Autism Vox

The Secret’s In the Ocean

by Kristina Chew, PhD on August 4th, 2008

The discovery of how a 2000 year-old astronomical computer created by the ancient Greeks—we have its remnants, a broken wooden and bronze case containing more than 30 gears—was used to predict solar eclipses and calculate the 4-year-cycles of the Olympiad (video here at Nature) was (if I may lapse into ancient Greek) mega ti—-”something big.” I’m a classicist who explains what “blog” means by talking about logos, the ancient Greek word for “account, tale, explanation, argument, reason” and (though someone this weekend laughed that I didn’t seem “bloggie”), I’ve found myself (like many of us) drawn to this most-modern medium of writing on the computer for immediate internet publication.

Pheidippides is said to have run the 40 km (26 miles) from Marathon to Athens to report the marvelous news that the Athenians had defeated the Spartans in 490BC; after delivering his message—”Νενικήκαμεν” (Nenikékamen, ‘We have won’)—-the story is that he instantly died. It’s a little less strenuous, and perilous, getting the message out today. The ancient computing machine never got to where someone wanted it go and remained in the waters off the island of Antikythera until divers, searching ancient shipwrecks, found it at the turn of the 20th century: There’s a lot in the ocean.

Maybe that’s why the three of us are so drawn to it. We drove down Sunday afternoon; the countdown to our annual two weeks at the beach house is fully underway around here now, and we are now but five days away. There was not much of a current in the ocean and the lifeguards had set their flags far apart so there was a wide stretch of water to swim in, and Jim and I ended up doing something novel: While Charlie swam in the ocean on his own, we stood on the shore and watched.

Charlie said no to holding hands and told us “bye” when we stood too close. There were plenty of people in the water, lifeguards at their stands, and the waves were fairly gentle. For awhile I posted myself in line with one of the lifeguard’s flags and Jim directed Charlie “this way” when he was venturing too close outside that invisible bound. Not completely and very gradually, Charlie was starting to swim “flag to flag,” rather than, as we’d been worrying, further and further out. And that’s what, we realized, we need to teach Charlie this summer, swimming flag to flag and up and down and back and forth.

Charlie went out and back, out and back, into the water. He likes to kneel in the sand and shove his hands and feet into the wet, crumbly stuff, and to wade in the little pools that form, and then pad out into the shallow water, and suddenly he flops down and is wholly under a wave. I watched (I got a bit too much sun, I confess) and Jim took a couple of walks to the jetty and figured out the title for a speech he’s giving in the fall.

And this reddish blob is a Portuguese man o’ war that we found washed up on the beach—-there’s a lot in that ocean.

Including, maybe the beginnings of fostering “independence” in Charlie, and leaving us his parents to enjoy the sun and surf.

And (here comes a cliché, but why not) I think it all, indeed, computes and adds up to a very fine mega ti.

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POSTED IN: Classics, Science, Statistics, Technology