and publicizing ways that humanity could destroy itself, with the hope of avoiding such a cataclysm and eventually becoming a spacefaring species. Sagan's deep concern regarding the potential destruction of human civilization in a nuclear holocaust was conveyed in a memorable cinematic sequence in the final episode of Cosmos, called "Who Speaks for Earth?" Sagan had already resigned from the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and voluntarily surrendered his top secret clearance in protest over the Vietnam War.[41] Following his marriage to his third wife (novelist Ann Druyan) in June 1981, Sagan became more politically active—particularly in opposing escalation of the nuclear arms race under President Ronald Reagan.
In March 1983, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative—a multi-billion dollar project to develop a comprehensive defense against attack by nuclear missiles, which was quickly dubbed the "Star Wars" program. Sagan spoke out against the project, arguing that it was technically impossible to develop a system with the level of perfection required, and far more expensive to build than for an enemy to defeat through decoys and other means—and that its construction would seriously destabilize the nuclear balance between the United States and the Soviet Union, making further progress toward nuclear disarmament impossible.
When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared a unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons, which would begin on August 6, 1985—the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima—the Reagan administration dismissed the dramatic move as nothing more than propaganda, and refused to follow suit. In response, US anti-nuclear and peace activists staged a series of protest actions at the Nevada Test Site, beginning on Easter Sunday in 1986 and continuing through 1987. Hundreds of people were arrested, including Sagan, who was arrested on two separate occasions as he climbed over a chain-link fence at the test site.[42]
Personal life and beliefs[link]
Sagan was married three times—in 1957, to biologist Lynn Margulis, mother of Dorion Sagan and Jeremy Sagan; in 1968, to artist Linda Salzman, mother of Nick Sagan; and in 1981, to author Ann Druyan, mother of Alexandra Rachel (Sasha) Sagan and Samuel Democritus Sagan. His marriage to Druyan continued until his death in 1996.
Isaac Asimov described Sagan as one of only two people he ever met whose intellect surpassed his own. The other, he claimed, was the computer scientist and artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky.[43]
Sagan wrote frequently about religion and the relationship between religion and science, expressing his skepticism about the conventional conceptualization of God as a sapient being. For example:
"Some people think God is an outsized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sitting on a throne somewhere up there in the sky, busily tallying the fall of every sparrow. Others—for example Baruch Spinoza and Albert Einstein—considered God to be essentially the sum total of the physical laws which describe the universe. I do not know of any compelling evidence for anthropomorphic patriarchs controlling human destiny from some hidden celestial vantage point, but it would be madness to deny the existence of physical laws."[44]
In another description of his view of God, Sagan emphatically writes:
"The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity."[45]
On atheism, Sagan commented in 1981:
"An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed".[46]
In reply to a question in 1996 about his religious beliefs, Sagan answered, "I'm agnostic."[47] Sagan's views on religion have been interpreted as a form of pantheism comparable to Einstein's belief in Spinoza's God.[48] Sagan maintained that the idea of a creator of the universe was difficult to prove or disprove and that the only conceivable scientific discovery that could challenge it would be an infinitely old universe.[49] According to his last wife, Ann Druyan, he was not a believer:
When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me—it still sometimes happens—and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl.[50]
In 2006, Ann Druyan edited Sagan's 1985 Glasgow Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology into a book, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, in which he elaborates on his views of divinity in the natural world.
Sagan is also widely regarded as a freethinker or skeptic; one of his most famous quotations, in Cosmos, was, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"[51] (called the "Sagan Standard" by some[52]). This was based on a nearly identical statement by fellow founder of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Marcello Truzzi, "An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof."[53][54] This idea originated with Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827), a French mathematician and astronomer who said, "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."[55]
Late in his life, Sagan's books elaborated on his skeptical, naturalistic view of the world. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, he presented tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent ones, essentially advocating wide use of critical thinking and the scientific method. The compilation Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, published in 1997 after Sagan's death, contains essays written by Sagan, such as his views on abortion, and his widow Ann Druyan's account of his death as a skeptic, agnostic, and freethinker.
Sagan warned against humans' tendency towards anthropocentrism. He was the faculty adviser for the Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In the Cosmos chapter "Blues For a Red Planet", Sagan wrote, "If there is life on Mars, I believe we should do nothing with Mars. Mars then belongs to the Martians, even if the Martians are only microbes."[56]
Sagan was a user and advocate of marijuana. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X", he contributed an essay about smoking cannabis to the 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered.[57][58] The essay explained that marijuana use had helped to inspire some of Sagan's works and enhance sensual and intellectual experiences. After Sagan's death, his friend Lester Grinspoon disclosed this information to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. The publishing of the biography, Carl Sagan: A Life, in 1999 brought media attention to this aspect of Sagan's life.[59][60][61] Not long after his death, widow Ann Druyan had gone on to preside over the board of directors of NORML, a foundation dedicated to reforming cannabis laws.[62]
In 1994, engineers at Apple Computer code-named the Power Macintosh 7100 "Carl Sagan" in the hope that Apple would make "billions and billions" with the sale of the PowerMac 7100.[4] The name was only used internally, but Sagan was concerned that it would become a product endorsement and sent Apple a cease and desist letter. Apple complied, but engineers retaliated by changing the internal codename to "BHA" for "Butt-Head Astronomer".[63][64] Sagan then sued Apple for libel, a form of defamation, in federal court. The court granted Apple's motion to dismiss Sagan's claims and opined in dicta that a reader aware of the context would understand Apple was "clearly attempting to retaliate in a humorous and satirical way", and that "It strains reason to conclude that Defendant was attempting to criticize Plaintiff's reputation or competency as an astronomer. One does not seriously attack the expertise of a scientist using the undefined phrase 'butt-head'."[63][65] Sagan then sued for Apple's original use of his name and likeness, but again lost.[66] Sagan appealed the ruling.[66] In November 1995, an out of court settlement was reached and Apple's office of trademarks and patents released a conciliatory statement that "Apple has always had great respect for Dr. Sagan. It was never Apple's intention to cause Dr. Sagan or his family any embarrassment or concern."[67]
Sagan briefly served as an adviser on Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.[6] Sagan proposed that the film would suggest, rather than depict, extraterrestrial superintelligence.[68]
Sagan and UFOs[link]
Sagan had some interest in UFO reports from at least August 3, 1952 when he wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson to ask how the U.S. would respond if flying saucers turned out to be extraterrestrial.[69] He later had several conversations on the subject in 1964 with Jacques Vallee.[70] Though quite skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question, Sagan thought scientists should study the phenomenon, at least because there was widespread public interest in UFO reports.
Stuart Appelle notes that Sagan "wrote frequently on what he perceived as the logical and empirical fallacies regarding UFOs and the abduction experience. Sagan rejected an extraterrestrial explanation for the phenomenon but felt there were both empirical and pedagogical benefits for examining UFO reports and that the subject was, therefore, a legitimate topic of study."[71]
In 1966, Sagan was a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's UFO investigation project. The committee concluded Blue Book had been lacking as a scientific study, and recommended a university-based project to give the UFO phenomenon closer scientific scrutiny. The result was the Condon Committee (1966–1968), led by physicist Edward Condon, and in their final report they formally concluded that UFOs, regardless of what any of them actually were, did not behave in a manner consistent with a threat to national security.
Ron Westrum writes that "The high point of Sagan's treatment of the UFO question was the AAAS's symposium in 1969. A wide range of educated opinions on the subject were offered by participants, including not only proponents such as James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek but also skeptics like astronomers William Hartmann and Donald Menzel. The roster of speakers was balanced, and it is to Sagan's credit that this event was presented in spite of pressure from Edward Condon".[70] With physicist Thornton Page, Sagan edited the lectures and discussions given at the symposium; these were published in 1972 as UFOs: A Scientific Debate. Some of Sagan's many books examine UFOs (as did one episode of Cosmos) and he claimed a religious undercurrent to the phenomenon.
Sagan again revealed his views on interstellar travel in his 1980 Cosmos series. In one of his last written works, Sagan argued that the chances of extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting Earth are vanishingly small. However, Sagan did think it plausible that Cold War concerns contributed to governments misleading their citizens about UFOs, and that "some UFO reports and analyses, and perhaps voluminous files, have been made inaccessible to the public which pays the bills ... It's time for the files to be declassified and made generally available." He cautioned against jumping to conclusions about suppressed UFO data and stressed that there was no strong evidence that aliens were visiting the Earth either in the past or present.[72]
Death[link]
After a long and difficult fight with myelodysplasia, which included three bone marrow transplants, Sagan died of pneumonia at the age of 62 at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, on December 20, 1996.[73] He was buried at Lakeview Cemetery in Ithaca, New York.[74]
Posthumous recognition[link]
The 1997 movie Contact, based on Sagan's novel of the same name and finished after his death, ends with the dedication "For Carl".
In 1997, the Sagan Planet Walk was opened in Ithaca, New York. It is a walking scale model of the solar system, extending 1.2 km from the center of The Commons in downtown Ithaca to the Sciencenter, a hands-on museum. The exhibition was created in memory of Carl Sagan, who was an Ithaca resident and Cornell Professor. Professor Sagan had been a founding member of the museum's advisory board.[75]
The landing site of the unmanned Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on July 5, 1997. Asteroid 2709 Sagan is named in his honor.
Sagan's son, Nick Sagan, wrote several episodes in the Star Trek franchise. In an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled "Terra Prime", a quick shot is shown of the relic rover Sojourner, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, placed by a historical marker at Carl Sagan Memorial Station on the Martian surface. The marker displays a quote from Sagan: "Whatever the reason you're on Mars, I'm glad you're there, and I wish I was with you." Sagan's student Steve Squyres led the team that landed the Spirit Rover and Opportunity Rover successfully on Mars in 2004.
On November 9, 2001, on what would have been Sagan's 67th birthday, the NASA Ames Research Center dedicated the site for the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Cosmos. "Carl was an incredible visionary, and now his legacy can be preserved and advanced by a 21st century research and education laboratory committed to enhancing our understanding of life in the universe and furthering the cause of space exploration for all time", said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Ann Druyan was at the Center as it opened its doors on October 22, 2006.
Sagan has at least three awards named in his honor:
- The Carl Sagan Memorial Award presented jointly since 1997 by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the Planetary Society,
- The Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science presented since 1998 by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS/DPS) for outstanding communication by an active planetary scientist to the general public—Carl Sagan was one of the original organizing committee members of the DPS, and
- The Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science presented by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP)—Sagan was the first recipient of the CSSP award in 1993.[76]
In 2006, the Carl Sagan Medal was awarded to astrobiologist and author David Grinspoon, the son of Sagan's friend Lester Grinspoon.
On December 20, 2006, the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, a blogger, Joel Schlosberg, organized a Carl Sagan "blog-a-thon" to commemorate Sagan's death, and the idea was supported by Nick Sagan.[77] Many members of the blogging community participated.
August 2007 the Independent Investigative Group IIG awarded Sagan posthumously a Lifetime Achievement Award. This honor has also been awarded to Harry Houdini and James Randi.[78]
Beginning in 2009, a musical project known as Symphony of Science sampled several excerpts of Sagan from his series Cosmos and remixed them to electronic music. To date, the videos have received over twenty-million views worldwide on the popular user generated website Youtube, and have exposed a new generation to the interconnected grandeur of the universe as Sagan described them in his documentary series.[79]
Awards and honors[link]
NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal
- Annual Award for Television Excellence—1981—Ohio State University—PBS series Cosmos
- Apollo Achievement Award—National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal—National Aeronautics and Space Administration (twice)
- Emmy—Outstanding Individual Achievement—1981—PBS series Cosmos
- Emmy—Outstanding Informational Series—1981—PBS series Cosmos
- Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal—National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Helen Caldicott Leadership Award – Awarded by Women's Action for Nuclear Disarmament
- Hugo Award—1981—Cosmos
- Humanist of the Year—1981—Awarded by the American Humanist Association
- In Praise of Reason Award—1987—Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
- Isaac Asimov Award—1994—Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
- John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award—American Astronautical Society
- John W. Campbell Memorial Award—1974—The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective
- Joseph Priestley Award—"For distinguished contributions to the welfare of mankind"
- Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific—1974
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal—Awarded by the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation
- Locus Award 1986—Contact
- Lowell Thomas Award—Explorers Club—75th Anniversary
- Masursky Award—American Astronomical Society
- Miller Research Fellowship—Miller Institute (1960–1962)
- Oersted Medal—1990—American Association of Physics Teachers
- Peabody Award—1980—PBS series Cosmos
- Prix Galbert—The international prize of Astronautics
- Public Welfare Medal—1994—National Academy of Sciences[80]
- Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction—1978—The Dragons of Eden
- SF Chronicle Award—1998—Contact
- Named the "99th Greatest American" on the June 5, 2005, Greatest American show on the Discovery Channel
- Named an honorary member of the Demosthenian Literary Society on November 10, 2011
- 2009 New Jersey Hall of Fame inductee.[81]
Publications[link]
- Planets (LIFE Science Library), Sagan, Carl, Jonathan Norton Leonard and editors of Life, Time, Inc., 1966
- Intelligent Life in the Universe, I.S. Shklovskii coauthor, Random House, 1966, ISBN 1-892803-02-X, 509 pgs (note: republished in 1998 by Emerson-Adams Press)
- UFOs: A Scientific Debate, Thornton Page coauthor, Cornell University Press, 1972, 310 pgs
- Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. MIT Press, 1973, 428 pgs
- Mars and the Mind of Man, Sagan, Carl, et al., Harper & Row, 1973, 143 pgs
- The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective, Jerome Agel coauthor, Anchor Press, 1973, ISBN 0-521-78303-8, 301 pgs
- Other Worlds. Bantam Books, 1975
- Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Sagan, Carl, et al., Random House, ISBN 0-394-41047-5, 1978
- The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine Books, 1978, ISBN 0-345-34629-7, 288 pgs
- Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Ballantine Books, 1979, ISBN 0-345-33689-5, 416 pgs
- Cosmos. Random House, 1980. Random House New Edition, May 7, 2002, ISBN 0-375-50832-5, 384 pgs
- The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War, Sagan, Carl et al., Sidgwick & Jackson, 1985
- Comet, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, 1985, ISBN 0-345-41222-2, 496 pgs
- Contact. Simon and Schuster, 1985; Reissued August 1997 by Doubleday Books, ISBN 1-56865-424-3, 352 pgs
- A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, Richard Turco coauthor, Random House, 1990, ISBN 0-394-58307-8, 499 pgs
- Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, October 1993, ISBN 0-345-38472-5, 528 pgs
- Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Random House, November 1994, ISBN 0-679-43841-6, 429 pgs
- The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Ballantine Books, March 1996, ISBN 0-345-40946-9, 480 pgs (note: the book was first published and copyrighted in 1995 with an errata slip inserted)
- Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, Ann Druyan coauthor, Ballantine Books, June 1997, ISBN 0-345-37918-7, 320 pgs
- The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God, Carl Sagan (writer) & Ann Druyan (editor), 1985 Gifford lectures, Penguin Press HC, November 2006, ISBN 1-59420-107-2, 304 pgs
References[link]
- ^ Sagan, Carl (1994). Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1st ed.). New York: Random House. p. 68. ISBN 0-679-43841-6.
- ^ Some of Carl Sagan's papers on NASA ADS
- ^ a b "StarChild: Dr. Carl Sagan". NASA. http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/whos_who_level2/sagan.html. Retrieved October 8, 2009.
- ^ a b Poundstone, William (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos. New York: Henry Holt & Company. pp. 363–364, 374–375. ISBN 0-8050-5766-8.
- ^ Carl Sagan: Biographical fast facts
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Davidson, Keay; Sagan, Carl (1999). Carl Sagan: a life. Wiley. p. 168. ISBN 0-471-25286-7. http://books.google.com/?id=TXDvAAAAMAAJ.
- ^ a b c Spangenburg, Ray; Moser, Diane. Carl Sagan: A Biography, Greenwood Publ. (2004) pp. 2–5
- ^ "Carl Sagan". FamousScientists.org. http://www.famousscientists.org/carl-sagan. Retrieved December 15, 2011.
- ^ http://astro.uchicago.edu/RAS/
- ^ Graduate students receive first Sagan teaching awards
- ^ Head, Tom (ed.) (2005). Conversations with Carl Sagan. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. p. xxi. ISBN 1-57806-736-7.
- ^ Spangenburg, Ray coauthors=Moser, Kit (2004). Carl Sagan: A Biography. Connecticut: Greenwood Press. p. 28. ISBN 0-313-32265-1.
- ^ "A conversation with Carl Sagan". Charlie Rose. January 5, 1995. 5 minutes in. PBS. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/7121.
- ^ Much of Sagan's research in the field of planetary science is outlined by William Poundstone. Poundstone's biography of Sagan includes an 8-page list of Sagan's scientific articles published from 1957 to 1998. Detailed information about Sagan's scientific work comes from the primary research articles. Example: Sagan, C., Thompson, W. R., and Khare, B. N. Titan: A Laboratory for Prebiological Organic Chemistry, Accounts of Chemical Research, volume 25, page 286 (1992). There is commentary on this research article about Titan at The Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight.
- ^ Pafumi, G.R. (2010). Is Our Vision of God Obsolete?. Xlibris Corporation. p. 338. http://books.google.com/books?id=ySNfuGKwfMcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia. "Sagan, Carl Edward". Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press. http://www.bartelby.com/65/sa/Sagan-Ca.html. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
- ^ The Planetary Society. "Carl Sagan". The Planetary Society. http://www.planetary.org/about/founders/carl_sagan.html. Retrieved May 14, 2007.
- ^ Gregory Benford (1997). "A Tribute to Carl Sagan: Popular & Pilloried". Skeptic (U.S. magazine) 13 (1). http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/popular-and-pilloried/.
- ^ "Christmas Lectures 1977: The Planets : Ri Channel". http://richannel.org/christmas-lectures/1977/1977-carl-sagan. Retrieved February 7, 2012.
- ^ "Carl Sagan". EMuseum@Minnesota State University. http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/sagan_carl.html. Retrieved October 8, 2009.
- ^ "CosmoLearning Astronomy". CosmoLearning. http://www.cosmolearning.com/documentaries/cosmos/. Retrieved October 8, 2009.
- ^ Time magazine, cover story, Oct. 20, 1980
- ^ Turco RP, Toon OB, Ackerman TP, Pollack JB, Sagan C. Climate and smoke: an appraisal of nuclear winter, Science, volume 247, pages 166–176 (1990). PubMed abstract JSTOR link to full text article. Carl Sagan discussed his involvement in the political nuclear winter debates and his erroneous global cooling prediction for the Gulf War fires in his book, The Demon-Haunted World.
- ^ "Meet Dr. Carl Sagan". The Science Channel. http://science.discovery.com/convergence/cosmos/bio/bio.html?clik=fsmain_feat3. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
- ^ Sagan, Carl (January 5, 1995) (.SWF). Interview with Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose. PBS. New York. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1127834163386485385#2370s. Retrieved April 25, 2007. starts at 00:39:29
- ^ Morrison, David (2007). Man for the Cosmos: Carl Sagan's Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic. Skeptical Inquirer January/February, 31(1), pp. 29–38.
- ^ Sagan, Carl (1996). The demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark. New York: Random House. p. 257. ISBN 0-394-53512-X.
- ^ In-situ observations of mid-latitude forest fire plumes deep in the stratosphere
- ^ EO Newsroom: New Images — Smoke Soars to Stratospheric Heights
- ^ Observations of Boreal Forest Fire Smoke in the Stratosphere
- ^ Fromm (2006). "Smoke in the Stratosphere: What Wildfires have Taught Us About Nuclear Winter". Eos Trans. AGU 87 (52 Fall Meet. Suppl.): Abstract U14A–04. Bibcode 2006EOSTr..87...14Z. DOI:10.1029/2006EO020009. http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?&listenv=table&multiple=1&range=1&directget=1&application=fm06&database=%2Fdata%2Fepubs%2Fwais%2Findexes%2Ffm06%2Ffm06&maxhits=200&=%22U14A-04%22.
- ^ Head, Tom (2006). Conversations With Carl Sagan. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 86–87. ISBN 1-57806-736-7.
- ^ "David Morrison—Taking a Hit: Asteroid Impacts & Evolution". Silicon Valley Astronomy Lectures. season 2007–2008. October 3, 2007. http://www.astrosociety.org/education/podcast/index.html.
- ^ Sagan, Carl; Ostro (1994). "Long-Range Consequences of Interplanetary Collisions". Issues in Science and Technology X (4)
- ^ a b c Sagan, Carl; p. 3-4 (1998). Billions and Billions. New York: Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-37918-7.
- ^ Fred R. Shapiro and Joseph Epstein (2006). "Carl Sagan". The Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press. pp. 660. ISBN 0-300-10798-6.
- ^ Carl Sagan (1980). Cosmos. Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-33135-9.
- ^ "Carl Sagan Takes Questions: More From His 'Wonder and Skepticism' CSICOP 1994 Keynote". The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. June 26, 1994. http://www.csicop.org/si/show/carl_sagan_takes_questions. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
- ^ sagan at dictionary.reference.com (definition from the Jargon File)
- ^ William Safire, ON LANGUAGE; Footprints on the Infobahn, New York Times, April 17, 1994
- ^ Druyan, Ann (2000). "A New Sense of the Sacred Carl Sagan's "Cosmic Connection"". Humanist. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_6_60/ai_78889720/.
- ^ Spangenburg, Ray; Moser, Kit; Moser, Diane (2004). Carl Sagan: a biography. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 106. ISBN 0-313-32265-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=Z01FzDkprgUC. , Chapter 8, page 106
- ^ Asimov, Isaac (1980). In Joy Still Felt: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1954–1978. Doubleday/Avon. pp. 217, 302. ISBN 0-380-53025-2.
- ^ Sagan, Carl (February 12, 1986). "Chapter 23". Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. Ballantine Books. p. 330. ISBN 0-345-33689-5.
- ^ http://atheism.about.com/library/quotes/bl_q_CSagan.htm
- ^ Wakin, Edward (May 1981). "God and Carl Sagan: Is the Cosmos Big Enough for Both of Them?". U.S. Catholic: 19–24. http://www.uscatholic.org. Retrieved 7 April 2012.
- ^ Head, Tom. "Conversations with Carl". Skeptic 13 (1): 32–38. Excerpted in Head, Tom, ed. (2006). University of Mississippi Press. ISBN 1-57806-736-7..
- ^ Tracy, David. "Kenosis, Sunyata, and Trinity: A Dialogue with Masao Abe." In The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, eds. John B. Cobb Jr., and Christopher Ives. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1990, pg. 52, ISBN 81-7030-490-3
- ^ Sagan, Carl (1996). The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Ballantine Books. p. 278. ISBN 0-345-40946-9.
- ^ Druyan, Ann (November/December 2003). "Ann Druyan talks about science, religion, wonder, awe ... and Carl Sagan". Skeptical Inquirer (Committee for Skeptical Inquiry) 27 (6). ISSN 0194-6730. http://www.csicop.org/si/show/ann_druyan_talks_about_science_religion/. Retrieved July 27, 2010.
- ^ Carl Sagan (writer/host) (December 14, 1980). "Encyclopaedia Galactica". Cosmos. episode 12. 01:24 minutes in. PBS.
- ^ Hugh Rawson (2008). "Sagan's Standard". The Unwritten Laws of Life. CSBC Ltd. http://lawsoflife.co.uk/sagans-standard/. Retrieved Feb 15, 2011.
- ^ Marcello Truzzi (1978). "On the Extraordinary: An Attempt at Clarification". Zetetic Scholar 1 (1): 11. http://www.tricksterbook.com/truzzi/ZS-Issues-PDFs/ZeteticScholarNo1.pdf.
- ^ Truzzi, Marcello (1998). "On Some Unfair Practices towards Claims of the Paranormal". Oxymoron: Annual Thematic Anthology of the Arts and Sciences, Vol.2: The Fringe. Oxymoron Media. http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/anomalistics/practices.htm. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
- ^ A sense of place in the heartland, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online
- ^ Sagan, Carl (October 12, 1985). Cosmos. Ballantine Books. p. 108. ISBN 0-345-33135-4.
- ^ Grinspoon, Lester (1994). Marihuana Reconsidered (2nd ed.). Oakland, CA: Quick American Archives. ISBN 0-932551-13-0.
- ^ Sagan, Carl. "Mr. X". Marijuana-Uses.com. http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/. Retrieved August 7, 2009.
- ^ Whitehouse, David (October 15, 1999). "Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/475954.stm. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
- ^ Davidson, Keay (August 22, 1999). "US: Billions and Billions of '60s Flashbacks". San Francisco Examiner. http://www.druglibrary.org/think/~jnr/sagan.htm. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
- ^ Larsen, Dana (November 1, 1999). "Carl Sagan: Toking Astronomer". Cannabis Culture Magazine. http://cannabisculture.com/articles/63.html. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
- ^ "Ann Druyan – NORML". ABOUT NORML. NORML and the NORML Foundation. http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4493. Retrieved Jul 20, 2011.
- ^ a b Poundstone, p. 364
- ^ "This Week in Apple History: November 14–20". The Mac Observer. http://www.macobserver.com/columns/thisweek/2004/20041120.shtml.
- ^ Sagan v. Apple Computer, Inc., 874 F.Supp. 1072 (USDC C.D. Cal. 1994), CV 94-2180 LGB (BRx); 1994 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20154.
- ^ a b Poundstone, p. 374
- ^ Poundstone, pp. 374–375.
- ^ Sagan, Carl (2000). Carl Sagan's cosmic connection: an extraterrestrial perspective (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 183. ISBN 0-521-78303-8. http://books.google.com/?id=lL57o9YB0mAC. , Chapter 25, page 183
- ^ Davidson, Keay (1999). "Chicago". Carl Sagan: A Life. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. pp. 51–52. ISBN 0-471-25286-7.
- ^ a b Westrum, Ron; Jacobs, David Michael (ed.) (2000). "Limited Access: Six Natural Scientists and the UFO Phenomenon". UFOs and abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. pp. 30–55. ISBN 0-7006-1032-4.
- ^ Appelle, Stuart; Jacobs, David Michael (ed.) (2000). "Ufology and Academia: The UFO Phenomenon as a Scholarly Discipline". UFOs and abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. pp. 7–30. ISBN 0-7006-1032-4.
- ^ Sagan, 1996: 81–96, 99–104
- ^ "Carl Sagan dies at 62". CNN. December 20, 1996. http://www.cnn.com/US/9612/20/sagan/. Retrieved December 5, 2011. "Sagan was a noted astronomer whose lifelong passion was searching for intelligent life in the cosmos."
- ^ Carl Sagan at Find a Grave
- ^ http://www.sciencenter.org/saganpw/
- ^ "Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science". The Council of Scientific Society Presidents. http://cssp.us/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=47. Retrieved May 2, 2007.
- ^ Joel's humanistic blog: Announcing the Carl Sagan memorial blog-a-thon
- ^ "IIG | The IIG Awards". Iigwest.com. August 21, 2010. http://www.iigwest.com/iigawards/2006/index.html. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
- ^ Carl Sagan – A Glorious Dawn http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc
- ^ "Public Welfare Award". National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_pwm. Retrieved February 18, 2011.
- ^ The Newark Star Ledger.
Further reading[link]
- Davidson, Keay (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 33–41. ISBN 0-471-25286-7.
- Head, Tom (ed.) (2005). Conversations with Carl Sagan. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-736-7.
- Poundstone, William (1999). Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-5766-8.
- Morrison, David (2006). "Carl Sagan: The People's Astronomer" (PDF). AmeriQuests 3 (2). http://ejournals.library.vanderbilt.edu/ameriquests/include/getdoc.php?id=402&article=93&mode=pdf.
- Achenbach, Joel (1999). Captured by Aliens: the search for life and truth in a very large universe. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84856-2. [Includes detailed account of Sagan's role in the search for extraterrestrial life. Lay summary].
External links[link]
| Find more about Carl Sagan on Wikipedia's sister projects: | |
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Images and media from Commons |
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Quotations from Wikiquote |
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Source texts from Wikisource |
- The Carl Sagan Portal
- Video of skit from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson mentioning "billions and billions"
- BBC Radio program "Great Lives" on Carl Sagan's life
- A Man whose time Has come—Interview with Carl Sagan by Ian Ridpath, New Scientist 1974 July 4
- Carl Sagan at the Internet Movie Database
- Works by or about Carl Sagan in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization
- Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science, presented by the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS/DPS)
- Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute
- Carl Sagan's Life and Legacy as Scientist, Teacher, and Skeptic, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
- A Tribute to Carl Sagan: Our Place in the Universe, The Skeptics Society
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Sagan, Carl |
| Alternative names | Sagan, Carl Edward |
| Short description | Astronomy and planetary science |
| Date of birth | 1934-11-9 <! ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) --> |
| Place of birth | Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Date of death | 1996-12-20 <! ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) --> |
| Place of death | Seattle, Washington, United States |
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| Aphex Twin | |
|---|---|
 In Turin, Italy in March 2007. |
|
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Richard David James |
| Born | (1971-08-18) 18 August 1971 (age 40) Limerick, Ireland |
| Origin | Lanner, Cornwall, United Kingdom |
| Genres | Electronic, ambient, IDM, acid techno |
| Occupations | Musician, composer, remixer |
| Instruments | Synthesizers, piano, electronics, harpsichord, organ, percussion, laptop, softsynth, turntables, drum machine, guitar, bass guitar, computer, sequencer, sampler |
| Years active | 1985–present |
| Labels | Warp Records Sire Records Rephlex Records |
| Associated acts | Universal Indicator, Mike & Rich |
Richard David James (born 18 August 1971), best known under the pseudonym Aphex Twin, is a British electronic musician and composer. He founded the record label Rephlex Records in 1991 with Grant Wilson-Claridge. He was described by The Guardian as "the most inventive and influential figure in contemporary electronic music."[1]
Aphex Twin has also recorded music under the aliases AFX, Blue Calx, Bradley Strider, Caustic Window, DJ Smojphace, GAK, Martin Tressider, Polygon Window, Power-Pill, Prichard D. Jams, Q-Chastic, Tahnaiya Russell, The Dice Man, Soit-P.P., and speculatively The Tuss.
Aphex Twin has released recordings on Rephlex, Warp, R&S, Sire, Mighty Force, Rabbit City, and Men Records.
Contents |
History[link]
Early years[link]
Richard David James was born to Welsh parents Lorna and Derek James in St. Munchin's Limerick Regional Maternity Hospital, Ireland. He grew up in Lanner, Cornwall, enjoying, along with two older sisters, a "very happy" childhood during which they, according to James, "were pretty much left to do what [they] wanted."[2] He "liked growing up there, being cut off from the city and the rest of the world".[3] James attended Redruth School, located in Redruth, Cornwall.[4]
According to musician Benjamin Middleton, James started producing music at the age of 12.[5] As a teenager he was a disc jockey at the Shire Horse Inn in St Ives, with Tom Middleton at the Bowgie Inn in Crantock, and also along the numerous beaches around Cornwall. James studied for a National Diploma in Engineering from 1988 to 1990 (aged 16 to 18) at Cornwall College. Talking about his studies, James has said that "music and electronics went hand in hand."[6] James graduated from college; according to an engineering lecturer, however, he often had his headphones on during practical lessons, "no doubt thinking through the mixes he'd be working on later".[7]
Early career: early 1990s[link]
In 1989 James met and befriended Grant Wilson-Claridge when working as a DJ on alternate weeks at the Bowgie pub, near Newquay in Cornwall. Wilson-Claridge was intrigued by James's sets and was surprised to discover that James was playing tapes of his own music.
James' first release was the 12-inch EP Analogue Bubblebath on Mighty Force Records in 1991. It was first released under the moniker Aphex Twin, later changed to AFX. The track "En Trance to Exit" was made in collaboration with Tom Middleton, also known as Schizophrenia.[8] The EP got on the playlist of Kiss FM, an influential London radio station, which helped the release to become a success.[9]
In 1991, James and Wilson-Claridge founded Rephlex Records to promote "innovation in the dynamics of Acid — a much-loved and -misunderstood genre of house music forgotten by some and indeed new to others, especially in Britain."[10]
Between 1991 and 1993, James released two Analogue Bubblebath EPs as AFX, and an EP under Bradley Strider, Bradley's Beat. James moved to London to take an electronics course at Kingston Polytechnic, but at the time admitted to David Toop that his "electronics studies were already slipping away as a career in the techno business took precedence." After quitting his course, James remained in London and released a number of albums and EPs on Warp Records and other labels under many aliases including AFX, Polygon Window, and Power-Pill. A number of James' tracks (released under the aliases Blue Calx, The Dice Man, and others) appeared on various compilations. Local legend has it that James lived on the roundabout in Elephant and Castle, South London during his early years in the capital - in fact he lived in a nearby disused bank.[2][11]
Gaining success: 1992–1995[link]
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Sample of "Ventolin (Video Version)" from the album ...I Care Because You Do.
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The first full-length Aphex Twin album, Selected Ambient Works 85–92, was released in 1992 on R&S Records. It received high ratings and praise from critics. John Bush of Allmusic described it as a "watershed of ambient music".[12] In 2002, Rolling Stone wrote of the album: "Aphex Twin expanded way beyond the ambient music of Brian Eno by fusing lush soundscapes with oceanic beats and bass lines."[13] Pitchfork Media's review called it, "among the most interesting music ever created with a keyboard and a computer."[14] Critics also noted that the songs were recorded on cassette and that the sound quality was "relatively poor".
In 1992, he also released the EPs Xylem Tube EP and Digeridoo (first played by DJ Colin Faver on London's Kiss FM) as Aphex Twin, as Power-Pill the Pac-Man EP based on the arcade game Pac-Man, and two of his four Caustic Window EPs. "Digeridoo" reached #55 in the UK Singles Chart, and was later described as foreshadowing drum and bass by Rolling Stone.[15] "Digeridoo" was recorded initially for the benefit of FIZZ-BOMB (at the Shire Horse, St Ives, Cornwall). These early releases came out on Rephlex Records, Mighty Force of Exeter, and R&S Records of Belgium.[16]
In 1993, James released Analogue Bubblebath 3. He also released a single titled "On"; his second Bradley Strider EP, Bradley's Robot; two more Caustic Window EPs; and his first releases on Warp Records, Surfing on Sine Waves and "Quoth" under the alias Polygon Window.
Warp Records pressed and released a follow-up to Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Selected Ambient Works Volume II in 1994. The sound was much less beat and melody-driven than the previous volume. All of the track names were described with pie chart symbols, each of which was meant to be paired with a corresponding image in the album jacket, with exception for one song, which was named "Blue Calx". To decipher song titles, listeners had to compare the length of each track with the size of each pie chart symbol. For example, the first title, which is often labelled cliffs, is realised by pairing the first symbol with the first image, which is that of a rocky cliffside.[17] James claimed in The Wire magazine and other media that these songs were inspired by lucid dreams and synaesthesia. Other releases are a fourth Analogue Bubblebath; GAK, derived from early demos sent to Warp Records; and Classics, a compilation album that includes "Digeridoo" and the Xylem Tube EP.
For his 1995 release, ...I Care Because You Do, James used an image of his face for the album cover, a motif that would continue on many of his later records. The album was a compilation of songs composed between 1990 and 1994 and represented a mish-mash of Aphex Twin's various music styles. This was James's last record of the 1990s to use mostly analogue synthesizers. He commissioned Western classical-music composer Philip Glass to create an orchestral version of one of the songs from this album, "Icct Hedral", which appeared on the Donkey Rhubarb EP.[18]
Jungle, DSP, and laptops: 1995–1999[link]
In 1995 (primarily with Hangable Auto Bulb, a near anagram of Analogue Bubblebath), James began releasing more material composed on computers, combining a jungle sound with nostalgic childhood themes and computer-generated acid lines.
James's early adoption of software synthesizers predated the later popularity of using computers to make music. In the mid-to-late 1990s, his music gradually gained more mainstream appeal, as he released Richard D. James Album and Expert Knob Twiddlers (a collaboration with fellow dance producer µ-ziq) in 1996, "Come to Daddy" in 1997 (#36 on UK charts) and "Windowlicker" in 1999 (#16 on UK charts). Two pop songs that heavily use Digital Signal Processing (DSP) techniques, "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" were shown on MTV and became cover features for music magazines such as NME. The videos for both singles were directed by British artist Chris Cunningham and caused controversy on release because of their disturbing images and themes.
In 1998, Aphex Twin's track "[rhubarb]" (from Selected Ambient Works Volume II) appeared as part of the BBC's digital widescreen test transmission, which was on loop for many months as the service was introduced across the UK.[19]
Prepared piano, laptops, and more DSP: 2000–2003[link]
In 2001 Aphex Twin released drukqs, a two-CD album that featured computer controlled piano songs influenced by Erik Satie and John Cage. Many of the tracks' names are written in the Cornish language (i.e., 'jynweythek' translatable as 'machinemusic'). Also included were abrasive, fast, and meticulously programmed computer-made songs. Rolling Stone described the piano songs as "aimlessly pretty".[20] Some reviewers concluded that drukqs was released as a contract breaker with Warp Records—a credible guess, as James's next big release was released on his own Rephlex label. James claimed to interviewers he had accidentally left an MP3 player labelled "Aphex Twin—unreleased tracks" on a plane, containing a large set of new songs, and rushed the album release to preempt an Internet leak.[21] He also released a short EP titled 2 Remixes By AFX the same year as Drukqs. It featured two remixes, the originals being from 808 State and DJ Pierre. In addition, there is one untitled third track that consists of an SSTV image, which consists of mostly of high-pitched sounds, which can be decoded to a viewable image by proper software such as MultiMode (for Macintosh) or MMSSTV (for Windows).
Synthesizers and drum machines: 2004–present[link]
In late 2004, rumours of James's return to an acid techno-based sound were realised with the Analord series, an 11-part series of EPs with 42 total tracks, averaging 2–4 tracks per EP. The series was created by playing and sequencing analogue and digital electronic music equipment such as synthesizers and drum machines. The series was recorded on magnetic tape and then later pressed on vinyl.
James was meticulous about the whole process of recording, mastering, and pressing. James has said Rephlex Records was strict on quality control, trying out various pressing-plant companies until they felt it sounded perfect. To James's ears, vinyl or tape is better than digital, as no two copies are the same. However, label co-owner Grant Wilson-Claridge convinced James to release a CD compilation, Chosen Lords, which included 10 selected tracks from the Analord series. For the Analord series James used his collection of vintage synthesizer and drum machines, some of which were quite rare by that time. Some of the record inserts have pictures of rare synthesizers like the Synton Fenix, and the notoriously difficult-to-program Roland MC-4 sequencer, as well as the legendary Roland TB-303.
In 2007 media reports indicated that Aphex Twin was recording under a new alias called The Tuss. Rephlex Records has denied that Aphex Twin is The Tuss, but Aphex Twin fans and the media have ignored Rephlex's denial and The Tuss is treated as yet another Aphex Twin project;[22][23] further evidence being provided by the fact that all Tuss tracks are published in the BMI Repertoire under the name JAMES RICHARD DAVID.[24]
Some of Aphex Twin's music was featured in the award winning documentary about the atrocities of shark finning, Sharkwater.
In March 2009 Steve Beckett of Warp Records announced a new album for a possible release but the album never materialised.[25] However, 20 more tracks were added to the Analord series in December 2009, only available through download from the Rephlex Records website.
In an October 2010 interview with British magazine Another Man, James stated that he had completed 6 albums, one of which was a remake of the unreleased Melodies from Mars, originally produced around the time of Richard D. James Album.[26] In June 2011, he spoke to Spanish magazine EL PAIS. When asked about the 6 albums, he answered 'More than 10 or 11 are already compiled, and many more songs are orphans.' He also revealed that a new album 'will show in a while' and that the reason there has been so long since his last album was that he was waiting for a divorce from his wife.[27]
Background details[link]
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The Aphex Twin name[link]
The name Aphex is derived from Aphex Systems Limited, a brand of audio signal processing equipment (itself derived from "analogue effects").[dubious – discuss] It is used with permission, as acknowledged on the back sleeves of Richard D. James Album and drukqs. He has explained in interviews that the Twin portion of his moniker is used in memory of his brother, also named Richard James, who died at birth in 1968.
Artwork[link]
James's own face, grinning or distorted in some way, is a common theme in his album covers, his music videos, and the songs themselves. The cover of I Care Because You Do features a painting of James, while the cover of Richard D. James Album presents a close-up photograph. His face is transplanted onto other peoples' bodies in the music videos of "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker". Near the end of the second track of the "Windowlicker" single (commonly referred to as "Equation"), a photo of James' face is embedded as a steganogram which is revealed when run through spectral analysis.[28] Another embedded image of James, along with collaborator Tom Jenkinson, appears in the third track of 2 Remixes by AFX, "Bonus High Frequency Sounds", encoded in SSTV format, with text relating to the release.
James has used his own photography for some of his releases, such as the elaborate album sleeve for Selected Ambient Works Volume II.
Braindance[link]
Richard's own Rephlex Records label, which he co-owns with Grant Wilson-Claridge, coined the term Braindance in 1991 to describe Aphex Twin's music.[22][29][30] Rephlex Records' official definition of Aphex Twin and his followers' music is quoted as follows: "Braindance is the genre that encompasses the best elements of all genres, e.g traditional, classical, electronic music, popular, modern, industrial, ambient, hip-hop, electro, house, techno, breakbeat, hardcore, ragga, garage, drum and bass, etc."[31]
Braindance applies to forward-thinking electronic music that can appeal to the mind as well as the desire to dance and party. Examples including Ed-DMX's Breakin' records label, µ-ziq's Planet-mu label, the Aphex Twin EP Come to Daddy and Astrobotnia Parts 1, 2 & 3.[32]
Influences[link]
At age 17, Richard D. James mentioned these influences: "Phonic Boy, Computer World, Mental Telepathy, Industrial Inc., Tomita, Tangerine Dream". Mixmaster Morris mentions on the "I Luv AFX" BBC Radio 1 Breezeblock session that James' preferred moniker while working as a DJ in Cornwall was Phonic Boy on Dope. More recently, he has said that he gets inspiration from "everyday sounds that can be emulated/reconstructed electronically, quality techno, especially from Europe, which overshadows the current hardcore pop crap." When asked about what is next for electronic music, he said "acid-techno, ambient-techno." Avant-garde music has been an influence on James, including artists such as Kraftwerk, Can, Tangerine Dream, Tod Dockstader, Xenakis, Piero Umiliani, Bernard Parmegiani, Karlheinz Stockhausen,[33] John Cage, and the French composer Erik Satie for his piano works and his ideas for furniture music.
In acknowledgment of another influence, James released Music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a compilation of music recorded by the pioneers of BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which included artists such as Delia Derbyshire,[34] on his own label, Rephlex Records.
Aphex Twin has said, "I don't really like rock & roll." Despite this, he has mentioned being a fan of Led Zeppelin, citing their use of breakbeats as an influence, as well as Pink Floyd for their psychedelic music.[35]
Many songs include sounds from and references to the ZX Spectrum. For instance, "Carn Marth" from Richard D. James Album includes the tape-loading noise of the game Sabre Wulf.
Influence on others[link]
The London Sinfonietta has performed arrangements of Aphex Twin tracks.[36] In 2005, the orchestra Alarm Will Sound released Acoustica: Alarm Will Sound Performs Aphex Twin. The album consists of acoustic arrangements of some of James's electronic tracks. He has also had an influence on rock bands like Radiohead.[37] However, he has dismissed the notion of going on tour with them: "I wouldn't play with them since I don't like them."[35] Despite his previous comments, he premiered new music alongside Radiohead guitarist/composer Jonny Greenwood in a 2011 collaboration with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki.[38] The animator David Firth has much of his work influenced and soundtracked by Aphex Twin.[39]
Intelligent Dance Music[link]
The term 'intelligent dance music', or IDM, was coined in August 1993 by the IDM mailing list based at hyperreal.org, as a term to describe the sound pioneered by the Warp Records Artificial Intelligence Series. The series featured Aphex Twin tracks (under a different pseudonym), as well as early productions from labelmates such as Autechre and LFO. The usage of this term spread in the USA and on internet messageboards, but the term is still a source of controversy and derision amongst the artists and fans, including Aphex Twin. As of October 2011 the list is still active.
I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's basically saying, 'this is intelligent and everything else is stupid.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music. (laughs) It makes me laugh, things like that. I don't use names. I just say that I like something or I don't.—Aphex Twin[40]
Aphex Twin refers to his own breakbeat tracks as breakbeat, jungle, or drum and bass interchangeably. Other genres that he indulges in include acid, ambient, ambient techno, noise, and many more.
Equipment[link]
| Synth | Synth | Drum Machine | Sampler | Sequencer | Software | Effects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roland SH-101[41] | Yamaha DX1 | Roland TR-606 | Casio SK-1 | Roland MC-4 Microcomposer | Reaktor | Alesis Quadraverb |
| Roland TB-303[41] | EMS synthi 100 | Roland TR-808[41] | ReCycle | |||
| Yamaha GX1 | Elka Synthex | Roland TR-909 | Casio FZ 10[41] | Cubase | Metasynth | |
| Synton Fenix | Roland Paraphonic 505 | Roland TR-707 | Roland SP-808 | Apple Mac | Max | |
| Roland MKS-80 | 3 Korg MS-20's[41] | Roland TR-727 | ||||
| Roland 100m[41] | Yamaha CS 5[42] | SuperCollider[43] |
During an interview with Future Music, Richard said he likes using Ableton Live but prefers Liveslice for beat editing/stretching. Asked what equipment did use, he responded "Raveolution 309, the Raven Max, MC-909 limited edition, Quasimidi Van Helden, MAM Freebass 383, Roland DJ-70, E-15, SP-808, Akai S3200, Behringer MX602A and all the Behringer effects that copy other things."[44]
Aphex Twin's press[link]
James described himself in The Guardian as follows: "I'm just some irritating, lying, ginger kid from Cornwall who should have been locked up in some youth detention centre. I just managed to escape and blag it into music."[1]
James said he composed ambient techno music at the age of 13; he claims to have "over 100 hours" of unreleased music, and to have made his own software to compose with, including algorithmic processes that automatically generate beats and melodies; in addition he claims to experience synaesthesia, and that he is able to incorporate lucid dreaming into the process of making music.[45]
He lives in southeast London in a converted bank, which was formerly the Bank of Cyprus and then HSBC. Contrary to popular opinion, however, he does not own the silver structure in the centre of the roundabout at Elephant and Castle. This is, in fact, the Michael Faraday Memorial, containing a power transformer for the Northern Line, which James jokingly claimed to be buying in an interview with The Face magazine in 2001.[2] Some of these rumours are hard to confirm as he has been known to spread mistruths in the prankster tradition, making such claims as only sleeping two to three hours a night.[46]
Stockhausen vs. The Technocrats[link]
In November 1995, The Wire published an article titled "Advice to Clever Children". In the process of producing the interview, a package of tapes containing music from several artists, including Aphex Twin, was sent to Karlheinz Stockhausen.
Stockhausen commented:
I heard the piece Aphex Twin of Richard James (sic) carefully: I think it would be very helpful if he listens to my work "Song of the Youth," which is electronic music, and a young boy's voice singing with himself. Because he would then immediately stop with all these post-African repetitions, and he would look for changing tempi and changing rhythms, and he would not allow to repeat any rhythm if it varied to some extent and if it did not have a direction in its sequence of variations.[47]
Aphex Twin, a fan of Stockhausen, responded:
ZX81 competition[link]
Richard claims to have produced sound on a Sinclair ZX81 (a machine with no sound hardware) at the age of 11:
When I was 11, I won 50 pounds in a competition for writing this program that made sound on a ZX81. You couldn't make sound on a ZX81, but I played around with machine code and found some codes that retuned the TV signal so that it made this really weird noise when you turned the volume up.[2]
Discography[link]
Main article: Richard D. James discography
- Studio albums (as Aphex Twin)
- Selected Ambient Works 85–92 (1992)
- Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994)
- ...I Care Because You Do (1995)
- Richard D. James Album (1996)
- Drukqs (2001)
References[link]
- ^ a b Lester, Paul (5 October 2001). "Tank boy". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,,734809,00.html. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ a b c d O'Connell, John (October 2001). "Untitled". The Face. EMAP. http://www.aphextwin.nu/learn/100771194880071.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Stern, Theresa (September 1997). "Interview by Theresa Stern". The Aphex Twin Community. Archived from the original on 2008-04-02. http://web.archive.org/web/20080402004414/http://xltronic.com/nostalgia/aphextwin.nu/v4/learn/98494129834161.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ "Rephlexology". mad.co.uk. 28 November 2003. http://www.mad.co.uk/Main/Home/Articles/c81bcea15aae4394b3eed3c859b0c2ff/Rephlexology.html. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Middleton, Benjamin (October 1992). "~~ rephlex ~~ aphex ~~ drn ~~". http://groups.google.com/group/alt.rave/browse_thread/thread/bd94e30720889cc4?pli=1.
- ^ Robinson, Dave (April 1993). "The Aphex Effect". Future Music.
- ^ Murray, Janet (12 June 2007). "College days". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2100257,00.html. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Middleton, Benjamin (30 October 1992). "~~ rephlex ~~ aphex ~~ drn ~~". alt.rave. http://groups.google.com/group/alt.rave/browse_thread/thread/bd94e30720889cc4/7958a9d0de1c453d?. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Turenne, Martin (April 2003). "Aphex Twin - The Contrarian". Exclaim!. http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/timeline.aspx. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Wilson-Claridge, Grant (30 November 1992). "~~~ The definitive RePHLeX ~~~". alt.rave. http://groups.google.com/group/alt.rave/browse_thread/thread/2b1d14ae853ba101/7a4d8b6191bb3e55?. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Toop, David (March 1994). "Lost in space". The Face. EMAP. Archived from the original on 2008-06-03. http://web.archive.org/web/20080603074638/http://xltronic.com/nostalgia/aphextwin.nu/v4/learn/98136154898147.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Bush, John. "Review". Allmusic. All Media Guide. http://www.allmusic.com/album/r191406/review. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Blashill, Pat (19 November 2002). "Selected Ambient Works 85-92". Rolling Stone. Wenner Publishing. http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/aphextwin/albums/album/218371/review/6067595/selected_ambient_works_8592. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Pecoraro, David (20 February 2002). "Selected Ambient Works 85-92". Pitchfork Media. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/14986-selected-ambient-works-85-92. Retrieved 2008-10-19.
- ^ "Biography". The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. 2001. http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/aphextwin/biography. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Hobbs, Mary Anne (6 December 2005). "tracklisting". Mary Anne Hobbs. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/maryannehobbs/tracklistingarchive.shtml?20051206. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ "The Saw II Graphical F.A.Q". The Aphex Twin Community. 2001. Archived from the original on 2008-03-04. http://web.archive.org/web/20080304212918/http://xltronic.com/nostalgia/aphextwin.nu/v4/learn/98491895499398.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ The Aphex Twin Community / Learn / Interviews & Articles / Eponymous Rex Interview
- ^ BBC Widescreen Digital Test Transmission - 1998 - YouTube
- ^ Blashill, Pat (17 October 2001). "Drukqs". Rolling Stone. Wenner Publishing. http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/182317/drukqs. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ "Synths, drukqs and rock'n'roll". The Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax Media). 9 January 2004. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/08/1073437402717.html. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ a b Pattison, Louis (26 May 2007). "Dancing in the dark". The Guardian (London: Guardian Media Group). http://music.guardian.co.uk/electronic/story/0,,2088396,00.html. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Phelan, Benjamin (24 July 2007). "Ghost in the Machine". The Village Voice (Village Voice Media). http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0731,phelan,77377,22.html. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ "BMI's entries for RICHARD DAVID JAMES". http://repertoire.bmi.com/writer.asp?blnWriter=True&blnPublisher=True&blnArtist=True&page=1&fromrow=1&torow=25&querytype=WriterID&keyid=533933&keyname=JAMES%20RICHARD%20DAVID&CAE=176937227&Affiliation=PRS. Retrieved 25 November 2008.
- ^ BBC - 6 Music - Aphex Twin album
- ^ Pitchfork Media article
- ^ Google Translate
- ^ "The Aphex Face". bastwood.com. http://www.bastwood.com/aphex.php. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ "Rephlex - the Record Label". h2g2. BBC. 28 August 2002. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A795639. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ "The Braindance Coincidence". The Milk Factory. May 2001. http://www.themilkfactory.co.uk/music/rephlex.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ "what is braindance?". rephlex.com. Archived from the original on 2001-03-02. http://web.archive.org/web/20010302124112/http://www.rephlex.com/braindance.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Cooper, Paul (4 October 2002). "Astrobotnia Parts 1, 2 & 3". Pitchfork Media. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/15080-parts-1-2-3?artist_title=15080-parts-1-2-3. Retrieved 2008-04-16.
- ^ Lester, Paul (5 October 2001). "Tank boy". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2001/oct/05/artsfeatures3. Retrieved 2010-04-25.
- ^ Sweet, Matthew (17 March 2002). "Queen of the wired frontier". The Observer (London: Guardian Media Group). http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2002/mar/17/featuresreview.review. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ a b Perez, Arturo (16 March 2002). "Interview: Aphex Twin". Kludge Magazine. http://web.archive.org/web/20090501160746/http://kludgemagazine.com/interviews/Aphex_Twin/2002-07-18/. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Llewellyn, Kati; Solarski, Matthew (13 September 2006). "London Sinfonietta Tackles Aphex Twin, Squarepusher". Pitchfork Media. http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/38533-london-sinfonietta-tackles-aphex-twin-squarepusher. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Tranter, Rhys (17 June 2003). "Everything in its Right Place...". Collective. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A1080983. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ Robbins, Winston (11 September 2011). "Video: Jonny Greenwood, Aphex Twin perform alongside Krzysztof Penderecki". Consequence of Sound. http://consequenceofsound.net/2011/09/video-jonny-greenwood-aphex-twin-perform-alongside-krzysztof-penderecki/. Retrieved 2011-09-12.
- ^ "Interview with Salad Fingers Creator David Firth."
- ^ "Interview by Jason Gross". Perfect Sound Forever. September 1997. http://www.furious.com/perfect/aphextwin.html. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
- ^ a b c d e f [The Aphex Effect| Future Music | April 1993 | Dave Robinson |futuremusic.co.uk ]
- ^ Music Thing: Aphex Twin sleevenotes, scrawled on a vintage synth
- ^ Dartmouth Symposium on the Future of Computer Music Software: A Panel Discussion, Computer Music Journal (2002) Vol. 26, No. 4, Pages 13-30 doi:10.1162/014892602320991347
- ^ Music Thing: Aphex Twin interview in Future Music
- ^ Anderson, Don (1999). "Aphex Twin: Mad Musician or Investment Banker?". Space Age Bachelor. http://www.space-age-bachelor.com/archives/aphex-twin. Retrieved 2011-03-10.
- ^ Reynolds, Simon (1998). Generation Ecstasy. Little, Brown and Company. pp. 186, 189. ISBN 0-316-74111-6.
- ^ a b Witts, Dick; Young, Rob (November 1995). "Advice to Clever Children". The Wire 67 (141): 553. DOI:10.2175/106143095X135840. http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/425/print. Retrieved 2008-06-14.
External links[link]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Aphex Twin |
- Aphex Twin at Warp Records
- Aphex Twin at the Open Directory Project
- Aphex Twin discography at Discogs.
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Aphex Twin |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1971-08-18 |
| Place of birth | Limerick, Ireland |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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For the 1953 science fiction novel, see The Transcendent Man.
| Transcendent Man | |
|---|---|
| File:Transcendent man poster.jpg Theatrical release poster |
|
| Directed by | Barry Ptolemy |
| Produced by | Barry Ptolemy Felicia Ptolemy |
| Starring | Ray Kurzweil |
| Music by | Philip Glass |
| Cinematography | Shawn Dufraine |
| Editing by | Meg Decker Doobie White |
| Studio | Ptolemaic Productions Therapy Studios |
| Distributed by | Docurama |
| Running time | 83 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Transcendent Man is a 2009 documentary film by American filmmaker Barry Ptolemy about inventor, futurist and author Ray Kurzweil and his predictions about the future of technology in his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near. In the film, Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around the world as he discusses his thoughts on the technological singularity, a proposed advancement that will occur sometime in the 21st century when progress in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics will result in the creation of a human-machine civilization.
William Morris Endeavor distributed the film partnership with Ptolemaic Productions and Therapy Studios, using an original model involving a nationwide screening tour of the film (featuring Q&A sessions with Ptolemy and Kurzweil), as well as separate digital and DVD releases. The film was also released on iTunes and On-Demand on March 1, 2011, and on DVD on May 24, 2011.[1]
Contents |
Synopsis[link]
Raymond Kurzweil, noted inventor and futurist, is a man who refuses to accept the inevitability of physical death. He proposes that the Law of Accelerating Returns—the exponential increase in the growth of information technology—will result in a "singularity", a point where humanity and machines will merge, allowing one to transcend biological mortality: advances in genetics will provide the knowledge to reprogram biology, eliminate disease and stop the aging process; nanotechnology will keep humans healthy from the inside using robotic red blood cells and provide a human-computer interface within the brain; robotics, or artificial intelligence, will make superhuman intelligence possible, including the ability to back up the mind.
Against this optimistic backdrop of human and machine evolution, concerns about Kurzweil's predictions are raised by technology experts, philosophers, and commentators. Physician William B. Hurlbut warns of tragedy and views Kurzweil's claims as lacking a more moderate approach necessitated by biological science. AI engineer Ben Goertzel champions the transhumanist vision, but acknowledges the possibility of a dystopian outcome. AI researcher Hugo de Garis warns of a coming "Artilect War", where god-like artificial intellects and those who want to build them, will fight against those who don't. Kevin Warwick, professor of Cybernetics at University of Reading, advocates the benefits of the singularity, but suggests the Terminator scenario could also occur. Dean Kamen observes that advances in technology have finally made immortality a reasonable goal.
Cast[link]
- Tom Abate, Technology Reporter, San Francisco Chronicle.
- Hugo De Garis, Professor of Computer Science and Mathematical Physics, Xiamen University.
- Peter Diamandis, Chairman, X Prize Foundation.
- Neil Gershenfeld, Director, Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT.
- Ben Goertzel, Artificial Intelligence Engineer.
- William Hurlbut, Consulting Professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University.
- Kevin Kelly, Co-founder, Wired.
- Aaron Kleiner, Kurzweil Technologies
- Hannah Kurzweil, mother of Ray Kurzweil
- Ray Kurzweil
- Sonya R. Kurzweil, wife of Ray Kurzweil
- Robert Metcalfe, co-inventor of Ethernet, founder of 3Com, and one of first students at DEC.
- Chuck Missler, Technologist/Koinonia Institute
- Colin Powell, retired four-star general in the United States Army.
- Steve Rabinowitz, college friend from MIT.
- Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life
- William Shatner
- Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics, University of Reading.
- Stevie Wonder
Music[link]
American composer Philip Glass scored the original soundtrack for the film. In addition to the Transcendent Man score, other music from Glass's collection was included in the soundtrack.
- "A Brief History of Time"
- "Koyaanisqatsi"
- "Kyoko's House" (from Mishima)
- "Religion" (from Naqoyqatsi)
- ""Satyagraha Act III" (Conclusion)
- "Symphony No. 3"
- "The Thin Blue Line"
- "Tirol Concerto for Piano and Orchestra"
Release[link]
The Transcendent Man tour visited five major cities in the U.S., as well as London. These screenings featured question and answer sessions with director Barry Ptolemy and Ray Kurzweil following the film, as well as V.I.P. receptions.[2][non-primary source needed]
Ptolemaic Productions and Therapy Studios have pursued an alternative distribution strategy for Transcendent Man, going through the Global and Music departments of agency William Morris Endeavor to partner with iTunes and Media-on-Demand for a March 1, 2011 digital release and with New Media for a May 24, 2011 DVD release.[1] Marketing made use of social media and emerging technologies like QR codes to appeal to a tech-savvy audience.[citation needed]
File:TM Prod Still2.jpg
Ray Kurzweil being interviewed by Barry Ptolemy on the set of Transcendent Man.
Reception[link]
The film debuted for the first public screening at the Time-Life Building in New York City on February 3, 2011. The same week TIME magazine ran the Singularity cover story by Lev Grossman with coverage about Kurzweil's ideas and the concepts citing Transcendent Man. Kurzweil toured the film appearing on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News and The Charlie Rose Show. Additionally, Kurzweil went on to discuss the film on The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Real Time with Bill Maher.
Film festivals[link]
- April 28, 2009 - Tribeca Film Festival, World Documentary Feature Competition.[3]
- November 5, 2009 - American Film Institute film festival, Los Angeles.[citation needed]
- November 24, 2009 - International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Amsterdam, Netherlands, screened in competition.[citation needed]
- March 2010 - Martha's Vineyard Film Festival.[4]
Criticism[link]
One common criticism of Kurzweil's final prediction is that he does not consider that new technologies are never universally and immediately adopted due to the laws of economics. Start-up costs and economies of scale mean that initially transhumanist technology would be prohibitively expensive for most people. This would cause the wealthy, first adopters of brain enhancing technology to be transcendental above the less fortunate. One response to this criticism uses the technology of the automobile as an example. Even though a rich person might drive an expensive Rolls-Royce, cheaper alternatives are available that perform the same task. In other words, no matter how much two cars differ in price, their function is virtually identical. One important element of Kurzweil's singularity, is that the cost will come down to virtually nothing.
Kurzweil readily defends AI as being controllable against malicious behavior, which he accepts is a definite threat. He never, on the other hand, confronts the obvious dangers of AI fusing with the first humans.[4]
References[link]
- ^ a b Stewart, A. (January 11, 2011). Futurist Kurzweil goes worldwide with 'Man'. Variety. Retrieved September 10, 2011.
- ^ Transcendent Man Film Screening Live with Ray Kurzweil
- ^ Lyons, D. (May 16, 2009). I, Robot. Newsweek; Terranova, G. (2009). Transcendent Man. Tribeca Film Festival.
- ^ a b Robards, B. (March 11, 2010). Martha's Vineyard Film Festival this weekend. The Martha's Vineyard Times.
Further reading[link]
- Barker, A. (November 23, 2009). Transcendent Man. Variety. 417 (2), 34.
- Gefter, A. (May 8, 2009). Film review: Transcendent Man. New Scientist. 202 (2707), 27. ISSN 02624079
- Shermer, M. (April 1, 2011). The Immortalist. Science. 332 (6025), 40. doi:10.1126/science.1205601
- Tucker, P. (2009). The Cinematic Singularitarian. The Futurist. 43 (5), 60.
External links[link]
http://wn.com/Transcendent_Man
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendent_Man
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
 |
This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (May 2012) |
| Ray Kurzweil | |
|---|---|
 Ray Kurzweil |
|
| Born | (1948-02-12) February 12, 1948 (age 64) Queens, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Author, entrepreneur and futurist |
| Spouse | Sonya R. Kurzweil |
| Children | Ethan, Amy |
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ KURZ-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, inventor and futurist. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism.
Contents
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Life, inventions, and business career[link]
Early life[link]
Ray Kurzweil grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. He was born to secular Jewish parents who had escaped Austria just before the onset of World War II, and he was exposed via Unitarian Universalism to a diversity of religious faiths during his upbringing. His father was a musician and composer and his mother was a visual artist. His uncle, an engineer at Bell Labs, taught young Ray the basics of computer science.[1] In his youth, he was an avid reader of science fiction literature. In 1963, at age fifteen, he wrote his first computer program.[2] Later in high school he created a pattern-recognition software program that analyzed the works of classical composers, and then synthesized its own songs in similar styles. In 1965, he was invited to appear on the CBS television program I've Got a Secret, where he performed a piano piece that was composed by a computer he also had built.[3] Later that year, he won first prize in the International Science Fair for the invention;[4] he was also recognized by the Westinghouse Talent Search and was personally congratulated by President Lyndon B. Johnson during a White House ceremony.
Mid-life[link]
In 1968, during his sophomore year at MIT, Kurzweil started a company that used a computer program to match high school students with colleges. The program, called the Select College Consulting Program, was designed by him and compared thousands of different criteria about each college with questionnaire answers submitted by each student applicant. When he was 20, he sold the company to Harcourt, Brace & World for $100,000 (roughly $500,000 in 2006 dollars) plus royalties.[5] He obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Literature in 1970 from MIT.
In 1974, Kurzweil started the company Kurzweil Computer Products, Inc. and led development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system—a computer program capable of recognizing text written in any normal font. Before that time, scanners had only been able to read text written in a few fonts. He decided that the best application of this technology would be to create a reading machine, which would allow blind people to understand written text by having a computer read it to them aloud. However, this device required the invention of two enabling technologies—the CCD flatbed scanner and the text-to-speech synthesizer. Development of these technologies was completed at other institutions such as Bell Labs, and on January 13, 1976, the finished product was unveiled during a news conference headed by him and the leaders of the National Federation of the Blind. Called the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the device covered an entire tabletop. It gained him mainstream recognition: on the day of the machine's unveiling, Walter Cronkite used the machine to give his signature soundoff, "And that's the way it is, January 13, 1976." While listening to The Today Show, musician Stevie Wonder heard a demonstration of the device and purchased the first production version of the Kurzweil Reading Machine, beginning a lifelong friendship between himself and Kurzweil.
According to former Kurzweil Computer Products employees, the Kurzweil Reading Machine's designer was engineer Richard Brown, a KCP employee at the time[citation needed].
Kurzweil's next major business venture began in 1978, when Kurzweil Computer Products began selling a commercial version of the optical character recognition computer program. LexisNexis was one of the first customers, and bought the program to upload paper legal and news documents onto its nascent online databases.
Two years later, Kurzweil sold his company to Lernout & Hauspie. Following the bankruptcy of the latter, the system became a subsidiary of Xerox formerly known as Scansoft and now as Nuance Communications, and he functioned as a consultant for the former until 1995.
Kurzweil's next business venture was in the realm of electronic music technology. After a 1982 meeting with Stevie Wonder, in which the latter lamented the divide in capabilities and qualities between electronic synthesizers and traditional musical instruments, Kurzweil was inspired to create a new generation of music synthesizers capable of accurately duplicating the sounds of real instruments. Kurzweil Music Systems was founded in the same year, and in 1984, the Kurzweil K250 was unveiled. The machine was capable of imitating a number of instruments, and in tests musicians were unable to discern the difference between the Kurzweil K250 on piano mode from a normal grand piano.[6] The recording and mixing abilities of the machine, coupled with its abilities to imitate different instruments made it possible for a single user to compose and play an entire orchestral piece.
Kurzweil Music Systems was sold to Korean musical instrument manufacturer Young Chang in 1990. As with Xerox, Kurzweil remained as a consultant for several years. Hyundai acquired Young Chang in 2006 and in January 2007 has appointed Raymond Kurzweil as Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems.[7]
Later life[link]
Concurrent with Kurzweil Music Systems, Kurzweil created the company Kurzweil Applied Intelligence (KAI) to develop computer speech recognition systems for commercial use. The first product, which debuted in 1987, was an early speech recognition program.
Kurzweil started Kurzweil Educational Systems in 1996 to develop new pattern-recognition-based computer technologies to help people with disabilities such as blindness, dyslexia and ADD in school. Products include the Kurzweil 1000 text-to-speech converter software program, which enables a computer to read electronic and scanned text aloud to blind or visually impaired users, and the Kurzweil 3000 program, which is a multifaceted electronic learning system that helps with reading, writing, and study skills.
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During the 1990s Kurzweil founded the Medical Learning Company.[8] The company's products included an interactive computer education program for doctors and a computer-simulated patient. Around the same time, Kurzweil started KurzweilCyberArt.com—a website featuring computer programs to assist the creative art process. The site used to offer free downloads of a program called AARON—a visual art synthesizer developed by Harold Cohen—and of "Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet", which automatically creates poetry. During this period he also started KurzweilAI.net, a website devoted towards showcasing news of scientific developments, publicizing the ideas of high-tech thinkers and critics alike, and promoting futurist-related discussion among the general population through the Mind-X forum.
In 1999, Kurzweil created a hedge fund called "FatKat" (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies), which began trading in 2006. He has stated that the ultimate aim is to improve the performance of FatKat's A.I. investment software program, enhancing its ability to recognize patterns in "currency fluctuations and stock-ownership trends."[9] He predicted in his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines, that computers will one day prove superior to the best human financial minds at making profitable investment decisions. In 2001, Canadian rock band Our Lady Peace released an album, titled Spiritual Machines, based on Kurzweil's book. Kurzweil's voice was featured in the album, reading excerpts from his book.
In June 2005, Kurzweil introduced the "Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader" (K-NFB Reader)—a pocket-sized device consisting of a digital camera and computer unit. Like the Kurzweil Reading Machine of almost 30 years before, the K-NFB Reader is designed to aid blind people by reading written text aloud. The newer machine is portable and scans text through digital camera images, while the older machine is large and scans text through flatbed scanning.
Kurzweil made a movie called The Singularity Is Near: A True Story About the Future[10] in 2010 based, in part, on his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near. Part fiction, part non-fiction, he interviews 20 big thinkers like Marvin Minsky, plus there is a B-line narrative story that illustrates some of the ideas, where a computer avatar (Ramona) saves the world from self-replicating microscopic robots.
In addition to his movie, an independent, feature-length documentary was made about Kurzweil, his life, and his ideas called Transcendent Man. Filmmakers Barry Ptolemy and Felicia Ptolemy followed Kurzweil, documenting his global speaking tour. Premiered in 2009 at the Tribeca Film Festival,[10] Transcendent Man documents Kurzweil's quest to reveal mankind's ultimate destiny and explores many of the ideas found in his New York Times bestselling book, The Singularity Is Near, including his concept of exponential growth, radical life expansion, and how we will transcend our biology. The Ptolemys documented Kurzweil's stated goal of bringing back his late father using AI. The film also features critics who argue against Kurzweil's predictions.
In 2010, an independent documentary film called Plug & Pray premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival, in which Kurzweil and one of his major critics, the late Joseph Weizenbaum, argue about the benefits of eternal life.[11]
Kurzweil frequently comments on the application of cell-size nanotechnology to the workings of the human brain and how this could be applied to building AI. While being interviewed for a February 2009 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Kurzweil expressed a desire to construct a genetic copy of his late father, Fredric Kurzweil, from DNA within his grave site. This feat would be achieved by exhumation and extraction of DNA, constructing a clone of Fredric and retrieving memories and recollections—from Ray's mind—of his father.[12]
Family[link]
Kurzweil is married with two children. His wife, Sonya, is a child psychologist while his son works as a venture capitalist and his daughter as a choreographer.[13]
Books[link]
Kurzweil's first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, was published in 1990. The nonfiction work discusses the history of computer AI and also makes forecasts regarding future developments. Other experts in the field of AI contribute heavily to the work in the form of essays. The Association of American Publishers' awarded it the status of Most Outstanding Computer Science Book of 1990.[14]
Next, Kurzweil published a book on nutrition in 1993 called The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life. The book's main idea is that high levels of fat intake are the cause of many health disorders common in the U.S., and thus that cutting fat consumption down to 10% of the total calories consumed would be optimal for most people.
In 1998, Kurzweil published The Age of Spiritual Machines, which focuses heavily on further elucidating his theories regarding the future of technology, which themselves stem from his analysis of long-term trends in biological and technological evolution. Much focus goes into examining the likely course of AI development, along with the future of computer architecture.
Kurzweil's next book published in 2004, returned to the subject of human health and nutrition. Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever was co-authored by Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, a medical doctor and specialist in alternative medicine.
The Singularity Is Near was published in 2005. The book was made into a movie starring Pauley Perrette (NCIS).[15]
In February 2007, Ptolemaic Productions acquired the rights to The Singularity is Near, The Age of Spiritual Machines and Fantastic Voyage including the rights to Kurzweil's life and ideas for the film Transcendent Man. The feature length documentary was directed by Barry Ptolemy.
Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever,[16] a follow-up to Fantastic Voyage, was released on April 28, 2009.
Kurzweil's newest book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, is scheduled for release on October 2, 2012. [17]
Recognition and awards[link]
Kurzweil was referred to by Forbes as "the ultimate thinking machine."[18]
Kurzweil has received many awards and honors, including:
- First place in the 1965 International Science Fair[4] for inventing the classical music synthesizing computer.
- The 1978 Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. The award is given annually to one "outstanding young computer professional" and is accompanied by a $35,000 prize.[19] Kurzweil won it for his invention of the Kurzweil Reading Machine.[20]
- The 1990 "Engineer of the Year" award from Design News.[21]
- The 1994 Dickson Prize in Science. One is awarded every year by Carnegie Mellon University to individuals who have "notably advanced the field of science." Both a medal and a $50,000 prize are presented to winners.[22]
- The 1998 "Inventor of the Year" award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[23]
- The 1999 National Medal of Technology.[24] This is the highest award the President of the United States can bestow upon individuals and groups for pioneering new technologies, and the President dispenses the award at his discretion.[25] Bill Clinton presented Kurzweil with the National Medal of Technology during a White House ceremony in recognition of Kurzweil's development of computer-based technologies to help the disabled.
- The 2000 Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology.[26] Two other individuals also received the same honor that year. The award is presented yearly to people who "exemplify the life, times and standard of contribution of Tesla, Westinghouse and Nunn."
- The 2001 Lemelson-MIT Prize for a lifetime of developing technologies to help the disabled and to enrich the arts.[27] Only one is meted out each year to highly successful, mid-career inventors. A $500,000 award accompanies the prize.[28]
- Kurzweil was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002 for inventing the Kurzweil Reading Machine.[29] The organization "honors the women and men responsible for the great technological advances that make human, social and economic progress possible."[30] Fifteen other people were inducted into the Hall of Fame the same year.[31]
- The Arthur C. Clarke Lifetime Achievement Award on April 20, 2009 for lifetime achievement as an inventor and futurist in computer-based technologies.[32]
- Kurzweil has received seventeen honorary doctorates between 1982 and 2010.[citation needed]
- In 2011, Kurzweil was named a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.[33]
Involvement with futurism and transhumanism[link]
Kurzweil is generally recognized as a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, due to his stances on life extension technologies, his efforts to forecast future advances in technology, and his interest in the concept of the technological singularity. At the same time, he has attracted significant criticism from scientists and thinkers.
Kurzweil's central argument is derived from the predictions of Moore's Law that the rate of innovation of computer technology is increasing not linearly but rather exponentially. According to Kurzweil's argument, since growth in so many fields of science and technology depends upon computing power, these improvements translate into exponentially more frequent advances in non-computer sciences like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and materials science. Kurzweil refers to this concept as the "Law of Accelerating Returns", and has asserted that this is supported by a number of metrics.
Kurzweil has forecast a number of specific technological advances with specific dates in his books, stating that before 2050 medical advances will allow people to radically extend their lifespans while preserving quality of life through the use of nanobots,[3][34] that a computer will pass the Turing test by 2029, that the first strong artificial intelligence will be a computer simulation of a human brain generated by nanorobotic brain scanning, sentient artificial intelligences will exhibit moral thinking and respect humans, and that the line between humans and machines will blur as machines attain human-level intelligence and humans start incorporating more technology.
Kurzweil's application of his law to forecasting innovations have been disputed by other scientists and writers.[35]
Kurzweil's standing as a futurist and Transhumanist has led to his involvement in several Singularity-themed organizations. In December 2004, Kurzweil joined the advisory board of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.[36] In October 2005, Kurzweil joined the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation.[37] On May 13, 2006, Kurzweil was the first speaker at the Stanford University Singularity Summit.[38]
In February 2009, Kurzweil, in collaboration with Google and the NASA Ames Research Center, announced the creation of the Singularity University training center for corporate executives and government officials. The University's self-described mission is to "assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges".[39] Using Vernor Vinge's Singularity concept as a foundation, the University offered its first nine-week graduate program to forty students in June, 2009.
Stance on nanotechnology[link]
Kurzweil is on the Army Science Advisory Board, has testified before Congress on the subject of nanotechnology, and has advocated that nanotechnology could solve significant global problems such as poverty, disease, and climate change, viz. "Nanotech Could Give Global Warming a Big Chill ".[40] In media appearances, Kurzweil has stressed the extreme potential dangers of nanotechnology,[3] but argues that in practice, progress cannot be stopped, and any attempt to do so will retard the progress of defensive and beneficial technologies more than the malevolent ones, increasing the danger. He suggests that the proper place of regulation is to make sure progress proceeds safely and quickly.
[edit] The Law of Accelerating Returns
Main article: Accelerating change
In his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines Kurzweil proposed "The Law of Accelerating Returns", according to which the rate of change in a wide variety of evolutionary systems (including the growth of technologies) tends to increase exponentially.[41] He gave further focus to this issue in a 2001 essay entitled "The Law of Accelerating Returns", which proposed an extension of Moore's law to a wide variety of technologies, and used this to argue in favor of Vernor Vinge's concept of a technological singularity.[42]
Predictions[link]
Main article: Predictions made by Ray Kurzweil
[edit] The Age of Intelligent Machines
Kurzweil's first book, The Age of Intelligent Machines, presented his ideas about the future. It was written from 1986 to 1989 and published in 1990. Building on Ithiel de Sola Pool's "Technologies of Freedom" (1983), Kurzweil claims to have forecast the demise of the Soviet Union due to new technologies such as cellular phones and fax machines disempowering authoritarian governments by removing state control over the flow of information. In the book Kurzweil also extrapolated preexisting trends in the improvement of computer chess software performance to predict correctly that computers would beat the best human players by 1998, and most likely in that year. In fact, the event occurred in May 1997 when chess World Champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM's Deep Blue computer in a well-publicized chess tournament. Perhaps most significantly, Kurzweil foresaw the explosive growth in worldwide Internet use that began in the 1990s. At the time of the publication of The Age of Intelligent Machines, there were only 2.6 million Internet users in the world,[43] and the medium was unreliable, difficult to use, and deficient in content. He also stated that the Internet would explode not only in the number of users but in content as well, eventually granting users access "to international networks of libraries, data bases, and information services". Additionally, Kurzweil claims to have correctly foreseen that the preferred mode of Internet access would inevitably be through wireless systems, and he was also correct to estimate that the latter would become practical for widespread use in the early 21st century.
Kurzweil also claims to have accurately forecast that, by the end of the 1990s, many documents would exist solely in computers and on the Internet, and that they would commonly be embedded with sounds, animations, and videos that would inhibit their transfer to paper format. Moreover, he claims to have foreseen that cellular phones would grow in popularity while shrinking in size for the foreseeable future.
[edit] The Age of Spiritual Machines
In 1999, Kurzweil published a second book titled The Age of Spiritual Machines, which goes into more depth explaining his futurist ideas. The third and final section of the book is devoted to elucidating the specific course of technological advancements Kurzweil predicts the world will experience over the next century.
[edit] The Singularity is Near
While this book focuses on the future of technology and the human race as did The Age of Intelligent Machines and The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil makes very few concrete, short-term predictions in The Singularity Is Near, though longer-term visions are present in abundance. He recently discussed the singularity with Vice Magazine.[44]
Solar Power and Grand Challenges of the 21st Century[link]
In 2008, Ray Kurzweil said in an expert panel in the National Academy of Engineering that solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth's people in 20 years.[45]
Work on nutrition, health, and lifestyle[link]
Kurzweil admits that he cared little for his health until age 35, when he was diagnosed with a glucose intolerance, an early form of type II diabetes (a major risk factor for heart disease). Kurzweil then found a doctor that shares his non-conventional beliefs to develop an extreme regimen involving hundreds of pills, chemical i.v. treatments, red wine and various other methods to attempt to live longer.
Kurzweil ingests "250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea" every day and drinks several glasses of red wine a week in an effort to "reprogram" his biochemistry.[46] Lately, he has cut down the number of supplement pills to 150.[47]
Kurzweil joined the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics company. In the event of his death, Kurzweil's body will be chemically preserved, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at an Alcor facility in the hope that future medical technology will be able to revive him.[citation needed]
Kurzweil has authored three books on the subjects of nutrition, health and immortality: The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and TRANSCEND: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever.[48] In all, he recommends that other people emulate his health practices to the best of their abilities.
Kurzweil and his current "anti-aging" doctor, Terry Grossman, MD., now have two websites promoting their first[49] and second book.[50]
Stance on religion[link]
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Though Kurzweil's parents were Jewish, they raised him as a Unitarian Universalist and exposed him to many different faiths during his youth. Kurzweil presented sermons at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego in January 2000 upon publication of The Age of Spiritual Machines. He gave a 2007 keynote speech to the United Church of Christ in Hartford, Connecticut, alongside Barack Obama, who was then a Presidential candidate. In The Singularity is Near he expresses his belief in a need for a new religion based on the principle of mutual respect between sentient life forms, and on the principle of respecting knowledge. This religion would not have a leader, instead being purely personal to adherents.
The documentary Transcendent Man (2009) reveals some aspects of Kurzweil's spiritual beliefs. He discusses how he was raised, saying that recent exciting events, whether they were scientific discoveries, inventions, or something sociological or something else, were often topics that came up at the dinner table. He says that human knowledge was highly respected in his family, and particularly the ability for humans to overcome challenges. He says this respect for human knowledge was personalized even, and was part of the religion, if you will, of his family.
Parts of the film discuss the vast level of superiority computers already have versus humans at most basic tasks, such as math. Some say that the artificial intelligences we may build in the future will be gods, or god-like. Kurzweil seems to indicate however that the AIs paving the future will actually be us, man merged with machine, rather than (or perhaps in addition to) separate robot entities apart from ourselves.
At the end of the film, Kurzweil talks more about his ideas about the future and particularly about this unification of all people on Earth, followed by an expansion of our civilization and consciousness outward into the universe (after the singularity takes place), "waking up" things in its path (bringing consciousness).
His abridged way of saying it is that "it will be the universe waking up." After this, the loud, triumphant music that had been accompanying the scene cuts out, and the camera focuses back on Kurzweil, who then finishes the film by saying:
"So you might ask 'Does god exist?' Well, I would say not yet."
Criticism[link]
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This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (April 2010) |
Kurzweil's ideas have generated much criticism within the scientific community and in the media. There are philosophical arguments over whether a machine can "think" (see Philosophy of artificial intelligence). Mitch Kapor, the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, has called the notion of a technological singularity "intelligent design for the IQ 140 people...This proposition that we're heading to this point at which everything is going to be just unimaginably different—it's fundamentally, in my view, driven by a religious impulse. And all of the frantic arm-waving can't obscure that fact for me."[51]
VR pioneer Jaron Lanier has been one of the strongest critics of Kurzweil’s ideas, describing them as “cybernetic totalism”, and has outlined his views on the culture surrounding Kurzweil’s predictions in an essay for Edge.org entitled One Half of a Manifesto.[52]
Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, has said of Kurzweil's and Hans Moravec's books: "It’s as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they're not stupid."[53]
Although the idea of a technological singularity is a popular concept in science fiction, some authors such as Neal Stephenson[54] and Bruce Sterling have voiced scepticism about its real-world plausibility. Sterling expressed his views on the singularity scenario in a talk at the Long Now Foundation entitled The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole.[55][56] Other prominent AI thinkers and computer scientists such as Daniel Dennett,[57] Rodney Brooks,[58] and David Gelernter[59] have also criticized Kurzweil’s projections.
Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, agrees with Kurzweil's timeline of future progress, but thinks that technologies such as AI, nanotechnology and advanced biotechnology will create a dystopian world.[60]
Daniel Lyons, writing in Newsweek, criticized Kurzweil for some of his predictions which turned out to be wrong; such as the economy continuing to boom from the 1998 dot-com through 2009, a US company having a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, a supercomputer achieving 20 petaflops, speech recognition being in widespread use and cars that would drive themselves using sensors installed in highways; all by 2009.[61] To the charge that a 20 petaflop supercomputer was not produced in the time he predicted, Kurzweil responded that he considers Google a giant supercomputer, and that it is indeed capable of 20 petaflops.[61] In 2009 however IBM announced the commencement of its development of the IBM Sequoia for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administrations, which is capable of 20+ petaflops and is expected to be delivered in 2011,[non-primary source needed] two years after Kurzeil's prediction.[62]
Biologist P. Z. Myers has criticized Kurzweil's predictions as being based on "New Age spiritualism" rather than science and says that Kurzweil does not understand basic biology.[63][64]
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ "Inventor of the Week". Web.mit.edu. http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/kurzweil.html. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
- ^ "KurzweilAI.net". KurzweilAI.net. http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0467.html. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
- ^ a b c In Depth: Ray Kurzweil. Book TV. 2006-11-05. http://www.booktv.org/Program/7515/In+Depth+Ray+Kurzweil.aspx. Retrieved 2010-05-18.
- ^ a b "Alumni Honors". Society for Science and the Public. http://www.societyforscience.org/Page.aspx?pid=261. Retrieved 2010-05-18.
- ^ "Biography of Ray Kurzweil". Kurzweiltech.com. 1976-01-13. http://www.kurzweiltech.com/raybio.html. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
- ^ Donald Byrd and Christopher Yavelow (1986). "The Kurzweil 250 Digital Synthesizer". Computer Music Journal 10 (1): 64. JSTOR 3680298.
- ^ "Hyundai names Kurzweil Chief Strategy Officer of Kurzweil Music Systems". Kurzweilai.net. 2007-02-01. http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id%3D6360. Retrieved 2012-04-27.
- ^ List of Private Companies Worldwide, BusinessWeek. Investing.businessweek.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ O'Keefe, Brian (May 2, 2007). "The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth". CNN. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008848/. Retrieved May 22, 2010.
- ^ a b Raymond Kurzweil at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ Independent documentary Plug & Pray. Plugandpray-film.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Transcendent Man makes comments substantiating this at about mark 00:50 mentions resurrecting dead at about 1:10.
- ^ Ray Kurzweil, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Kurzweil Technologies | CRN.com. Retrieved on 2012-03-27.
- ^ Era of smart people is dawning. Eetimes.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ "The Singularity Is Near: IMDB". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049412/. Retrieved 2012-02-10.
- ^ "Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever". http://www.rayandterry.com/transcend/.
- ^ "SXSW Preview: Damon Lindelof Interviews Ray Kurzweil About What Hollywood Gets Wrong (Q&A)". The Hollywood Reporter. March 8, 2012. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-business/sxsw-2012-damon-lindelof-ray-kurzweil-297218.
- ^ Renowned Futurist Ray Kurzweil to Keynote the 2008 Game Developers Conference. Reuters.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ ACM Awards: Grace Murray Hopper Award. Awards.acm.org. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ ACM: Fellows Award / Raymond Kurzweil. Awards.acm.org. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Engineer of the Year Hall of Fame, 6/12/2007[dead link]
- ^ Dickson Prize. Nndb.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Corporation names new members. Web.mit.edu (2005-06-08). Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Technology Administration. THE NATIONAL MEDAL OF TECHNOLOGY RECIPIENTS. 1985–2006 Recipients. technology.gov
- ^ Technology Administration. THE NATIONAL MEDAL OF TECHNOLOGY. 2007 Events and Activities. technology.gov
- ^ Telluride Tech Festival[dead link]
- ^ Winners' Circle: Raymond Kurzweil. Web.mit.edu. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Lemelson-MIT Prize. Web.mit.edu (2006-10-27). Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Ray Kurzweil Inventor Profile. Invent.org (1948-02-12). Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Hall of Fame Overview. Invent.org. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Hall of Fame 2002. Invent.org. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ "The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation". Clarkefoundation.org. 2009-04-20. http://www.clarkefoundation.org/news/042009.php. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
- ^ "Design Futures Council Senior Fellows". Di.net. http://www.di.net/about/senior_fellows/.
- ^ Briggs, Helen (2008-02-16). "Machines 'to match man by 2029'". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248875.stm. Retrieved 2008-02-17.
- ^ "Ray Kurzweil's Slippery Futurism – IEEE Spectrum". Spectrum.ieee.org. http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/ray-kurzweils-slippery-futurism. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
- ^ Board | Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Singinst.org. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Lifeboat Foundation Advisory Boards. Lifeboat.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Printable version: Smarter than thou? / Stanford conference ponders a brave new world with machines more powerful than their creators. Sfgate.com (2006-05-12). Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ "FAQ | Singularity University". Singularityu.org. 2008-09-20. http://singularityu.org/about/faq/. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
- ^ "Nanotech Could Give Global Warming a Big Chill" (PDF). July, 2006. http://www.qsinano.com/pdf/ForbesWolfe_NanotechReport_July2006.pdf. Retrieved June 16, 2011.
- ^ Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines, Viking, 1999, p. 30 and p. 32
- ^ "The Law of Accelerating Returns". Kurzweilai.net (2011-06-05). Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Fleeing the dot.com era: decline in Internet usage. Findarticles.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ RAY KURZWEIL- That Singularity Guy Vice magazine. April 2009
- ^ "Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years, Futurists Say". LiveScience. 2008-02-19. http://www.livescience.com/environment/080219-kurzweil-solar.html. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
- ^ Never Say Die: Live Forever. Wired.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ CNN.com – Transcripts. Transcripts.cnn.com (2008-05-30). Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ TRANSCEND | Home page. Rayandterry.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Live Long Enough to Live Forever. Fantastic Voyage. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ Ray and Terry's Longevity Products – Store Front Page. Rayandterry.com. Retrieved on 2011-06-16.
- ^ O'Keefe, Brian (2007-05-02). "The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth". Fortune. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/14/100008848/. Retrieved 2008-08-28.
- ^ Lanier, Jaron. "One Half of a Manifesto". Edge.org. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier/lanier_p1.html. Retrieved 2008-08-28.
- ^ Ross, Greg. "An interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter". American Scientist. http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/douglas-r-hofstadter. Retrieved 2008-08-28.
- ^ Miller, Robin (2004-10-20). "Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor". Slashdot. http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217. Retrieved 2008-08-28. "My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware's nothing more than a really complicated space heater."
- ^ Brand, Stewart (2004-06-14). "Bruce Sterling – "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole"". The Long Now Foundation. http://blog.longnow.org/2004/06/14/bruce-sterling-the-singularity-your-future-as-a-black-hole/. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
- ^ Sterling, Bruce. "The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole" (MP3). http://media.longnow.org/seminars/salt-0200406-sterling/salt-0200406-sterling.mp3. "It’s an end-of-history notion, and like most end-of-history notions, it is showing its age."
- ^ Dennett, Daniel. "The Reality Club: One Half Of A Manifesto". Edge.org. http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#dennett. ""I'm glad that Lanier entertains the hunch that Dawkins and I (and Hofstadter and others) 'see some flaw in logic that insulates [our] thinking from the eschatalogical implications' drawn by Kurzweil and Moravec. He’s right. I, for one, do see such a flaw, and I expect Dawkins and Hofstadter would say the same.""
- ^ Brooks, Rodney. "The Reality Club: One Half Of A Manifesto". Edge.org. http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks. "I do not at all agree with Moravec and Kurzweil's predictions for an eschatological cataclysm, just in time for their own memories and thoughts and person hood to be preserved before they might otherwise die."
- ^ Transcript of debate over feasibility of near-term AI (moderated by Rodney Brooks): "Gelernter, Kurzweil debate machine consciousness". KurzweilAI.net. http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_manifesto.html#brooks.
- ^ Joy, Bill (April 2000). "Why the future doesn't need us". Wired. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html. Retrieved 2008-09-21. "...it was only in the autumn of 1998 that I became anxiously aware of how great are the dangers facing us in the 21st century. I can date the onset of my unease to the day I met Ray Kurzweil..."
- ^ a b Lyons, Daniel (May 2009). "I, Robot". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/197812/page/2. Retrieved 2009-05-22. "During the height of the dotcom boom in 1998, Kurzweil predicted that the economy would keep on booming right through 2009 and that at least one U.S. company would have a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion, neither of which occured. Kurzweil also predict-ed that by 2009 a top supercomputer would be capable of performing 20 petaflops, the same as the human brain. In fact, the top supercomputer at the time, the IBM Roadrunner, was capable of only 1.456 petaflops mark. Kurzweil also predicted that by now our cars would be able to drive themselves by communicating with intelligent sensors embedded in highways, and that speech recognition would be in widespread use."
- ^ "IBM Press room – 2009-02-03 20 Petaflop Sequoia Supercomputer – United States". 03.ibm.com. 2009-02-03. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26599.wss. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
- ^ Lyons, Daniel (May 2009). "I, Robot". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/197812. Retrieved 2009-07-24. "Still, a lot of people think Kurzweil is completely bonkers and/or full of a certain messy byproduct of ordinary biological functions. They include P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, who has used his blog to poke fun at Kurzweil and other armchair futurists who, according to Myers, rely on junk science and don't understand basic biology. "I am completely baffled by Kurzweil's popularity, and in particular the respect he gets in some circles, since his claims simply do not hold up to even casually critical examination," writes Myers. He says Kurzweil's Singularity theories are closer to a deluded religious movement than they are to science. "It's a New Age spiritualism—that's all it is," Myers says. "Even geeks want to find God somewhere, and Kurzweil provides it for them.""
- ^ Myers, PZ. "Singularitarianism?". Pharyngula blog. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/02/singularitarianism.php. Retrieved 14 February 2011.
External links[link]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Raymond Kurzweil |
This audio file was created from a revision of the "Ray Kurzweil" article dated 2011-11-25, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)
- Kurzweil Companies web site
- Raymond Kurzweil's IP – all of Raymond Kurzweil's US patents & patent applications
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Ray Kurzweil on Charlie Rose
- Raymond Kurzweil at the Internet Movie Database
- Ray Kurzweil at the Notable Names Database
- Works by or about Ray Kurzweil in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- 2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal, Lev Grossman, Time, February 10, 2011
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Kurzweil, Ray |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | Author, Scientist, & Futurist |
| Date of birth | February 12, 1948 |
| Place of birth | Queens, New York, United States |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
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