The_Astonished_Heart

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astonished_Heart
The Astonished HeartFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search The Astonished Heart is a short play by Noël Coward, one of ten that make up Tonight at 8:30, a cycle written to be performed across three evenings. The play, described at its first production as "a tragedy in six scenes",[1] is told through a series of flashbacks in reverse order. The title is taken from Deuteronomy 28:28, "the Lord shall smite thee with madness and blindness and astonishment of heart."[2]




In the introduction to a published edition of the plays, Coward wrote, "A short play, having a great advantage over a long one in that it can sustain a mood without technical creaking or over padding, deserves a better fate, and if, by careful writing, acting and producing I can do a little towards reinstating it in its rightful pride, I shall have achieved one of my more sentimental ambitions."[3]



The play was first produced in 1935 in Manchester and on tour and played in London (1936), New York (1936–1937) and Canada (1938). It has enjoyed several major revivals and in 1949 was adapted for film. At the London première, The Astonished Heart was played on the same evening as Family Album and Red Peppers. Like all the other plays in the cycle, it originally starred Gertrude Lawrence and Coward himself.[4]



Contents [hide]

1 History

2 Roles and original cast

3 Plot

4 Notes

5 References





[edit] History
Six of the plays in Tonight at 8:30, including The Astonished Heart, were first presented at the Manchester Opera House beginning on 15 October 1935,[5] and a seventh play was added on the subsequent provincial tour.[4] The final three were added for the London run: Ways and Means, Still Life. The plays were performed in various combinations of three at each performance during the original run. The plays chosen for each performance were announced in advance, although a myth evolved that the groupings were random.[6] Matinées were sometimes billed as Today at 2:30.



On its opening night in Manchester, The Astonished Heart was presented together with We Were Dancing and Red Peppers.[5] The first London performance was on 9 January 1936 at the Phoenix Theatre.[7] Coward directed all ten pieces, and each starred Coward and Gertrude Lawrence. Coward said that he wrote them as "acting, singing, and dancing vehicles for Gertrude Lawrence and myself".[8] Coward loved playing in some of the other plays in Tonight at 8:30, particularly Fumed Oak and Red Peppers, but "I hated playing The Astonished Heart. It depressed me."[9] The Astonished Heart was not one of the best-received plays in Tonight at 8:30 (or Tonight at 7:30 as it was billed in Manchester, to reflect the earlier starting time in the provinces in the 1930s). The Manchester Guardian described it as "a clever play which probably touched nobody's heart", and other reviews said much the same.[1][5][7]



The Broadway openings for the three parts took place on 24 November 1936 (including The Astonished Heart), 27 November 1936 and 30 November 1936 at the National Theatre, again starring Coward and Lawrence.[10] The London and New York runs were limited only by Coward's boredom at long engagements.[11]



Major productions of parts of the cycle were revived in 1948 and 1967 on Broadway and in 1981 at the Lyric Theatre in London, in each case omitting The Astonished Heart. However, it was included at the Chichester Festival in 2006 (along with Hands Across the Sea, Shadow Play, Red Peppers, Family Album and Fumed Oak). In 1971, the Shaw Festival revived several, and in 2000, the Williamstown Theatre Festival revived six, but The Astonished Heart was omitted in both cases.[12] The Antaeus Company in Los Angeles revived all ten plays in October 2007, and the Shaw Festival revived the full cycle in 2009.[13] In 1991, BBC television mounted productions of the individual plays with Joan Collins taking the Lawrence roles.[14]



A film adaptation was made of the play in 1949 with music by William Blezard.[15] Coward himself played Christian Faber, and it also starred Celia Johnson and Margaret Leighton



[edit] Roles and original castBarbara Faber – Alison Leggatt (Joyce Carey in New York)

Christian Faber – Noël Coward

Leonora Vail – Gertrude Lawrence

Tim Verney – Anthony Pelissier

Susan Birch – Everly Gregg (Joan Swinstead in New York)

Ernest – Edward Underdown

Sir Reginald French – Alan Webb

[edit] Plot
Christian Faber, a leading psychiatrist, falls passionately in love with Leonora Vail, an old friend of his wife. Leonora has wilfully led him on but is unprepared for the disastrous effect on him. Faber, more and more desperate, watches his own mind lose control of itself, and he finally kills himself.[5]



[edit] Notes1.^ a b The Observer, 19 January 1936, p. 15

2.^ The Observer, 9 August 1936, p. 9

3.^ Shaw Festival Study Guide, 2009, p. 4. Accessed 17 March 2010.

4.^ a b Hoare, pp. 268–70

5.^ a b c d The Manchester Guardian, 16 October 1935, p. 11

6.^ The Times, 20 January 1936, p. 10; 11 February 1936, p. 12; 2 March 1936, p. 12; 6 April 1936, p. 10; 2 May 1936, p. 12; 10 June 1936, p. 14.

7.^ a b The Times, 10 January 1936, p. 10.

8.^ Coward, unnumbered introductory page

9.^ Castle, p. 139

10.^ The Astonished Heart and other plays at the IBDB database

11.^ Kenrick, John. "Noel Coward 101: Coward's Musicals", Musicals 101: The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film

12.^ Brantley, Ben. "How to Savor Fleeting Joys: Smiles Suave, Brows Arched", The New York Times, 28 June 2000,

13.^ Belcher, David. "Brushing Up Their Coward in Canada". New York Times, 17 August 2009

14.^ Truss, Lynne. "Tonight at 8.30", The Times, 15 April 1991

15.^ Noël Coward website.

[edit] ReferencesCastle, Charles. Noël, W. H. Allen, London, 1972. ISBN 0-491-00534-2

Coward, Noël. Plays: Three, Eyre Methuen 1979, ISBN 0-413-46100-9

Day, Barry. Coward on Film, Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8108-5358-2

Hoare, Philip. Noël Coward, A Biography. Sinclair-Stevenson 1995. ISBN 1-85619-265-2.

Boxcar Bertha (1972)

http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/194050%7C0/Boxcar-Bertha.html
Boxcar BerthaDuring the Depression, a poor Arkansas girl named Bertha (Barbara Hershey) is orphaned after her father is killed in a crop-dusting accident. Soon afterwards she meets and falls in love with union activist Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine) and takes to the road, riding the rails and becoming involved with a gang of robbers led by New York gambler Rake Brown (Barry Primus). The thieves are soon pursued by goons working for railroad tycoon H. Buckram Sartoris (John Carradine) who close in on the gang members as they attempt to elude imprisonment on the backroads of rural Arkansas.




Originally conceived as a period crime drama, set during the Depression just like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), but closer in tone and style to the much more exploitive Bloody Mama (1970), Roger Corman's violent account of real-life criminal Ma Barker and her murderous brood, Boxcar Bertha (1972) turned out to be something much more ambitious and engaging than the lurid promotional campaign which promised nudity, sex and violence. Corman's hand was clearly evident in every aspect of the film's publicity but the movie wasn't the typical drive-in fare from American International Pictures due to the young, untested director Martin Scorsese.



The New York filmmaker, who had made his feature film debut in 1967 with the barely distributed Who's That Knocking at My Door? (aka I Call First), had relocated to Los Angeles in 1971 to assist in the editing of Medicine Ball Caravan, a cross-country concert tour documentary that attempted to duplicate the success of Woodstock (1970), a film Scorsese also helped edit. It was while he was working as a sound effects cutter on John Cassavetes' Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) that Scorsese was offered his first Hollywood feature. "I had met Roger Corman the first month I got to Hollywood, in January 1971," Scorsese recalled, "but I heard nothing from him for months. He'd wanted me to do a sequel to Bloody Mama, but then he offered me Boxcar Bertha. I worked hard preparing Boxcar Bertha, laying out every shot, five hundred shots in drawings, but Roger Corman said, "Let me see what your planning is like." He went through the first ten pages, then flipped the rest and said, "You're fine because you've got to shoot this picture in twenty-four days, and you've got all the shots. If you're this well planned, you're going to be okay." (From Martin Scorsese: Interviews, edited by Peter Brunette).



Scorsese was given a $600,000 budget for shooting on location in Arkansas with only three days allotted for the rerecording mix but he was eager to accept the challenge, promising to work in Corman's demand for sex, violence or explosions every fifteen pages of the script. Based on Sister of the Road, the 1937 autobiography of Bertha Thompson, co-authored with Dr. Ben Reitman, the Boxcar Bertha screenplay was adapted by Joyce H. and John William Corrington and then rewritten by Scorsese (uncredited). While the movie takes extensive liberties with the true story, it does capture the Depression era milieu, focusing on the hobo jungles, whorehouses and freight car hopping that befitted the open road lifestyle of its free spirited heroine.



Although Scorsese's debut feature Who's That Knocking at My Door? proved that he had talent to burn, the young director was still learning the technical aspects of making a professional feature and credits cinematographer John Stephens (Seconds [1966], Billy Jack [1971]) with helping him understand the importance of shooting coverage material as opposed to just concentrating on master shots. Scorsese also acknowledges assistant producer Paul Rapp and the AIP crew on Boxcar Bertha as invaluable instructors in his Hollywood education.



When Scorsese's first few days of shooting were screened for the AIP studio executives, however, he was almost fired from the project. Executive producer Samuel Z. Arkoff complained to Roger Corman, "There was nothing but train wheels going around and around, train wheels going this way, train wheels going that way...For Christsakes Roger, what have we got here, a fornicating documentary on trains?" Scorsese's intention was to shoot all of the transition train footage first to use later as cutaways in the narrative and once Corman explained that to Arkoff, Scorsese was allowed to continue without close supervision.



While Boxcar Bertha was a strictly-for-hire project, Scorsese's fingerprints are all over it and you can see his emerging trademark style and thematic interests in various scenes from the use of the zoom lens in a sequence where the gang runs through a tunnel to unexpected bursts of violence to religious iconography that references his Catholic upbringing (Carradine's Christ-like activist character is crucified in the final scene). Some film scholars have also noted homages to favorite Scorsese films such as The Wizard of Oz (Bertha's first appearance in the film in long pigtails references Dorothy's appearance in the 1939 MGM film), David Lean's The Wife of General Ling (1937), Zoltan Korda's Drums (1938), and Alexander Korda's The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936), the latter three appearing as film posters outside a movie theatre. Like one of his idols, Alfred Hitchcock, Scorsese also puts in a brief cameo appearance, playing a customer in a whorehouse.



Barbara Hershey, who was romantically involved with her co-star David Carradine at the time, later said Boxcar Bertha "was the most fun I'd ever had on a movie. We covered eight years of a story in four weeks of shooting, and that could have been a nightmare, but in this case, it was a delight. We managed to improvise. I remember Marty designing a shot in the reflection of a car. I'd never been with a director who thought like that." Hershey also recalls introducing Scorsese to the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, which ironically enough, she would make with him almost sixteen years later in 1988, playing Mary Magdalene. David Carradine, in an interview for Psychotronic Magazine, claimed that it was He, not Hershey, who encouraged the director to read the Nikos Kazantzakis novel. Regardless of who should take the credit, Carradine and Hershey enjoyed a creative collaboration with Scorsese and were completely comfortable with the nudity and sex scenes required of them. The couple's very public love affair also helped generate some interest in the film, especially after they appeared in a layout for Playboy magazine that was shot on a movie-inspired boxcar set and was much more explicit than the actual film.



When Boxcar Bertha opened theatrically it was paired on a double bill with AIP's 1000 Convicts and a Woman (1971) and was ignored by most major film critics. Still, there were a few who caught it and reviewed it favorably such as Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times who wrote, "Boxcar Bertha is a weirdly interesting movie, and not really the sleazy exploitation film the ads promise....Director Martin Scorsese has gone for mood and atmosphere more than for action, and his violence is always blunt and unpleasant – never liberating and exhilarating, as the New Violence is supposed to be." Howard Thompson of The New York Times also endorsed it, writing, "Boxcar Bertha, believe it or not, is an interesting surprise...The thoughtful, ironic script thins only toward the middle and the whole thing has been beautifully directed by Martin Scorsese, who really comes into his own here." Dennis Hunt of The San Francisco Chronicle was one of the few critics to pan it completely, stating "Boxcar Bertha is a dismal imitation of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde...[The film] features carelessly developed, vacuous characters and was made on a budget too spare for the acquisition of the huge number of cars, clothes and sets necessary to properly establish the '30s look."



Reviews aside, Roger Corman and the executives at AIP realized they had a uniquely talented director in their midst and assigned Scorsese to do I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973) in Costa Rica with Jim Brown. But Scorsese was destined for something greater than another AIP exploitation film. "Next thing I know," he recalled, I showed a two and a half hour rough cut of Boxcar Bertha to a bunch of friends – Carradine and all the people in the picture and Corman and Cassavetes. Cassavetes took me aside the next day and spoke to me for three hours. He said, "Don't do any more exploitation pictures. Do something that you really [want] – do something better"...I said, "The only thing I have is this Season of the Witch." Scorsese described the storyline to Cassavetes who advised him to rewrite it and make it more personal. As a result the revised Season of the Witch screenplay became Mean Streets and when it premiered at the New York Film Festival of 1973, Scorsese was immediately hailed as one of the most exciting directors of his generation, joining the hallowed ranks of such contemporaries as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Brian De Palma.



Producer: Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff (uncredited)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Screenplay: Joyce H. Corrington, John William Corrington; Ben L. Reitman (book "Sister of the Road")

Cinematography: John Stephens

Music: Gib Guilbeau, Thad Maxwell

Film Editing: Buzz Feitshans

Cast: Barbara Hershey ('Boxcar' Bertha Thompson), David Carradine ('Big' Bill Shelly), Barry Primus (Rake Brown), Bernie Casey (Von Morton), John Carradine (H. Buckram Sartoris), Victor Argo (McIver #1), David R. Osterhout (McIver #2)

C-82m.



by Jeff Stafford

The Dodecahedron

The Dodecahedron


http://www.kjmaclean.com/Geometry/dodecahedron.html

The dodecahedron has 30 edges, 20 vertices and 12 faces. Dodeca is a prefix meaning “twelve.”




The dodecahedron is the only polyhedron I know of which is composed entirely of pentagons.

Buckminster Fuller describes what he calls a '6 pentagonal tensegrity sphere' in Synergetics I, 726.01, and which is shown at Marvin Solit's website at www.fnd.org/geo.htm, but I don't believe that structure can be built without tensegrity struts and tension wires.

Figure 1


The dodecahedron is pentagonal both inside and out, as can be seen from Figure 1. Like the icosahedron, it has many golden section relationships, which we shall see.

The dodecahedron is even more versatile then the icosahedron. The icosahedron contains and geometry, but the dodecahedron contains , and geometry!

Figure 2

Cube and tetrahedron in dodecahedron. Cube in gray, tetrahedron in green

This view of the dodecahedron is significant in that it shows the 2 dimensional shadow of the decagon. The decagon itself is based upon the pentagon, the building block of the dodecahedron. See Pentagon and Decagon for more information.





Figure 2A -- Another view of tetrahedron (green) inside cube (blue) inside dodecahedron (orange)



Figures 2 and 2A show how a cube and a tetrahedron can be placed inside a dodecahedron. These placements are 'nice' meaning that the vertices of the placed-in solids are all vertices of the dodecahedron.



The cube, octahedron and tetrahedron are all based on root 2 and root 3 geometry: The relationship of the side of the cube to the radius of its enclosing sphere is r = sqrt(3) / 2.

For the tetrahedron, For the octahedron,

The dodecahedron is capable of elegantly sustaining these and relationships, along with its own many relationships.





Figure 3 -- octahedron inside tetrahedron

Notice that the octahedron fits precisely on the bisected sides of the tetrahedron.



The icosahedron cannot contain any of the other 5 solids 'nicely' on its vertices.

The icosehedron and the dodecahedron are 'duals' (as are the cube and the octahedron). By 'dual' is meant that if you put a vertex in the middle of all of the faces and connect the lines, you get the dual.

By placing a vertex at the middle of all the faces of the dodecahedron you get an icosahedron, and vice-versa. Figure 4 shows the dual nature of the icosahedron and dodecahedron.



Figure 4 Duals ---- dodecahedron inside icosahedron

Notice that to create the dodecahedron, all we did was draw lines from each vertex of the icosahedron to every other vertex. The vertices of the dodecahedron are at the intersection points. We could just as easily have found the vertices of the dodecahedron by drawing lines on every triangular face of the icosahedron. Where those lines intersect is the center of the face, and a vertex of the dodecahedron. That occurs because the dodecahedron has 12 faces and the icosahedron has 12 vertices.







Now for the standard analysis:

What is the volume of the dodecahedron?

We will use the pyramid method.



There are 12 pentagonal pyramids, 1 for each face, each pyramid beginning at O, the centroid. See Figure 1 and Figure 5.

The volume of any n-sided pyramid is 1/3 * area of base * pyramid height.



First we need to get the area of the base, which is the area of each pentagonal face:



Figure 5 One pyramid on face BCHLG



The area of the pentagon is the area of the 5 triangles which compose it.

From Area of Pentagon we know

This is approximately 1.720477401 .



Now we need to find the height of the pyramid, OU. To do that, we need to find the distance from O to a vertex, lets say, OH. This distance will be the hypotenuse of the right triangle OUH. Since we already know UH, we can then get OU from the good ol’ Pythagorean Theorem.

Imagine a sphere surrounding the dodecahedron and touching all of its vertices. OH is just the radius of the enclosing sphere. If you look at Figure 6, HOZ = GON = diameter. There is a line through HOZ to show the diameter.



Figure 6



Now look at the rectangle MIFK. The diagonal of it, MF, is also a diameter (MF = HZ). Notice that the long sides of the rectangle, MK, and IF, are diagonals of the two large pentagons ADMQK and FEIRP.

We know from Composition of the Pentagon that the diagonal of a pentagon is * side of pentagon.

We also can see from Figure 6 and more clearly in Figure 1 that the sides of the large pentagons themselves are diagonals of the pentagonal faces of the dodecahedron! (For instance, DA is a diagonal of the face ABCDE). That means each side of the large pentagons is * s and that MK (or any of the diagonals of a large pentagon) is * * s.

So MK = s.

In fact, like the icosahedron, the dodecahedron is composed of rectangles divided in Extreme and Mean Ratio. In the icosahedron, we found these rectangles to be rectangles.

In the dodecahedron, they are rectangles.



In rectangle MKIF, MK = IF = , MI = KF = , as shown in figure 7.





Figure 7 -- showing vertices of the rectangle MKIF.



There are 30 sides to the dodec, and therefore 15 different rectangles.



All of this as explanation of finding the distance OH from Figure 5! Because we are not using trigonometry, we need OH in order to get the pyramid height, OU in Figure 5. Notice that MHFZ is also a rectangle and that HZ is the diagonal of it. If we can find HZ, then OH is just 1/2 of that.

d² = HZ² = MZ² + HM² =

diameter = HZ =







Now we can find OU, the height of the pyramid.

From Area of Pentagon we know the distance mid-face to any vertex of a pentagon =

So UH =















The volume of 1 pyramid = 1/3 * area base * pyramid height =









Or













Note that (from Figure 5) OU / UX = .







What is the surface area of the dodecahedron? It is

12 faces * area of face = , or







What is the central angle of the dodecahedron?

From Figure 5, this is (for example) HOC:



Figure 8 -- dodecahedron central angle

HC = side of dodecahedron, so XH = (1/2)s.



OH = radius = one half HZ = .

sin( XOH) = XH / OH =

XOH = = 20.90515744°

HOC = central angle = 41.81031488°

Since each face of the dodecahedron is a pentagon, the surface angle = 108°



While we're at it, lets get OX, the distance from the centroid to any mid- edge.



OX =



What is the dihedral angle of the dodecahedron?



Figure 9



The dihedral angle is AXH. AH is one of the long sides of any of the 15 rectangles which compose the dodec. AX and HX are the height h of the pentagon.

We know from Construction of the Pentagon Part 2 that the height h of the pentagon is:

We know from Figure 7 that AH is , so IH =

sin( IXH) = IH / XH =

We recognize this ratio as our old friend the Phi Triangle with sides in ratio of

IHX = = 58.28252558°.

Dihedral angle AXH = 2 * IXH,

So dihedral angle AXH = 116.5650512°.







Let's compare distances:

Distance from centroid to mid-face (h) = = 1.113516365s.

Distance from centroid to mid-edge = = 1.309016995.

Distance from centroid to vertex = = 1.401258539.











Go back to Figure 6. We have colored the 4 internal pentagonal planes of the dodecahedron. U,X, W and V are the centers of these 4 planes which line up with the centroid O.

What is the distance UX = WV? What is XW?

If we can find these out we can figure out more deeply how the dodecahedron is constructed.



Figure 6, repeated



In Figure 6 we can see that UH on the top plane is the distance from the pentagon center to a vertex.

On plane ADMQK, XM is parallel to UH and is also the distance from that pentagon center to a vertex. UH is connected to XM by HM, a side of the pentagon face CDIMH.

So we have a quadrilateral UHMX, with UH parallel to XM. From here we can derive UX, the distance between the two planes.



Figure 10 -- dodecahedron planar distance.



We know from Construction of the Pentagon Part 2 that the distance from the center of pentagon to a vertex =

Therefore UH =

The side of the large pentagon ADMQK in Figure 6 is, as we have seen, a diagonal of a dodecahedron face and so the side of the large pentagon = Therefore, XM =

Therefore, XM = *UH, and XM is divided in Mean and Extreme Ratio at N (See Figure 10).

=

HM = s. Triangle MNH is right by construction.

So =

HN =



Notice: UH = UX. So the dodecahedron is designed such that the distance to the 2 large pentagonal planes from the top or bottom faces is exactly equal to the distance between the center and a vertex of any of the faces of the dodecahedron.

This relationship is precisely what we saw in the icosahedron! That makes sense because the two are duals of each other.



The difference is that the dodecahedron is entirely pentagonal, both internally, and externally, on its faces.











What is the distance XW between the 2 large pentagonal planes ADMQK and FEIRP?

Figure 6 is misleading, it looks like the distance must be MI or KF, the dodecahedron side, but it isn't.

We already have enough information to establish this distance.

UX = VW. UV = 2*height of any pyramid =

So XW = UV - 2*UX =

XW =



Notice UX / XW = .

UW is divided in Mean and Extreme Ratio at X.

XV / WV = . XV is divided in Mean and Extreme Ratio at W.



Let's make a chart of these planar distances along the diameter of the dodecahedron as we did with the icosahedron: (see Figure 6):







Relative Chart of Distances –– Pentagonal Planes of Dodecahedron

Relative to the side of the dodecahedron



(Available in the book)



Here is a table of these relationships, letting UX = 1:



(Available in the book)



Note that the diameter of the enclosing sphere is HZ, not UV.

We already know that the diameter is, from page 92,

So what is the distance from U to the top of the sphere, and from V to the bottom of the sphere? Let T’ be the top of the sphere and B’ be the bottom of the sphere. Refer to Figure 6.

If the radius is and the distance OU is , then

UT’ =VB’ =







Finally, let us demonstrate how the dodecahedron may be constructed from the interlocking vertices of 5 tetrahedron. We have already seen how the cube fits inside the dodecahedron, and how 2 interlocking tetrahedron may be formed from the diagonals of the cube. As Buckminster Fuller has pointed out, however, the cube and the dodecahedron are structurally unsound unless bolstered by the additional struts supplied by the tetrahedron. Fuller concludes logically that the tetrahedron is the basic building block of Universe; yet it is the dodecahedron that provides the blueprint and forms the structure for the interlocking tetrahedrons. The dodecahedron unites the geometry of crystals and lattices (root 2 and root 3) with the geometry of Phi (root 5), found in the biology of organic life.







Conclusions:



The dodecahedron is entirely pentagonal, consisting of the geometry of Phi. Yet it contains the and geometry of the cube, tetrahedron, and octahedron.

Remarkably, the sides of the cube are * side of the dodecahedron, because the cube side is the diagonal of a pentagonal face. Here is the key to the relationship of the first three Regular Solids and the much more complex icosahedron and dodecahedron.



Later on in this book we will discover a remarkable polyhedron that defines the relationship and provides the proper nesting for all 5 Platonic Solids, including the icosahedron, directly on its vertices. If a polyhedron could be called exciting, this one is IT! If you can’t wait, go to the last chapter of the book.



Dodecahedron Reference Tables

(included in the book)





Return to Geometry Home Page The Big Picture Home

 

More on Lisbon

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles11/evening-book-63.shtml

Great Earthquake At Lisbon In 1775


( Originally Published 1851 )







Many natives of Portugal yet remember the morning of the first of November, 1775. The day dawned clear and beautiful. The sun shone out in its full lustre; the whole face of the sky was perfectly serene, and no one conceived of the horrible contrast, which was soon after to present itself. The earth had trembled at short intervals for a year. An English merchant, who resided at Lis-bon, gives the following account of the approach of the final catastrophe:



It was on the morning of this fatal day, between the hours of nine and ten, that I was sat down in my apartment, just finishing a letter, when the papers and table I was writing on, began to tremble with a gentle motion, which rather suprised me, as 1 could not perceive a breath of wind stirring. 'Whilst I was reflecting with myself what this could be owing to, but without having the least apprehension of the real cause, the whole house began to shake from the very foundation; which at first I imputed to the rattling of several coaches in the main street, which usually passed that way, at this time, from Belem to the palace; but on hearkening more attentively, I was soon undeceived, as I found it was owing to a strange frightful kind of noise under ground, resembling the hollow distant rumbling of thunder. All this passed in less than a minute, and I must confess I now began to be alarmed, as it naturally occurred to me that this noise might possibly be the forerunner of an earth-quake; as one I remembered, which had happened about six or seven years ago, in the island of Madeira, commenced in the same manner, though it did little or no damage.



" Upon this I threw down my pen and started upon my feet, remaining a moulent in suspense, whether I should stay in the apartment or run into the street, as the danger in both places seemed equal; and still flatterrng myself that this tremor might produce no other effects than such inconsiderable ones as had been felt at Madeira; but in a moment I was roused from my dream, being instantly stunned with a most horrid crash, as if every edifice in the city had tumbled down at once. The house I was in shook with such violence, that the upper stories immediately fell, and though my apartment (which was the first floor) did not then share the same fate, yet every thing was thrown out of its place in such a manner, that it was with no small difficulty I kept my feet, and expected nothing less than to be soon crushed to death, as the walls continued rocking to and fro in the fright-fullest manner, opening in several places; large stones falling down on every side from the cracks, and the ends of most of the rafters starting out from the roof. To add to this terrifying scene, the sky in a moment became so gloomy that I could now distinguish no particular object; it was an Egyptian darkness indeed, such as might be felt; owing, no doubt, to the prodigious clouds of dust and lime raised from so violent a concussion, and, as some reported, to sulphureous exhalations, but this I cannot affirm; however it is certain I found myself almost choked for near ten minutes."



During the whole of November the shocks continued to be violent. Lisbon was reduced to a heap of ruins. The loss of lives was computed at upwards of 30,000. In the lower part of the town not a street could be traced but by the fragments of broken walls, and the accumulation of ashes and rubbish. Palaces, churches, convents and private houses, appeared as if the angel of desolation had just passed by. The following cut gives a faint idea of the ruins of the church of St. Pauls. The falling of this church buried a great part of the congregation, which was very numerous, beneath its walls.



At night the city was deserted by the surviving inhabitants, and only infested by robbers who proceeded in gangs to break open and plunder. The heights around Lisbon were so covered with tents, that they seemed a continued encampment. The great aqueduct over the valley of Alcantara remained entirely unshaken, though its height is so great and its line of arches so extensive. It was remarked, that during the month of November, the tides did not observe their proverbial regularity.



The terrors of a conflagration were added to those of the earthquake. On the night of the 1st of November, the whole city appeared in a blaze, which was so bright, that persons could see to read by it. It continued burning for six days, without the least attempt being made to stop it. The people were so dejected and terrified, that they made no exertion even to save their own property. Dead bodies remained unburied in the churches, in the streets, and among the rubbish. The scene inspired melancholy even into dumb animals.



The property of all kinds consumed or engulfed was of immense value. Many years elapsed before Lisbon recovered from the calamity, and the traces of it are still visible in many places.



When we read the lives of distinguished men in any department, we find them almost always celebrated for the amount of labor they could perform. Demosthenes, Julius Caesar, Henry the Fourth of France, Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Franklin, Washington, Napoleon,—different as they were in their intellectual and moral qualities, were all renowned as hard-workers. We read how many days they could support the fatigues of a march ; how early they rose ; how late they watched ; how many hours they spent in the field, in the cabinet, in the court ; how many secretaries they kept employed ; in short how hard they worked.

Synesthesia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia#Experiences

Synesthesia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Synesthesia (disambiguation).




How someone with synesthesia might perceive certain letters and numbers.Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiæ or synæsthesiæ), from the ancient Greek σύν (syn), "together," and αἴσθησις (aisthēsis), "sensation," is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.[1][2][3][4] People who report such experiences are known as synesthetes. Recently, difficulties have been recognized in finding an adequate definition of synesthesia,[5][6] as many different phenomena have been covered by this term and in many cases the term synesthesia ("union of senses") seems to be a misnomer. A more accurate term for the phenomenon may be ideasthesia.



In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme → color synesthesia or color-graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored,[7][8] while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities.[9][10] In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, and/or days of the week elicit precise locations in space (for example, 1980 may be "farther away" than 1990), or may have a (three-dimensional) view of a year as a map (clockwise or counterclockwise).[11][12][13] Yet another recently identified type, visual motion → sound synesthesia, involves hearing sounds in response to visual motion and flicker.[14] Over 60 types of synesthesia have been reported,[15] but only a fraction have been evaluated by scientific research.[16] Even within one type, synesthetic perceptions vary in intensity[17] and people vary in awareness of their synesthetic perceptions.[18]



While cross-sensory metaphors (e.g., "loud shirt," "bitter wind" or "prickly laugh") are sometimes described as "synesthetic", true neurological synesthesia is involuntary. It is estimated that synesthesia could possibly be as prevalent as 1 in 23 persons across its range of variants.[19] Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained. Synesthesia is also sometimes reported by individuals under the influence of psychedelic drugs, after a stroke, during a temporal lobe epilepsy seizure, or as a result of blindness or deafness. Synesthesia that arises from events after birth is referred to as "adventitious synesthesia" to distinguish it from the more common congenital forms of synesthesia. Adventitious synesthesia involving drugs or stroke (but not blindness or deafness) apparently only involves sensory linkings such as sound → vision or touch → hearing; there are few, if any, reported cases involving culture-based, learned sets such as graphemes, lexemes, days of the week, or months of the year.



Although synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 19th century and early 20th century, it was largely abandoned by scientific research in the mid-20th century, and has only recently been rediscovered by modern researchers.[20] Psychological research has demonstrated that synesthetic experiences can have measurable behavioral consequences, while functional neuroimaging studies have identified differences in patterns of brain activation.[8] Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process, and many non-synesthetes have attempted to create works of art that may capture what it is like to experience synesthesia. Psychologists and neuroscientists study synesthesia not only for its inherent interest, but also for the insights it may give into cognitive and perceptual processes that occur in synesthetes and non-synesthetes alike.



Contents [hide]

1 Definitional criteria

2 Experiences

3 Various forms

3.1 Grapheme → color synesthesia

3.2 Spatial Sequence Synesthesia

3.3 Sound → color synesthesia

3.4 Number form synesthesia

3.5 Personification

3.6 Lexical → gustatory synesthesia

3.7 Auditory-tactile synesthesia

3.8 Mirror Touch Synesthesia

4 Research history

5 Prevalence and genetic basis

6 Objective verification

7 Possible neural basis

8 The role of meaning

9 Associated cognitive traits

10 Links with other areas of study

11 Artistic investigations

12 Literary depictions

13 People with synesthesia

14 See also

15 References

16 Further reading

17 External links

17.1 Scientific resources

17.2 Synesthesia associations

17.3 On the Web

Definitional criteriaAlthough sometimes spoken of as a "neurological condition," synesthesia is not listed in either the DSM-IV or the ICD classifications, since it most often does not interfere with normal daily functioning. Indeed, most synesthetes report that their experiences are neutral, or even pleasant.[21] Rather, like color blindness or perfect pitch, synesthesia is a difference in perceptual experience and the term "neurological" simply reflects the brain basis of this perceptual difference (see below for associated cognitive traits).




It was once assumed that synesthetic experiences were entirely different from synesthete to synesthete, but recent research has shown that there are underlying similarities that can be observed when large numbers of synesthetes are examined together. For example, sound-color synesthetes, as a group, tend to see lighter colors for higher sounds[22] and grapheme-color synesthetes, as a group, share significant preferences for the color of each letter (e.g., A tends to be red; O tends to be white or black; S tends to be yellow etc.,[21][23][24]). Nonetheless, there are a great number of types of synesthesia, and within each type, individuals can report differing triggers for their sensations, and differing intensities of experiences. This variety means that defining synesthesia in an individual is difficult, and the majority of synesthetes are completely unaware that their experiences have a name.[21] However, despite the differences between individuals, there are a few common elements that define a true synesthetic experience.



Neurologist Richard Cytowic identifies the following diagnostic criteria of synesthesia in his first edition book. However, the criteria are different in the second book:[1][2][3]



1.Synesthesia is involuntary and automatic.

2.Synesthetic perceptions are spatially extended, meaning they often have a sense of "location." For example, synesthetes speak of "looking at" or "going to" a particular place to attend to the experience.

3.Synesthetic percepts are consistent and generic (i.e., simple rather than pictorial).

4.Synesthesia is highly memorable.

5.Synesthesia is laden with affect.

Cytowic's early cases included individuals whose synesthesia was frankly projected outside the body (e.g., on a "screen" in front of one's face). Later research showed that such stark externalization occurs in a minority of synesthetes. Refining this concept, Cytowic and Eagleman[3] differentiate between "localizers" and "non-localizers" to distinguish those synesthetes whose perceptions have a definite sense of spatial quality.



[edit] ExperiencesSynesthetes often report that they were unaware their experiences were unusual until they realized other people did not have them, while others report feeling as if they had been keeping a secret their entire lives, as has been documented in interviews with synesthetes on how they discovered synesthesia in their childhood.[16] The automatic and ineffable nature of a synesthetic experience means that the pairing may not seem out of the ordinary. This involuntary and consistent nature helps define synesthesia as a real experience. Most synesthetes report that their experiences are pleasant or neutral, although, in rare cases, synesthetes report that their experiences can lead to a degree of sensory overload.[21]



Though often stereotyped in the popular media as a medical condition or neurological aberration, many synesthetes themselves do not perceive their synesthetic experiences as a handicap. To the contrary, most report it as a gift—an additional "hidden" sense—something they would not want to miss. Most synesthetes become aware of their "hidden" and different way of perceiving in their childhood. Some have learned how to apply this gift in daily life and work. Synesthetes have used their gift in memorizing names and telephone numbers, mental arithmetic, but also in more complex creative activities like producing visual art, music, and theater.[16]



Despite the commonalities which permit definition of the broad phenomenon of synesthesia, individual experiences vary in numerous ways. This variability was first noticed early on in synesthesia research[25] but has only recently come to be re-appreciated by modern researchers. Some grapheme → color synesthetes report that the colors seem to be "projected" out into the world (called "projectors"), while most report that the colors are experienced in their "mind's eye" (called "associators").[26] It is estimated that approximately one or two per hundred grapheme-color synesthetes are projectors; the rest are associators.[26]



Additionally, some grapheme → color synesthetes report that they experience their colors strongly, and show perceptual enhancement on the perceptual tasks described below, while others (perhaps the majority) do not,[17] perhaps due to differences in the stage at which colors are evoked. Some synesthetes report that vowels are more strongly colored, while for others consonants are more strongly colored.[21] In summary, self reports, autobiographical notes by synesthetes and interviews show a large variety in types of synesthesia, intensity of the synesthetic perceptions, awareness of the difference in perceiving the physical world from other people, the way they creatively use their synesthesia in work and daily life.[16][27] The descriptions below give some examples of synesthetes' experiences, which have been experimentally tested, but do not exhaust their rich variety.



[edit] Various formsSynesthesia can occur between nearly any two senses or perceptual modes, and at least one synesthete, Solomon Shereshevsky, experienced synesthesia that linked all five senses. Given the large number of forms of synesthesia, researchers have adopted a convention of indicating the type of synesthesia by using the following notation x → y, where x is the "inducer" or trigger experience, and y is the "concurrent" or additional experience. For example, perceiving letters and numbers (collectively called graphemes) as colored would be indicated as grapheme → color synesthesia. Similarly, when synesthetes see colors and movement as a result of hearing musical tones, it would be indicated as tone → (color, movement) synesthesia.



While nearly every logically possible combination of experiences can occur, several types are more common than others.



[edit] Grapheme → color synesthesiaMain article: Grapheme-color synesthesia



From Wednesday is Indigo Blue.[3] Note this example's upside-down clock face.In one of the most common forms of synesthesia, grapheme → color synesthesia, individual letters of the alphabet and numbers (collectively referred to as graphemes), are "shaded" or "tinged" with a color. While different individuals usually do not report the same colors for all letters and numbers, studies with large numbers of synesthetes find some commonalities across letters (e.g., A is likely to be red).[21][23]



As a child, Pat Duffy told her father, "I realized that to make an R all I had to do was first write a P and draw a line down from its loop. And I was so surprised that I could turn a yellow letter into an orange letter just by adding a line." Another grapheme synesthete says, "When I read, about five words around the exact one I'm reading are in color. It's also the only way I can spell. In elementary school I remember knowing how to spell the word 'priority' [with an "i" rather than an "e"] because ... an 'e' was out of place in that word because 'e's were yellow and didn't fit."[28]



[edit] Spatial Sequence SynesthesiaA special form of the condition, in which people tend to see all numerical sequences they come across as points in space. For instance, the number 1 might be farther away and the number 2 might be closer. A new study shows that those with SSS have superior memories. They were able to recall past events and memories far better, and in far greater detail than those without the condition.[citation needed]



[edit] Sound → color synesthesiaAccording to Richard Cytowic, sound → color synesthesia, or chromesthesia is "something like fireworks": voice, music, and assorted environmental sounds such as clattering dishes or dog barks trigger color and firework shapes that arise, move around, and then fade when the sound ends.[3] For some, the stimulus type is limited (e.g., music only, or even just a specific musical key); for others, a wide variety of sounds triggers synesthesia.



Sound often changes the perceived hue, brightness, scintillation, and directional movement. Some individuals see music on a "screen" in front of their faces. Deni Simon, for whom music produces waving lines "like oscilloscope configurations – lines moving in color, often metallic with height, width and, most importantly, depth. My favorite music has lines that extend horizontally beyond the 'screen' area."[3]



Individuals rarely agree on what color a given sound is (composers Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov famously disagreed on the colors of music keys)[citation needed]; however, synesthetes show the same trends as non-synesthetes do. For example, both groups say that loud tones are brighter than soft tones, and that lower tones are darker than higher tones. Synaesthetes nevertheless choose more precise colours than non-synesthetes and are more consistent in their choice of colours given a set of sounds of varying pitch, timbre and composition.[29]



[edit] Number form synesthesiaMain article: Number form



A number form from one of Francis Galton's subjects.[11] Note how the first 12 digits correspond to a clock face.A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers. Number forms were first documented and named by Francis Galton in "The Visions of Sane Persons".[30] Later research has identified them as a type of synesthesia.[12][13] In particular, it has been suggested that number-forms are a result of "cross-activation" between regions of the parietal lobe that are involved in numerical cognition and spatial cognition.[31][32] In addition to its interest as a form of synesthesia, researchers in numerical cognition have begun to explore this form of synesthesia for the insights that it may provide into the neural mechanisms of numerical-spatial associations present unconsciously in everyone.



[edit] PersonificationMain article: Ordinal linguistic personification

Ordinal-linguistic personification (OLP, or personification for short) is a form of synesthesia in which ordered sequences, such as ordinal numbers, days, months and letters are associated with personalities.[9][33] Although this form of synesthesia was documented as early as the 1890s[25][34] modern research has, until recently,[1] paid little attention to this form.



For example, one synesthete says, "T’s are generally crabbed, ungenerous creatures. U is a soulless sort of thing. 4 is honest, but… 3 I cannot trust… 9 is dark, a gentleman, tall and graceful, but politic under his suavity."[34] Likewise, Cytowic's subject MT says, "I [is] a bit of a worrier at times, although easy-going; J [is] male; appearing jocular, but with strength of character; K [is] female; quiet, responsible...."[1]



For some people in addition to numbers and other ordinal sequences, objects are sometimes imbued with a sense of personality. Recent research has begun to show that alphanumeric personification co-varies with other forms of synesthesia, and is consistent and automatic, as required to be considered a form of synesthesia.[9]



[edit] Lexical → gustatory synesthesiaMain article: Lexical-gustatory synesthesia

In the rare lexical → gustatory synesthesia, individual words and the phonemes of spoken language evoke taste sensations in the mouth. According to James Wannerton, "Whenever I hear, read, or articulate (inner speech) words or word sounds, I experience an immediate and involuntary taste sensation on my tongue. These very specific taste associations never change and have remained the same for as long as I can remember."



Jamie Ward and Julia Simner have extensively studied this form of synesthesia, and have found that the synesthetic associations are constrained by early food experiences.[35][36] For example, James Wannerton has no synesthetic experiences of coffee or curry, even though he consumes them regularly as an adult. Conversely, he tastes certain breakfast cereals and candies that are no longer sold.



Additionally, these early food experiences are often paired with tastes based on the phonemes in the name of the word (e.g., /I/, /n/ and /s/ trigger James Wannerton’s taste of mince) although others have less obvious roots (e.g., /f/ triggers sherbet). To show that phonemes, rather than graphemes are the critical triggers of tastes, Ward and Simner showed that, for James Wannerton, the taste of egg is associated to the phoneme /k/, whether spelled with a "c" (e.g., accept), "k" (e.g., York), "ck" (e.g., chuck) or "x" (e.g., fax). Another source of tastes comes from semantic influences, so that food names tend to taste of the food they match, and the word "blue" tastes "inky."



[edit] Auditory-tactile synesthesiaAuditory-tactile synesthesia may originate from birth or acquired sometime in life. It is one of the rarest forms of synesthesia. In a 2008 article, Beauchamp and Ro reported on a patient with a rare infarct restricted to the ventrolateral nucleus of her right thalamus. This infarct had initially resulted in a loss of somatosensory sensation on the contralateral half of the patient's body. Although this deficit completely disappeared within a period of 18 months, the patient developed symptoms of auditory–tactile synesthesia, where certain sounds induced intense and often unpleasant somatosensory tingling sensations in her left hand and arm.[37]



[edit] Mirror Touch SynesthesiaIn this rare form of synesthesia, when you see someone else being touched, you feel a touch as well. This means that you can literally feel the pain of others when you see them get hurt. People with mirror-touch synesthesia, often score high on empathy tests compared to people without the condition.[38]

Research historyMain article: History of synesthesia research


The interest in colored hearing dates back to Greek antiquity, when philosophers asked if the color (chroia, what we now call timbre) of music was a quantifiable quality.[39] Isaac Newton proposed that musical tones and color tones shared common frequencies, as did Goethe in his book, "Theory of Color." Despite this idea being false, there is a long history of building color organs such as the clavier à lumières on which to perform colored music in concert halls.[40][40][41]



The first medical description of colored hearing is in a German 1812 thesis.[42] The father of psychophysics, Gustav Fechner reported the first empirical survey of colored letter photisms among 73 synesthetes in 1871,[43][44] followed in the 1880s by Francis Galton.[11][45][46] Research into synesthesia proceeded briskly in several countries, but due to the difficulties in measuring subjective experiences and the rise of behaviorism, which made the study of any subjective experience taboo, synesthesia faded into scientific oblivion between 1930 and 1980.



As the 1980s cognitive revolution began to make inquiry into internal subjective states respectable again, scientists once again looked to synesthesia. Led in the United States by Larry Marks and Richard Cytowic, and later in England by Simon Baron-Cohen and Jeffrey Gray, research explored the reality, consistency, and frequency of synesthetic experiences. In the late 1990s, the focus settled on grapheme → color synesthesia, one of the most common[21][24] and easily studied types. Synesthesia is now the topic of scientific books and papers, Ph.D. theses, documentary films, and even novels.



Since the rise of the Internet in the 1990, synesthetes began contacting one another and creating Web sites devoted to the condition. These early grew into international organizations such as the American Synesthesia Association, the UK Synaesthesia Association, the Belgian Synaesthesia Association, the German Synesthesia Association and the Netherlands Synesthesia Web Community.

Prevalence and genetic basisEarly estimates of prevalence varied widely (from 1 in 20 to 1 in 20,000). These studies all had the methodological shortcoming of relying on self-selection, meaning individuals reporting their experience to investigators. Random population studies later determined that 1 in 23 individuals have some kind of synesthesia, while 1 in 90 have colored graphemes.[19] Colored days of the week and colored graphemes are the most common types.[19][21]




Many studies noted that synesthesia runs in families, consistent with a genetic origin for the condition. Francis Galton's 1880 report noted a familial component. Studies from the 1990s[47][48] that noted a much higher prevalence in women than men (up to 6:1) most likely suffered from a sampling bias due to the fact that women are more likely to self-disclose than men. More recent random samples find an equal sex ratio of 1.1:1.[19]



At first, the observed patterns of inheritance were consistent with an X-linked mode of inheritance because there had been no verified reports of father-to-son transmission, whereas father-to-daughter, mother-to-son and mother-to-daughter transmission were readily observed[1][48][49] However, the first genome-wide association study failed to find X-linkage,[50] and furthermore verified two cases of father-to-son transmission.



Suggestive of incomplete gene penetrance is the situation of identical twins in which only one member of the pair is synesthetic,[51][52] and the observation that synesthesia can skip generations within a family.[53] It is furthermore common for family members to experience different types of synesthesia, suggesting that the gene(s) involved do not lead to invariably specific types of synesthesia.[49] Developmental factors such as gene expression and environment must also play a role in determining which types of synesthesia an individual has (for example, children must interact with culturally learned artifacts such as alphabets and food names)

Possible neural basisMain article: Neural basis of synesthesia



Regions thought to be cross-activated in grapheme-color synesthesia (green=grapheme recognition area, red=V4 color area).[31]Dedicated regions of the brain are specialized for given functions. Increased cross-talk between regions specialized for different functions may account for the many types of synesthesia. For example, the additive experience of seeing color when looking at graphemes might be due to cross-activation of the grapheme-recognition area and the color area called V4 (see figure).[31] One line of thinking is that a failure to prune synapses that are normally formed in great excess during the first few years of life may cause such cross-activation.



An alternate possibility is disinhibited feedback, or a reduction in the amount of inhibition along normally existing feedback pathways.[59] Normally, excitation and inhibition are balanced. However, if normal feedback were not inhibited as usual, then signals feeding back from late stages of multi-sensory processing might influence earlier stages such that tones could activate vision. Cytowic & Eagleman find support for the disinhibition idea in the so-called acquired forms[3] of synesthesia that occur in non-synesthetes under certain conditions: Temporal lobe epilepsy, head trauma, stroke, and brain tumors. They also note that it can likewise occur during stages of meditation, deep concentration, sensory deprivation, or with use of psychedelics such as LSD or mescaline, or even, in some cases, marijuana.[3] However, synesthetes report that common stimulants, like caffeine and cigarettes do not affect the strength of their synesthesia, nor do alcoholic beverages.[3]p. 137–140



Functional neuroimaging studies using PET and fMRI demonstrate significant differences between the brains of synesthetes and non-synesthetes. fMRI shows V4 activation in both word → color and grapheme → color synesthetes.[17][60][61] Diffusion tensor imaging allows visualization of white matter fiber pathways in the intact brain. This method demonstrates increased connectivity in fusiform gyrus, intraparietal sulcus and frontal cortex in grapheme-color synesthetes.[62] The degree of white matter connectivity in the fusiform gyrus correlates with the intensity of the synesthetic experience.



The role of meaningMain article: Ideasthesia

Evidence has shown that concurrents in synesthesia may be operating at the level of the meaning of the stimulus (i.e. semantic representations), not at the level of the sensory inputs. For example, if presented with letter A, a synesthete would associated concurrent experiences only once the letter has been recognized and the meaning of the stimulus has been extracted. Hence, the basics for understanding synesthesia may be in the semantic structures that, uniquely for synesthetes, associate sensory-like experiences. It has been proposed that a more accurate definition of the phenomenon is within the context of ideasthesia.



[edit] Associated cognitive traitsLittle is known about what, if any, cognitive traits might be associated with synesthesia. As early as 1980, Richard Cytowic first noted mild difficulties in left-right confusion, arithmetic, and sense of direction.[1] These observations await large-scale confirmation. What has been confirmed is elevated, sometimes photographic, memory.[63] It was reading Alexander Luria's 1968 book The Mind of a Mnemonist that alerted Cytowic to the link between synesthesia and enhanced memory: Luria's subject had a 5-fold synesthesia that gave him extra hooks on which to hang and remember numerous facts.



Autism and epilepsy occur with synesthesia more often than chance predicts. Daniel Tammet, the savant who set a European record for reciting the digits of pi, has all three conditions indicating that they might share an underlying genetic cause. Synesthesia has so far been linked to a region on chromosome 2 that is associated with autism and epilepsy.[50]



Synesthetes are likely to participate in creative activities.[24][64][65] Individual development of perceptual and cognitive skills, and one's cultural environment likely determine the variety in awareness and practical use of synesthetic skills[18][27] These are major topics of ongoing research.

Literary depictionsMain article: Synesthesia in literature


Main article: Synesthesia in fiction

Synesthesia is sometimes used as a plot device or way of developing a character's inner life. Author and synesthete Pat Duffy describes five ways in which synesthetic characters have been used in modern fiction.[75][76]



1.Synesthesia as romantic ideal: in which the condition illustrates the Romantic ideal of transcending one's experience of the world. Books in this category include The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov.

2.Synesthesia as pathology: in which the trait is pathological. Books in this category include The Whole World Over by Julia Glass.

3.Synesthesia as romantic pathology: in which synesthesia is pathological but also provides an avenue to the Romantic ideal of transcending quotidian experience. Books in this category include Holly Payne’s The Sound of Blue.

4.Synesthesia as psychological health and balance: Painting Ruby Tuesday by Jane Yardley, and A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass.

5.Synesthesia as young adult lterature and science fiction: Ultraviolet by R.J. Anderson

Many literary depictions of synesthesia are not accurate. Some say more about an author's interpretation of synesthesia than the phenomenon itself.


People with synesthesiaMain article: List of people with synesthesia


Determining synesthesia from the historical record is fraught with error unless (auto)biographical sources explicitly give convincing details.



Famous synesthetes include David Hockney, who perceives music as color, shape, and configuration, and who uses these perceptions when painting opera stage sets but not while creating his other artworks.[77] Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky combined four senses: color, hearing, touch, and smell.[3] Vladimir Nabokov describes his grapheme-color synesthesia at length in his autobiography, Speak, Memory and portrays it in some of his characters.[78] Composers include Duke Ellington,[79] Franz Liszt,[80] Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov,[81] and Olivier Messiaen, whose three types of complex colors are rendered explicitly in musical chord structures that he invented.[3][82] Physicist Richard Feynman describes his colored equations in his autobiography, What Do You Care What Other People Think?[83]



Other notable synesthetes include musicians Billy Joel,[84]p. 89, 91 Itzhak Perlman,[84]p. 53 Ida Maria,[85] Brian Chase[86][87] and Patrick Stump; actress Stephanie Carswell (credited as Stéphanie Montreux); inventor Nikola Tesla;[88] electronic musician Richard D. James aka Aphex Twin (who claims to be inspired by lucid dreams as well as music); and classical pianist Hélène Grimaud. Although it has not been verified, Pharrell Williams, of the groups The Neptunes and N.E.R.D., claims to experience synesthesia,[89] and to have used it as the basis of the album Seeing Sounds. Singer/songwriter Marina and the Diamonds experiences music → color synesthesia, and reports colored days of the week.[90]



Some artists frequently mentioned as synesthetes did not in fact have the condition. Alexander Scriabin's 1911 Prometheus, for example, is a deliberate contrivance whose color choices are based on the circle of fifths and appear to have been taken from Madame Blavatsky.[3][91] The musical score has a separate staff marked luce whose "notes" are played on a color organ. Technical reviews appear in period volumes of Scientific American.[3] On the other hand, his older colleague Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (who was perceived as a fairly conservative composer), was in fact a synesthete.[92]



French poets Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire wrote of synesthetic experience but there is no evidence they were synesthetes themselves. Baudelaire's 1857 Correspondances (text available here) introduced the notion that the senses can and should intermingle. Baudelaire participated in a hashish experiment by psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau, and became interested in how the senses might correspond.[16] Rimbaud later wrote Voyelles (1871) (text available here), which was perhaps more important than Correspondances in popularizing synesthesia, although he later boasted "J'inventais la couleur des voyelles!" [I invented the colors of the vowels!].



In addition to being a natural mimic and polyglot, the lauded Cartoon-network voice actor, Brian Hamilton, is a self-ascribed synesthete.[citation needed]



Daniel Tammet wrote a book on his experiences with synesthesia, called Born on a Blue Day.[93]



Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, is a synesthete who says she experiences colours as scents.[94] Her novel Blueeyedboy features various aspects of synesthesia.



Sean Day, synesthete and the President of the American Synesthesia Association, maintains a list of famous synesthetes, pseudosynesthetes, and non-synesthetes who used synesthesia in their art or music.


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2.^ a b Cytowic, Richard E. (2003). The Man Who Tasted Shapes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-53255-7. OCLC 53186027.

3.^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Cytowic, Richard E; Eagleman, David M (2009). Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (with an afterword by Dmitri Nabokov). Cambridge: MIT Press. p. 309. ISBN 0-262-01279-9 Check
isbn= value (help). Text "[[Category:Articles with invalid ISBNs]]" ignored (help)

4.^ a b Harrison, John E.; Simon Baron-Cohen (1996). Synaesthesia: classic and contemporary readings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 0-631-19764-8. OCLC 59664610.

5.^ Nikolić D (2009). "Is synaesthesia actually ideaestesia? An inquiry into the nature of the phenomenon". Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Synaesthesia, Science & Art, Granada, Spain, April 26–29.

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70.^ Gage, John D. (1993). Colour and culture: practice and meaning from antiquity to abstraction. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27818-0.

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72.^ Campen, Cretien van (2009) Visual Music and Musical Paintings. The Quest for Synesthesia in the Arts. In: F. Bacci & D. Melcher. Making Sense of Art, making Art of Sense. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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74.^ Marcia Smilack Website Accessed 20 Aug 2006.

75.^ Duffy, P.L. (2006). "Images of Synesthetes and their Perceptions of Language in Fiction". 6th Annual Meeting of the American Synesthesia Association. University of South Florida. http://www.synesthesia.info/florida.html.

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77.^ see Cytowic, Richard E. 2002. Synesthesia: a Union of the Senses. Second edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, and Cytowic, R.E. & Eagleman, D.M. (2009) Wednesday is Indigo Blue." Cambridge: MIT Press

78.^ Nabokov, Vladimir. 1966. Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited. New York: Putnam.

79.^ Ellington, as quoted in George, Don. 1981. Sweet man: The real Duke Ellington. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Page 226.

80.^ Quoted from an anonymous article in the Neuen Berliner Musikzeitung (29 August 1895); quoted in Mahling, Friedrich. 1926. "Das Problem der 'Audition colorée: Eine historische-kritische Untersuchung." Archiv für die Gesamte Psychologie; LVII Band. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft M.B.H. Pp. 165–301. Page 230. Translation by Sean A. Day.

81.^ according to the Russian press: Yastrebtsev V. "On N.A.Rimsky-Korsakov's color sound- contemplation." Russkaya muzykalnaya gazeta, 1908, N 39–40, p. 842–845 (in Russian), cited by Bulat Galeyev (1999).

82.^ see Samuel, Claude. 1994 (1986). Olivier Messiaen: Music and Color. Conversations with Claude Samuel. Translated by E. Thomas Glasow. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press.

83.^ Feynman, Richard. 1988. What Do You Care What Other People Think? New York: Norton. P. 59.

84.^ a b Seaberg, M. (2011). Tasting the Universe. New Page Books. ISBN 978-1-60163-159-6.

85.^ Cairns, Dan (2008-02-24). "Times Online interview". The Times (London). Retrieved 2008-07-24.

86.^ Forrest, Emma (March 30, 2009). "Emma Forrest meets New York's favourite art-punk rockers Yeah Yeah Yeahs". guardian.co.uk (London: The Guardian). Retrieved 2009-05-07.

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88.^ Tesla, Nikola. "The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla". pitt.edu. Retrieved 4 September 2012.

89.^ It just always stuck out in my mind, and I could always see it. I don't know if that makes sense, but I could always visualize what I was hearing... Yeah, it was always like weird colors." From a Nightline interview with Pharrell

90.^ Loose Women
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91.^ Dann, Kevin T. (1998). Bright colors falsely seen: synaesthesia and the search for transcendental knowledge. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06619-8.

92.^ This is according to an article in the Russian press, Yastrebtsev V. "On N.A.Rimsky-Korsakov's color sound- contemplation." Russkaya muzykalnaya gazeta, 1908, N 39-40, pp. 842–845 (in Russian), cited by Bulat Galeyev (1999).

93.^ Tammet, Daniel (2007). Born on a Blue Day. Free Press. ISBN 978-1416535072.

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Further reading Baron-Cohen, S. and Harrison, J. (Eds., 1997). Synaesthesia: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-19764-8.

Bosch, P. (2007) The Name of This Book is Secret Little, Brown Young Readers. ISBN 978-0-316-11366-3.

Campen, Cretien van. (2007) The Hidden Sense. Synesthesia in Art and Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Leonardo Books. ISBN 0-262-22081-4

Cytowic, R.E. (2003)The Man Who Tasted Shapes. Cambridge: MIT Press ISBN 978-0-907845-43-0.

Cytowic, R.E. (2002) Synesthesia: A Union of The Senses, second edition. Cambridge: MIT Press ISBN 978-0-262-03296-4.

Cytowic, R.E. & Eagleman, D.M. (2009) Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia, with an afterword by Dmitri Nabokov. Cambridge: MIT Press ISBN 978-0-262-01279-9.

Dann, K. (1998). Bright Colors Falsely Seen. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-300-06619-8.

Duffy, P. L. (2001). Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color their Worlds. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-7167-4088-5.

Harrison, J. (2001). Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-263245-0.

Jay, C. (2009) Breathing in Colour. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-7499-2978-7.

Marks L.E., The Unity of the Senses. Interrelations among the modalities, Academic Press, New York, 1978.

Robertson, L. and Sagiv, N. (Eds., 2005). Synesthesia: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516623-X.

Tammet, D. (2006) Born on a Blue Day: A Memoir of Aspergers and an Extraordinary Mind. Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. ISBN 978-0-340-89974-8.

Mass, W. (2003) A Mango-Shaped Space. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-52388-7

Ward, J. (2008) The Frog who croaked Blue: Synesthesia and the Mixing of the Senses. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-43014-2.

      External links[edit] Scientific resourcesRichard E. Cytowic Downloads, videos, and information.

David Eagleman's Synesthesia Battery: take the test to see if you are synesthetic.

Houston synesthesia study: Click here for more information.

Synesthetics by Cretien van Campen Artistic and scientific experiments, historical background.

Synaesthesia Research Group at the University of Sussex Information and article links.

Synesthesia in Art and Science Bibliography compiled by Cretien van Campen for Leonardo/ISAST

Blue Cats Resource Center by Patricia Lynne Duffy

[edit] Synesthesia associationsAmerican Synesthesia Association

Australian Synaesthesia Association

Belgian Synesthesia Association

UK Synaesthesia Association

synaesthesia.com: international synaesthesia community (synaesthesia-tests, workshops, Infos)

Russian Synaesthesia Web-community

[edit] On the WebTED talk: "I listen to color"

Synesthesia: What it is and how to diagnose it.

TED Blog, including video links to V. S. Ramachandran's TED talk.

Cytowic's video lecture at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum Visual Music exhibit. Four-part YouTube version [2].

Scientific American article Hearing Colors, Tasting Shapes (PDF version) by Ramachandran & Hubbard, May 2003.

Campen, Cretien van (2009), The Hidden Sense: On Becoming Aware of Synesthesia, TECCOGS, vol. 1, pp. 1–13.

Synaisthesis Publishers, a Luxembourgish publishing house with focus on synaesthesia

Red Mondays and Gemstone Jalapeños: The Synesthetic World a documentary short featuring, featuring David Eagleman and four synesthetes, from ResearchChannel.

Lawrence Marks, a pioneering synesthesia researcher, interviewed by Anton Dorso

Danis, Alex. "Grapheme → colour synesthesia". Numberphile. Brady Haran.

Pythagoras son of Hermes

http://www.thebigview.com/greeks/pythagoras.html



“He was once born as Aethalides and was considered to be the son of Hermes. Hermes invited him to choose whatever he wanted, except immortality; so he asked that, alive and dead, he should remember what happened to him. Thus, in life he remembered everything, and when he died he retained the same memories. [...] He remembered everything - how he first had been Aethalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, then Pyrrhus, the Delian fisherman. When Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras.” (Diogenes Laertius, Live of Philosophers, VIII 4-5)
“Pythagoras believed in metempsychosis and thought that eating meat was an abominable thing, saying that the souls of all animals enter different animals after death. He himself used to say that he remembered being, in Trojan times, Euphorbus, Panthus’ son who was killed by Menelaus. They say that once when he was staying at Argos he saw a shield from the spoils of Troy nailed up, and burst into tears. When the Argives asked him the reason for his emotion, he said that he himself had borne that shield at Troy when he was Euphorbus.



They did not believe him and judged him to be mad, but he said he would provide a true sign that it was indeed the case: on the inside of the shield there had been inscribed in archaic lettering EUPHORBUS. Because of the extraordinary nature of his claim they all urged that the shield be taken down - and it turned out that on the inside the inscription was found.” (Diogenes Laertius)
After Pythagoras introduced the idea of eternal recurrence into Greek thought, which was apparently motivated by his studies of earlier Egyptian scriptures, the idea soon became popular in Greece. It was Pythagoras’ ambition to reveal in his philosophy the validity and structure of a higher order, the basis of the divine order, for which souls return in a constant cycle.



This is how Pythagoras came to mathematics. It could be said that Pythagoras saw the study of mathematics as a purifier of the soul, just like he considered music as purifying. Pythagoras and his disciples connected music with mathematics and found that intervals between notes can be expressed in numerical terms. They discovered that the length of strings of a musical instrument correspond to these intervals and that they can be expressed in numbers. The ratio of the length of two strings with which two tones of an octave step are produced is 2:1.
Music was not the only field that Pythagoras considered worthy of study, in fact he saw numbers in everything. He was convinced that the divine principles of the universe, though imperceptible to the senses, can be expressed in terms of relationships of numbers. He therefore reasoned that the secrets of the cosmos are revealed by pure thought, through deduction and analytic reflection on the perceptible world.


“The Egyptians had known that a triangle whose sides are 3, 4, 5 has a right angle, but apparently the Greeks were the first to observe that 3²+4²=5², and, acting on this suggestion, to discover a proof of the general proposition. Unfortunately for Pythagoras this theorem led at once to the discovery of incommensurables, which appeared to disprove his whole philosophy. In a right-angled isosceles triangle, the square on the hypotenuse is double of the square on either side.
Let us suppose each side is an inch long; then how long is the hypotenuse? Let us suppose its length is m/n inches. Then m²/n²=2. If m and n have a common factor, divide it out, then either m or n must be odd. Now m²=2n², therefore m² is even, therefore m is even, therefore n is odd. Suppose m=2p. Then 4p²=2n², therefore n²=2p² and therefore n is even, contra hyp. Therefore no fraction m/n will measure the hypotenuse. The above proof is substantially that in Euclid, Book X.” (Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy)
This shows how Pythagoras’ formulation immediately led to a new mathematical problem, namely that of incommensurables. At his time the concept of irrational numbers was not known and it is uncertain how Pythagoras dealt with the problem. We may surmise that he was not too concerned about it. His religion, in absence of theological explanations, had found a way to blend the “mystery of the divine” with common-sense rational thought.
From Pythagoras we observe that an answer to a problem in science may give raise to new questions. For each door we open, we find another closed door behind it. Eventually these doors will be also be opened and reveal answers in a new dimension of thought. A sprawling tree of progressively complex knowledge evolves in such manner. This Hegelian recursion, which is in fact a characteristic of scientific thought, may or may not have been obvious to Pythagoras. In either way he stands at the beginning of it.