My talk in Houston can now be found on-line. It's more than an hour long, however...

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/education/lectures/archive/20091119/Br-Guy-Consolmango.html

Next Tuesday, Dec. 1, I am being flown down to NYC to appear on The Colbert Report. It should air that night.

Those of you who know the show, nothing more need be said. Those of you who don't... it's an American thing, I'm afraid.

I am in Houston for the rest of this week, speaking (last night and today) at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, just down the road from the Johnson Space Center. This trip had been on my calendar for over a year, even before I knew I was going to be teaching in Syracuse, so my students at LeMoyne get a holiday today.

The talk last night was an oldie-but-goodie, "Astronomy, God and the Search for Elegance". They had a big crowd -- not much to do on a Thursday night, I guess.

What was fun for me were some of the folk who came up to see me after the talk. Some I was hoping to see, like my friend Rita from Peace Corps who now lives in Galveston; others, I had no idea...

1. "Glad to hear you mention our old advisor, John Lewis," said a man about ten years younger than me. We had the same advisor, I wondered? Who was this guy? He saw the look of confusion on my face, and introduced himself. "I'm Tom Jones." Oh, right. We had written a paper together in the 1980s, while he was a student at the U of Arizona... before he went off to become an astronaut.

2. "Hi, I'm Luanne," said a woman about my age. Luanne? The only Luanne I ever knew was the little girl who used to chase after me to play house when we were four years old, living in Harper Woods. Yeah, that Luanne. She lives in Texas now, and came to the talk when she saw that I was in town.

3. A little old lady waited patiently until she had a chance to tell me all about a book that I really must read; it was by Carl Sagan. I didn't know about the book, but I did tell her that, ahem, yes, ma'am, (strut-strut), you know I actually knew Carl Sagan. (We even spoke together a couple of times.) She let this flow on by her. Then replied, "I was Carl Sagan's sister." (She did look just like him, in fact.)

In about an hour I head off to Binghamton, NY to give a couple of talks to the Kopernik Observatory, an amateur astronomy group that meets in the Polish Cultural Center (and at their own observatory nearby). Alas, the weather has stripped most of the color from the trees but other than that it should be a pleasant drive -- unlike yesterday, when it was snowing here. My topics will be "The Heavens Proclaim" (basically a slide show of the pretty pictures from our book) and "Is Pluto a Planet -- And Why Does It Matter" which is an old standby.

I used to be defensive about my role in the Pluto "demotion" -- I had originally argued and voted against the IAU decision, but then as an officer of Commission 16, Planets and Moons, it was my job to explain and defend it. (And having lived with it for three years I actually think now we made the right choice.) Finally I got tired of all the ill-informed grief I was getting, and now my attitude when people accuse me of maligning poor little Pluto is to cackle with glee and insist, "Yes, I killed Pluto -- and I'd do it again! Ha-ha-ha!"

After all, how often does one get to use that mad-scientist chortle that we worked so hard to perfect when we were graduate students?

I am just back to Syracuse (NY) from two days in Rome (Italy). For my non-New Yorker readers I point out that there is also a Syracuse (Italy) and a Rome (New York), neither of which I saw this trip.

The event was the opening of the Vatican's display of antique astronomical instruments, gathered from observatories across Italy (including ours and the Vatican Museum) in honor of the International Year of Astronomy; the gathering was also an official opening of our new headquarters in the Papal Gardens. About 75 astronomers from Italy and around the world, including a number of impressive names, gathered on Friday at the headquarters of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (a lovely building in the gardens behind St. Peter's) to hear a presentation from John Huchra on telescopes past and future.

Then, after a bit of coffee, we walked over to the audience halls of the Vatican (on a path that takes you underneath the Vatican Museum and past the Sistine Chapel, which is not quite as impressive on the outside as it is on the inside!) where Pope Benedict XVI greeted the astronomers and said a few words about astronomy. He's all for it!

After lunch in the Pope Paul VI auditorium, we then split into three groups to do a round-robin tour of the new exhibit, the Sistine Chapel, and the Tower of the Winds. My task was to be the tour guide to the tower, so I didn't get to see the other spots. (I've seen the Sistine Chapel a few times now, and I'll be back in January to get a look at the exhibit.) So three times I (and a secretary from the Archives) led groups up the stairs to the Tower of the Winds. Yeah, stairs. Quite a few of them. It is a tower, after all... After that, we went into the "Secret Archives" where you can see a bit of the 85 kilometers of shelving. (The name is a bad translation of the Italian which would be better put as "Private Archives" -- the root word is the same as in "secretary" not "top secret.")

For next class: how many terabytes does 85 linear kilometers of shelving represent?

On Saturday, the group came by bus out to Castel Gandolfo. Chris Corbally, Paul Gabor, and I led three groups on a tour through the Papal Gardens -- took about an hour and a half, and we only saw half of them -- ending up at our new headquarters. We were going to do a formal tour of our library, rare books, and meteorites but by then everyone was exhausted so we just let people wander while we served a four course pranzo in the cobblestone courtyard. The weather (in the upper teens Celsius, and sunny) was almost as good as the food.

The group left at around 2:30; by 4:00 I was in the car heading back to the airport. And today I have two classes to teach at LeMoyne College.

(Crossposted at Cosmic Diary)

Sorry for the long delay posting. After Conclave I was staying at the Jesuit residence of U of Detroit High and they share their internet with the high school, which blocks sites like facebook and LJ. Then I was in London, Ontario, staying at the seminary in a room without internet connection. Then less than 24 hours in Georgia with no time. Finally I arrived in Syracuse on Sunday night; here, Wednesday am, is my first chance to blog.

While at the high school, I was asked to talk to students. I had been a student there in 1966-70. Having me talk to these kids was like having someone from the class of 1930 talking to us when we were students. Ouch.

I am teaching the second half of a course at LeMoyne College (a small, 2500 student, Jesuit undergraduate school on a hilltop in the middle of upstate New York famous mostly for its large snowfalls) called "Dynamic Creation" which looks at the interaction between cosmology and theology. Guess which half I am covering! More about that in later posts.

I will be here for two months, until the end of the term. Except, of course, for the trip to Rome for the last weekend in October; to Binghamton the following weekend, NYC the weekend after that, Houston the next weekend, then Rochester for Thanksgiving...

So what does my title have to do with anything? I was walking across campus yesterday and saw a student wearing a ratty Dark Side of the Moon tee-shirt. My first thought was that his parents were barely born when that record came out. (I heard Floyd perform it live, a year before the album came out.) Then I thought to myself, when my generation was in college did we go around glorying in bits of 40 year old pop culture?

Actually, yes, we did. The Marx Brothers. The cover of a Firesign Theatre album came to mind...

Hurrah for Captain Spalding! Shorter of breath, another day closer to death. Somehow seeing Pink Floyd as the Marx Brothers of the Millenials does nothing to make me feel younger.

I just got in from the annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Puerto Rico, to a rainy Detroit for ConClave. Met up with friends and fellow Guests in the Con Suite last night; the convention opens tonight. As the Science Guest of Honor I have a bunch of program items but I am too muddled at the moment to remember when and where. My task for today is to find a laundromat and replace the iPhone that I managed to lose in Puerto Rico. (A good excuse to upgrade my phone!)

The European Jesuits in Science met last month in Portugal, and came up with the following statement which we sent to Fr. Mark Rostaert, the president of the European Assistancy of Jesuits. (He was at our meeting and helped craft the message to one that he can then take to the higher-ups.) Following that, we then crafted a longer piece which is now done to expand on these themes.

Since many of you helped when I first asked for ideas and suggestions, I thought you might be interested in what we came up with. It's below the cut.

( Jesuits and Science )

My podcast is up for the 365 Days of Astronomy:

http://365daysofastronomy.org/2009/09/30/september-30th-the-delight-of-stars/

... that mentions my name.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0904135.htm

(Edited, to include the better link, and to unlock now that the news is public.)

A beautiful day in London… cool, dancing clouds around the sky (OK, so it has just gone completely overcast), a taste of fall in the air. I am looking forward to seeing some old friends (and doing some amateur astronomy) up in Oxford, getting to bookstores with books in English, a couple of fun talks on the schedule… one tonight, one next week. And a very busy month ahead of me, all of which I am looking forward to very much.

I expected that with all this coming my way I would probably wake up an hour before I needed to; instead, I rolled over this morning at 6:20 and realized with a start that my ride to the airport was leaving in ten minutes. Mostly I was packed; I threw everything else I could see into my bag and raced downstairs. Made my ride, and the flight to Gatwick was uneventful. I am writing this on the train to London and the Jesuit house in Swiss Cottage.

Oh, and yesterday, I got to show off my new meteorite laboratory to the Pope, who happened to drop by and sign the visitor’s book. (Yes, we knew he was coming. The place has never been so clean. Nor will it be again.)

He liked the chunk of Nakhla that he got to hold (for those who don’t know their meteorites, it’s a piece of Mars; our piece is 152 g. Quite nice.), was impressed at the heft of Canyon Diablo and how Knyahinya looked through a petrographic microscope under crossed Nichols. But mostly -- I guessed right -- he got the biggest smile out of looking through our sample microscope at little pieces of a howardite called Mässing, named for the small town in Germany where it was seen to fall and collected in 1803, right near his home town.

Our first papal visitor in Castel Gandolfo was Pius XI, who by coincidence also came to see us on a September 16th, but 75 years earlier, in 1934.

See: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0904135.htm

Portugal, Sept. 8 - 13
Attending: Darwin Conference/European Jesuits in Science meeting

Rome, Sept. 14 - 16
Back to work for a few days...

London, Sept. 17-21
Thurs: Talk to “The Keys” (Guild of Catholic Writers)
Fri: Visit NHM; visit University College
Mon: Train to Ely; staying with the (Anglican) Bishop

Lille, France, Sept. 22 - 23
Tues Sept. 22 bus/train to Lille
Staying at: La Maison Diocésaine d’Accueil, Merville, France
Wed: Speaking to Ely (Anglican) Diocese priests, "Small Truths in Large Spaces"

London, Sept. 24
Thurs: Eurostar to London

New York City, Sept. 25 - 26
Staying with Dan and Léonie Davis (my Turn Left at Orion co-conspirators; we are preparing a 4th Edition)

Nashville, TN, Sept. 27 - 28
Speaking at: Montgomery Bell Academy, "God, Astronomy, and the Search for Elegance"

Pensacola, FL, Sept. 29 - 30
Wed: Speaking at: Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), "Meteorites, Asteroids and the Stratigraphy of the Solar System" and "The Religious Life of Techies

Orlando, Oct. 1 - 2
Working at: U. Central Florida

Tampa, Oct. 3
Drive to Tampa; visit with parents.

Puerto Rico, Oct. 4-7
Attending: Annual Meeting, American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences

Detroit, Oct. 8 - 14
Attending: Conclave SF Convention (Science Guest of Honor)
Sun: Speaking to U. Mich. amateur astronomers
Mon: Speaking at U Mich. Dearborn, Detroit Science Center.

London, Oct. 15-16
Fri: Speaking at: London Diocese “Symposium on the Word of God”

Georgia, Oct. 17
Speaking at: Peach State Star Gaze, Deerlick Astronomy Village

Syracuse, NY, Oct. 18 - 27
Teaching at: LeMoyne University (half semester course on cosmology)

Rome, Oct. 27 - 31
Attending: Opening of Vatican 400 Years of the Telescope exhibit, Vatican Museums 

 

 Nothing profound... just that it's in the low 20's (mid 70's F), humidity around 40%, sunny, light breeze; just a gorgeous September day in Italy.

A thing to recall is that I am interested in reaching clergypeople who already have a certain training in philosophy. This poses interesting challenges. For instance... 

In my previous post I have a paragraph, gleaned from the comments, that reads "Science is inquiry based on observation, measurement, and -- most importantly -- informed skepticism. It means being prepared to admit you're wrong in the face of solid evidence to the contrary. It is supposed to be open-ended, and to perpetually test its assumptions. Nothing is a given. Nothing is axiomatic, nothing is dogma, everything can be re-examined in the light of new evidence. Everything is provisional, can be rewritten by new evidence, from what you see (be it through a telescope or just watching the people around you)."

(First, a silly correction that I've already made in my master copy (but not in the previous post): "being prepared to admit you're wrong in the face of solid evidence to the contrary" I think is supposed to mean "being prepared to admit you're wrong when faced with solid evidence to the contrary" -- in other words, the "evidence to the contrary" is evidence that your original idea was wrong, not that (as might be implied) one should admit one is wrong even when the evidence is to the contrary, i.e. that you are actually right!)

The real issue I have with this paragraph, and other comments similar to is, is a fundamental philosophy-of-science issue, and one that does not have a simple answer. How "meta" is this "meta"? Is "nothing is given" itself an example of something that can be challenged? Is "everything is provisional" itself provisional?

This is not mere playing games with words; it reaches to the absolute core of what science is. For example, most people would accept that quantum physics is real science, but certainly it violates a lot of what 19th century physicists would have asserted were axioms of science. But it works. Is "it works" the only factor that makes it science?

The Ptolemaic view of the universe, if pushed to the extreme of having an infinite number of epicycles, could describe the motions of planets just as accurately as the Keplerian view; but there is a fundamental difference in the way you think of the planets between the views. Am I somehow a prejudiced Keplerian, and a bad scientist, by preferring to think that Kepler was right, and Ptolemy was fundamentally wrong?

A lot of scientists (I found this in the GT list a lot, where I posed the same question) have no idea of how science actually works; worse, they have a false idea of how it works. No logician or mathematician would accept inductive logic ("it always works, so it must be true") as valid, yet science relies on it all the time. And likewise, sometimes great advances in science occur when someone is able to see a different between what's really going on in nature, versus what is a systematic error in the observation. (Vide, the famous joke about the physicist's "proof" that all odd numbers are prime: "three is prime, five is prime, seven is prime, nine is experimental error, eleven...") But, of course, it's because this logic is faulty that we say "everything is provisional."

This is the sort of thing that makes it especially challenging to explain what science is, to people who have a graduate-level understanding of philosophy!

Thanks for your great answers! Before I comment (in a later post) let me summarize here what I have gleaned from your comments -- think of this as a first draft of a commentary that I want to send to the European Jesuits in Science group for us to discuss in our meeting in Portugal next week. There are a couple of points here that in fact I actually disagree strongly with -- but in a way that I think will advance the discussion.

So, please comment if there is a better way of phrasing what I have pulled out of your comments...

( What Should Every Jesuit Know About Science? )

 In September I will be at a meeting of European Jesuits in Science, and the topic will be teaching science to non-scientific Jesuits. This has raised a bigger question that I would love to hear some input from my favorite techies about: in general, what bits of science do you think it is most important for a clergyperson in this day and age to know? (And how should it be taught?)

 

This is a subset of the bigger "what should every educated person know about science" but somewhat bigger than just "what should every Jesuit know about science" since I realize that most of you probably know only one Jesuit, and it would be exhausting to list all the things *I* wish I knew about science!

 

Or, if you like it in the form of a meme: List three things about science that all clergy should know.

 

 Back in the US, today I start my eight day silent retreat, followed by a few days of vacation and then flying back to Rome. Don't expect to hear much from me until the 29th or so.

 Cool, rainy day in Rio today, though it dried up by the afternoon and we had a pleasant walk around the city center. This evening I stepped out on to the balcony on the 4th floor of the Jesuit residence where we are staying, at the Colegio Santo Inacio, the big Jesuit high school here in Rio. There was a hole in the clouds. Directly over head I could spot Scorpius, looking very different from the dim stretched out set of stars I normally see along the southern horizon. And then the hole in the clouds drifted westward, and I saw Alpha and Beta Centauri and a couple of stars of the Southern Cross.

 So, while a good number of my friends are partying at the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, I am stuck here in boring old Rio de Janeiro, attending the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. Poor me.

The IAU GAs are unlike any other scientific convention I have attended, in that half of what goes on here is politics... the boring but essential kind of politics, where a lot of arbitrary decisions are made over matters that can be tedious (but are sometimes fun); usually not important in themselves (the world won't end if we don't make the best possible decisions) but which do have to be decided, one way or another. Stuff like the rules for naming asteroids. Or at what hour the standard Julian day begins. Or the definition of the standard equation to be used to extrapolate the brightness of asteroids observed at a variety of phase angles, to the value at zero phase angle. Or if Pluto... never mind.

Since the tiny nation that pays my salary (if I had one) wants to be recognized as a nation, it feels strongly that it should be represented at the IAU. So every three years I get a trip to some fun location. Kyoto, Japan. (Where I was, instead of attending beamjockey's wedding.) Sydney, Australia. Prague, Czech Republic. The Hague, The Netherlands. Manchester, UK. (Don't snort like that, I actually enjoyed Manchester. It reminds me a lot of my home town, Detroit, a sports-mad blue collar town that gets no respect from the rest of the world...)

Since I actually show up to these things regularly, I wind up getting elected to posts and appointed to committees. I dodged a bullet this time; by one vote I avoided being the present-Elect of Division III. But the most fun, to me, is sitting on the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. We get to approve the proposed names of craters on Mercury or plains on Venus.

And so to my friends in Montreal... this past year, we named a crater on Mars for Isaac Asimov, and approved the theme for plains on Titan as "names of planets in the Dune series." I've done my part to keep SF alive in the universe.