Walking the line

Walking the line

The Prime Meridian at Greenwich • Photo by Kris Arnold (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Originally published 6 August 2006

(The fol­low­ing is an inter­view I did sev­er­al months ago [in 2006] for Pow­ell’s book­store in Port­land, for my book Walk­ing Zero.)

So what is Walk­ing Zero all about?

—In the fall of 2003, I walked the prime merid­i­an — the line of zero lon­gi­tude — across south­east­ern Eng­land, vis­it­ing along the way such shrines of sci­ence as Dar­win’s home at Downe, the Roy­al Obser­va­to­ry at Green­wich, and New­ton’s col­lege at Cam­bridge. In my book I use the walk as a hook for telling the sto­ry of how humans made their way from a uni­verse scarce­ly larg­er and old­er than our­selves into the uni­verse of the galax­ies and geo­log­i­cal eons.

Why the prime meridian?

—The merid­i­an is the stan­dard for all the world’s maps and clocks, and it lies close to a sur­pris­ing num­ber of sites of sci­en­tif­ic inter­est. But the real rea­son is this: For years, I taught an Earth Sci­ence course to lib­er­al arts stu­dents, and one thing I did was take them on an imag­i­nary walk across a geo­log­i­cal map of south­east­ern Eng­land, observ­ing the rocks “under our feet.” They then had to fig­ure out the geo­log­i­cal his­to­ry of the region. I did the walk so many times in my imag­i­na­tion, that I final­ly decid­ed to do it in reality.

How long a walk is it?

—The merid­i­an runs about 200 miles from the Eng­lish Chan­nel to the North Sea, the greater part of which I tramped. If those 200 miles rep­re­sent the 13.7 bil­lion-year his­to­ry of the uni­verse as we under­stand it today, then all of record­ed human his­to­ry would be spanned by a sin­gle step. The sto­ry I tell in Walk­ing Zero, from the Alexan­dri­an geo­g­ra­phers and astronomers to the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, would fit in a foot­print. If those 200 miles rep­re­sent the dis­tance to the most dis­tant objects we see with our tele­scopes, then a fleck of dust from my shoe is big enough to con­tain not only the solar sys­tem but many neigh­bor­ing stars.

Sure­ly you did­n’t walk exact­ly along the merid­i­an? You’d be walk­ing through peo­ple’s flower gar­dens and bedrooms.

—No. But the Eng­lish coun­try­side is so laced with pub­lic foot­paths that I nev­er had to depart far from the line, and sel­dom had to put my foot on asphalt.

You began at the Eng­lish Channel?

—In the vil­lage of Peace­haven, near Brighton, where a mon­u­ment marks the prime. Up over the chalky South Downs to the town of Lewes where — bless­ing! — a fine Eng­lish pub stands exact­ly on the line, the Merid­i­an Pub. A day lat­er, in the vil­lage of Pilt­down, I stopped for anoth­er pint at the Pilt­down Man pub. Pilt­down Man was the infa­mous “miss­ing link” fos­sil, a pur­port­ed man-chimp. The place where the fraud­u­lent fos­sil was found is near to the line.

Sounds like your book might be sub­ti­tled “A Pub Crawl Through Cos­mic Space and Time.”

—Oh, it gets bet­ter. As the merid­i­an goes north from Green­wich it fol­lows the course of the Riv­er Lee, which in the 19th cen­tu­ry was made nav­i­ga­ble by the addi­tion of locks. At each lock was a pub where boat­men took their plea­sure while wait­ing their turn through the lock. The ye olde pubs are still there. A charm­ing walk, indeed.

Tell us about your own jour­ney into cos­mic space and time.

—Like all of us, I was born at the cen­ter of a world — the child of white, Roman Catholic par­ents in Ten­nessee, USA. My race was the most favored, my reli­gion was the truest, my coun­try the great­est, my region the fairest. I now count myself today part of a uni­verse that con­tains more stars than there are cells in my body — a typ­i­cal crea­ture on a typ­i­cal plan­et near a typ­i­cal star in a typ­i­cal cor­ner of a typ­i­cal galaxy.

Sounds deflat­ing.

—Not at all. We car­ry the uni­verse of cos­mic space and time in our heads, which makes us pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant. In the book I hon­or the brave men and women who had the spunk to buck reign­ing ortho­dox­ies to take us out of the self-cen­tered worlds into which we are born: Aristarchus, Gior­dano Bruno, Galileo, Mary Anning, Charles Dar­win, and many oth­ers. They blazed the way.

What helped you make the per­son­al jour­ney into cos­mic space and time?

—My father was an intense­ly curi­ous man, and he shared his curios­i­ty with his chil­dren. My moth­er belonged to the Book-of-the-Month Club, and every month when I was young anoth­er ter­rif­ic book came into our house. My par­ents sparked in me a will­ing­ness to look beyond the given.

Any spe­cial book of your own?

—The first book I have a mem­o­ry of was a pic­ture-book of Christo­pher Colum­bus. To this day I remem­ber the illus­tra­tion of Colum­bus stand­ing before Queen Isabel­la with an apple in his hand, explain­ing that the world was round and that he could reach the East by sail­ing west. Not his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate — the monarch need­ed no con­vinc­ing of the spheric­i­ty of the Earth — but it made a suit­able impres­sion on me.

Teach­ers?

—I had a cou­ple of won­der­ful teach­ers in high school, Domini­can nuns, who rec­og­nized my curios­i­ty and nur­tured it, a math/science teacher and an Eng­lish teacher. They nudged me out of the tight orbit of my birth.

So Walk­ing Zero is real­ly three jour­neys — on foot along the prime merid­i­an, humankind’s jour­ney into cos­mic space and time, and your per­son­al jour­ney into the uni­verse of the galaxies.

—That’s right. My own intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney is inter­est­ing only in that it is a jour­ney each of us can make if we choose to do so. The path has been blazed by the coura­geous men and women whose sto­ries I tell. But, of course, many of us choose not to make the jour­ney, to remain all our lives in the com­fort­able, cozy world of our birth, a world cen­tered upon ourselves.

What inspires you to sit down and write?

—I am retired from teach­ing now, so I have more time to write. I still walk to col­lege each day, where I have an office near the library. My morn­ing walk through woods and mead­ows nev­er fails to inspire.

We notice you have a blog — sciencemusings.com.

—For 20 years I wrote a week­ly col­umn for the Boston Globe, called Sci­ence Mus­ings. When that came to an end my son sug­gest­ed tak­ing it on line, which I did; the idea was that it might sell a few books. The week­ly essay I post every Sun­day is com­ple­ment­ed by dai­ly rumi­na­tions. The site gives struc­ture and dis­ci­pline to my writer­ly life.

What are some of the things you’d like your com­put­er to do that it can­not now do?

—Walk. I’d like my Mac­Book to fol­low me around like a pup­py, always ready to play.

Describe the best sci­ence muse­um you’ve ever vis­it­ed and what made it great.

—Dur­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic year 1968 – 69 I lived in Lon­don direct­ly across the street from the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um com­plex in South Kens­ing­ton. I loved those muse­ums. I knew every nook and cor­ner. The col­lec­tions make more than one appear­ance in Walk­ing Zero.

Did you have fam­i­ly with you then?

—We had three young chil­dren at the time. On Sat­ur­day morn­ings we all went to the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, where for the deposit of a big brown Eng­lish pen­ny the kids received a can­vas stool, a clip­board, draw­ing paper and col­ored pen­cils. Off they scam­pered among the stuffed beasts and dinosaur bones. My daugh­ter, a geol­o­gist, is now fea­tured in a video exhib­it in the geo­log­i­cal sec­tion of the museum.

By the end of your life, where do you think humankind will be in terms of sci­ence and tech­no­log­i­cal advancement?

—Well, at age 70, that does not allow a lot of time. I am clear­ly not going to “live long enough to live for­ev­er,” to bor­row Ray Kurzweil’s phrase. I would like to live long enough to see all of us become cit­i­zens of cos­mic space and time, and stop killing one anoth­er because we belong to dif­fer­ent reli­gions, eth­nic­i­ties, or polit­i­cal per­sua­sions. That’s the bright hope of Walk­ing Zero. Sci­ence is a way of know­ing that makes no ref­er­ence to reli­gion, nation­al­i­ty, eth­nic­i­ty, race, or gen­der. Read any paper in any sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal and you will know noth­ing of the par­tic­u­lar­i­ties or prej­u­dices of the authors’ births. The sci­en­tif­ic way of know­ing has walked us into the uni­verse of the galax­ies and the geo­log­ic eons. In such a uni­verse, the things that divide us seem pet­ty indeed.

What comes next for you?

—Well, after three books based on walks I think I’ll pon­der a book set in a ham­mock on a trop­ic beach, with my Mac­Book pup­py curled in my lap.

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