"What little cosmology and cosmogony [Dagny] had learned, for instance, was in the form of vague, probably distorted tradition - latter-day myth. And she was intelligent enough to recognize this." (p. 487)
However, she does know that very young stars have:
"'...condensed out of an interstellar medium made rich in metals by the thermonuclear furnaces of earlier star generations.'" (p. 487)
- also that:
"'...planets with super-abundant heavy elements can be lethal to men. So much...oh, arsenic, selenium, radioactives. Slow poison in some areas, fast and horrible death in others. This water, that fruit, may have stuff to kill us.'" (ibid.)
(Dagny is mistaken about Nike's sun being young but that will emerge.)
- also that iron makes rocks red and that stars are differentiated into Types like F, G and K which have different colours and spectral distributions.
In other words, Dagny's traditional, mythical knowledge is very scientific.
She reflects that, if her husband has been killed and if the gods are kind, then she might eventually avenge him. References to gods might just be a way of speaking but she also says:
"'We may or may not be able to get Tom back unhurt. I vow the gods a hundred Blue Giant seabeasts if we do!'" (p. 489)
So, on Kraken, they practise lavish polytheist animal sacrifices?
(Very unscientific.)
Yasmin from Sassania, which was ruled by a Shah, asks God for strength.
Cultures connect and collide.
8 comments:
Religious belief seems to be selected for in evolutionary terms. Believers have 3x the birth-rate of nonbelievers, for example.
BTW, Paul, remind me -- what formats for text files do you use?
That I don't know the answer to. Ketlan, now deceased, used to help me with such things. I might need to get help from other family members when it comes to receiving text files etc.
Kaor, Paul!
The way Dagny thought and reasoned must have been analogous to how many people thought in the centuries after the Western Roman Empire fell. There must have been many intelligent people with scraps of learning, but not deeply grasped or known in a systematic way.
And I have speculated that Sassania was colonized by non-Muslim Iranians harking back to the pre-Muslim past of Iran. Possibly by Christians or Zoroastrians, or both.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: what word-processing program do you use for typing up text?
Is it sufficient just to say "Word"? I am making further enquiries. All that I do on the computer is email (gmail), blog and google. If any further questions arise, I have to ask someone else.
Paul: if that's Microsoft Word, we have no problem. Ask!
We are getting it sorted. Please see email communications.
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