If 95% of great programmers aren’t in the US, and an even higher percentage not in the Bay Area, set up your company to take advantage of that fact as a strength, not a weakness.
I have heard recently and first hand, that some investors don’t like to invest in virtual companies, or in companies where any of the important team members is remote.
It’s especially disheartening in light of the continued and sustained explosion in communication tools and capabilities, and the fantastic reduction in cost of communicating with remote people. At the same time I have friends who are experts with very deep experience who are having trouble finding work.
In my now over 18-year technology career, I’ve spent nearly half of it working with or for remote teams or at virtual companies, and a large portion of my best and most important work has happened while working “remote” from home.
Companies (and people) that don’t figure out how to do this are already at a significant disadvantage against those that do, and have been since at least the early 2000’s. And this disadvantage is more than likely to continue to grow as communication and coordination tools continue to get better and cheaper.
When companies open up to the possibility of remote work, they vastly expand the pool of talent they can draw upon. When people live and work in less expensive locations, they may be less expensive, or they may be more loyal because you can pay them more. Remote workers may be happier and more productive because they can tailor their work environment to maximize their own, personal productivity needs.
And when the whole company is virtual, you can decrease operational expenses: There may be no need for an office. The cost and time lost to commuting disappears. Perks that are common in our industry, like free food, on-site massages, and high-end office decor are unnecessary, and the savings can be passed on to employees to use in ways that better fit their personal needs.
Early-stage startups can leverage the savings for a longer “runway”. And for established or so-called “growth” companies, you can use the balance to pay for better people, support travel for company-wide meetings, sponsor related trade shows, or a multitude of other things.
Today I needed to start figuring out how to install an open source analytics package on my dev machine. It’s implemented in Java, and needed Tomcat. I groaned. “Great. Another complicated dependency to install,” I thought.
Turns out that installing Tomcat on a Mac is actually pretty easy. I ended up following Wolf Paulus’ tutorial here.
A few months back, we reported Nissan's in-house tuning shop, Nissan Motorsports (Nismo) was planning to heighten its profile outside Japan. It's been doing so over the course of 2005, launching the Nismo Frontier pickup in the US and showing off its R-tune 350Z show car at this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed. Now, it's adding new evidence in its case for aftermarket performance-parts cred among Nissan owners and the cars they sweat, with two new showcase vehicles.
An R-tune Altima 2.5 S, including cold-air intake, 18" bronze wheels, suspension mods, rear spoiler, shocks and springs, header, cat-back exhaust, high-performance cams and other cosmetics, and an S-tune spec'd SE, which 18" aluminum-alloy wheels mounting and similar suspension and body mods — just about everything but the engine work. The cars will be featured at this year's SEMA show in November and other auto shows to be announced.
Sugar in the gas tank is one of those staples of miserable things you always heard that awful people do to other, often similarly awful people’s cars. While nobody thinks sweeting your car’s gas is a good idea, the actual results of putting sugar in a gas tank isn’t all that well known. That’s why it’s nice to see someone actually give it a try, and evaluate exactly what happens.
The engine-ruiners over at Project Farm made a sweet-gas mixture for their test gasoline engine, in this case a lawnmower engine, ran the sugar-gas mixture through the engine, then removed the cylinder head and did some basic tests to see the results.
While perhaps doing the test on a full-size modern car engine may have been more exciting, that’s an awful lot of commitment, and, really, a four-stroke lawnmower engine should show the same basic results as a larger automotive engine.
The results are interesting, but not really surprising. The engine doesn’t explode or fail in any dramatic way, or even at all, really. The performance does get degraded a bit thanks to the caramelized sugar on the piston, valves, cylinder head, and pretty much everywhere. Longer-term, this will absolutely be an issue, possibly a delicious, creme brulée-tasting one.
I wonder if modern fuel-injected engines would experience more trouble running on a sugar-gas mixture than this crude carbureted lawnmower, too? I suspect that’s likely.
It’s unthinkable how many things can go wrong when selling used cars, but for some reason, these are risks that almost all of us are or have been willing to take. Here are ten of your worst experiences selling cars.
It always surprises me to see how ignorant people can be when it comes to money and or goods. Unfortunately, reader MTY19855 found out just how bad some people could be. Some people, as in, half his family.
I was selling a CRV due to a death in the immediate family. Had a bunch of family members offer to “take it off my hands” or give me some ridiculous lowball offer on what was a $15,000 vehicle, because “family is family.” When I sold it to a Craigslist punter at a fair price, the entire side of the family basically stopped talking to me because I wasn’t “looking out for family.” Basically lost my dad’s side of the family over a Honda.
Not sure if this is ‘worst’ or just ‘weirdest’ but in college I had a girl come and look at a car I was selling, then text me incessantly using the number from the ad. We knew some acquaintances in common, and she would sext late into the night. Long story short, we ended up having the weirdest sex of my life and she didn’t even buy the car. Guess sex doesn’t always sell.
You might think that receiving payment with certified loan check and verifying the check on the spot might be one of the most secure and reliable methods of payment for selling used cars in a private party transaction, right? Apparently not for reader Jeebus:
My worst experience was when I sold my 96 Nissan Maxima. Like any cheap-ish used car, I put it up on Craigslist. A marine called me up VERY interested, because he was in love with this gen Maxima. We met up in a Best Buy parking lot and he decided it was the car for him. The next day we met at my bank, and he brought with him a loan check from Navy Federal...all very official looking, everything looked A-OK. I made copies of his license and I walked into the bank to verify and deposit the check. They verified it, I signed it in my teller’s presence, and that $4k went straight into my account.
Because it was verified the funds were available immediately, but I waited over a week to move those funds...just in case. When I felt comfortable, I moved those funds to payoff some debt we had. A few days later I got an email from my bank notifying me that I was a few thousand dollars overdrawn. This was at a time in my life where we were not exactly rolling in the dough, so this was quite concerning. I looked online that instant and sure enough the $4k car check was reversed!!!!
What? I was furious. What the hell was going on? I called the buyer freaking out and he sounded confused as well. He had no idea what this could be about. I didn’t want to call him a scammer just yet, but I felt scammed...however why would he answer his phone? Then I called my bank. They told me that Navy Federal had reversed the check. I was in shock...”why?” All my bank could tell me was that it was reversed due to a signature issue. MY signature.
Yes, somehow Navy Federal determined that MY signature...from a man that doesn’t bank with them or have any previous dealings with them, was not MY signature. I had signed it in my teller’s presence for fuck’s sake! Sure my signature is scribbly, but so are most...and how would they know what it’s supposed to look like??
I tried to calm down and figure out what to do next. There was a Navy Federal branch near me so I went there. I brought this up to them and they looked it all up, then told me “sorry, there’s nothing we can do. The loan has been canceled due to this.” Now I was furious...”cancelled!!! how can it be cancelled??? Your customer has MY car! And now he doesn’t even have to pay you for it!”
I wasn’t satisfied with that answer and demanded to speak to the manager. She wasn’t very apologetic...she basically said, “there’s nothing we can do. you have to go to the ORIGINAL branch office with the buyer and he has to get a new loan” I argued and argued, until they escorted me out by security.
Thankfully, the buyer felt REALLY bad about this. He agreed to meet me at the branch the next day and we’d get this straightened out. We met at the branch and got the process rolling. Unfortunately it wasn’t super smooth. Because the old loan was still on his credit, he wasn’t qualified for a new one...so this whole process took a lot longer than it should have. Hours went by. I made it clear to Navy Federal that I would leave with nothing less than a wad of cash. I would NOT accept another check from them. They kind of poo pooed that request and handed me a check.
So naturally, I had to argue some more. It took another hour before they finally caved and just gave me the cash. I rushed to my bank and deposited that cash minutes before they closed for the day. I was relieved. I was tired. And I sure as fuck wasn’t going to do business with Navy Federal EVER again.
[many years later I caved and DID do business with them again. They fucked me over in a different way...and it took me another day of being at an office...I shit you not]
This one drives me insane. It’s personal. When someone does this, you have to file a claim through eBay so that they won’t charge your their ridiculous seller fees. It’s a complete hassle. Reader Slow in, slow out has experienced it:
Had some asshole click buy it now and end my auction about 10 minutes after it started. He had no intention of buying and EBay did nothing to help, other than taking my money for another listing. The relisted auction involved the usual private emails wanting to finance/trade for a bass boat, but it eventually sold...
There seems to be nothing more embarrassing than having your car break on you while you’re trying to sell it. Reader polka1 has been there:
My first car. Crap box Cavalier that some old lady had owned and generally took care of except for running one side of it down something. I had it for about 2 years, fixed up the damage and it might have been the cleanest 4 door 10 year old basic Cavalier in existance. Nearly spotless and well maintained - plus low miles.
I put it up for sale because I had just spent my first job profits on something new. But I was in a tight spot - for a teenager - and needed the money asap. Plus, of all torture, my parents refused to let me pick up my new wheels until this one left and I had cash in hand.
After putting it up for sale its price point led me straight to the teenage buyer market. Dads with girls that ague with each other because it’s obviusly solid for the price - but maroon 4 doors aren’t really cool with the teens. Over and over. No bites, same back and forth. My nails biting, my mind knowing that there is something that is very much NOT a Cavalier with my name on it - only if I can sell this thing.
Finally, a couple comes looking. Looking for something cheap and reliable for his wife to use and super excited to see how clean the car is. Perfect.
This is even my first to go as far as a test drive. Go out with them, ~5 mile test. Husband is psyched - car is tight, running good, shifting well, about all you could ask for in the price range. Mile 4.5 something major cuts the engine back to sputtering and having about 3hp. WTF, I think. It’s been perfect the whole time I’ve had it....as perfect as a ‘88 Cav can be, I suppose - but couldn’t this have waited or even happened before? The wife looks like she outta there, but I think the husband wanted the car because it was a good deal and not beat to shit.
We return with me probably looking more disappointed than I possibly ever had been. Luckily, upon seeing this, my Dad jumped in with a bit of quick diagnosing to confirm that the coil for 2 cyls has dropped out. I tell them I will fix it as soon as the parts store is open (weekend). Wife looks concerned, husband says give a call anyway. I figure yeah right - that is never going to happen.
Anyhow, I get to sit out Sunday worried about a broken car - a new car in waiting - and possibly a missed sale after what seemed like years of trying to sell. Pure torture. But, two days later with a new coil and all is well. They actually pick up the phone and they actually came back to buy the car.
Plus, I made money over what I originally paid for it. But damn, I think I got some white hairs early.
It’s hard letting go of something you’ve tossed so much money at, when in the end, you know none of it was really worth it, and you’ll probably never see most of that money again. Reader smalleyxb122 has been that naive:
I was 17 and naive to think that the car was worth what I had into it. I wasn’t going to take less than the $3500 I had sunk into the thing. Potential buyers were kind enough not to laugh in my face, but I’m sure they all had a good chuckle when they got home.
I came home from work one day, and my father had found a buyer. He had sold it for $240. (I didn’t forget a zero, it was two hundred forty dollars)
Don’t forget you can still be very much liable for a car, even after the paperwork has been signed and the money has been handed over. Until the buyer’s paperwork has been processed, there is still a large amount of possibly risk at hand. Reader Highball! has met this risk firsthand.
The time I was 19 and sold my 1987 Cutlass Supreme to someone else who had a Cutlass (If you’re reading this John, you are a huge fucking asshole), who in turn sold it to a 15 year old, no one transferred ownership or registered it, proceeding to throw stolen license plates on it, tear up some lawns and high school field. I was filled in by these events the car was subjected to by the Yonkers Police who came looking for me after the car was abandoned on a side-street across from the violated field, looking to charge me with vandalism, possession of stolen property (the plates) and not having registration or insurance. The car was so beat on the wheel studs I had replaced supposedly broke as they were towing the car to impound. Luckily I had a bill of sale to cover my ass but still sucked having to turn myself into the cops to explain the situation.
As a buyer of cheap project cars, I am always looking for situations like this. Not looking to rip anyone off, but cheap cars with easy fixes, that’s the project car dream. Trust me they’re out there. Reader JackBerts has been the seller of one of these cars:
Had a 94 Celica that spun a rod bearing. After pulling everything apart looking for the issue, I found the bearing and put it all back together. It then started having all kinds of electrical issues, mostly surrounding an on-again-off-again ignition and spark. After weeks of troubleshooting the car would no longer start and I gave up.
Listed it on craigslist and was upfront about the issues. A guy made a cash offer well below the price of the car a few weeks later. He hadn’t driven it or really even so much as kicked the tires. Because I couldn’t find what was wrong and the thing had been sitting for weeks I took the offer. We exchanged cash and title. He walked over to the car, popped the hood, poked around for maybe 2 minutes, replaced a ground wire, jump started it up and drove it away.
Yeah... I don’t know if I would’ve sold my car to this guy. I’m not that desperate for cash! Apparently, reader RealRoadNews was:
The buyer paid in dirty bills that looked like they’d logged a lot of miles in entertainer’s undergarments. And they had mustard on them. He had mustard on his face too. No other complaints about doing business with the Mustard Man (as we called him afterwards).
Isn’t it great when you agree to a price with a buyer, they show up, and they try to knock more off the price? And, their main tactic for doing this is by blatantly trying to break things to cause more issues with the car? Reader SeventhScorchedEarth was selling his Jeep CJ-7 on eBay. This is what happened when the winning bidder came to take delivery of the car and finish the transaction:
I once posted a fairly modified Jeep CJ-7 on eBay. The eventual winning bidder was from Boston (I was in NJ) and he contacted me several times by email. I gave him my phone number and spent maybe two hours with him discussing the condition of the Jeep, the work done to it, taking additional pictures, really trying to give him as much info as possible. I BEGGED him to take a day trip and come down and see the Jeep. Bidding was over $15k at that point, and seeing in person is not the same as pictures or phone calls.
So he wins the auction, comes down to pick-up the jeep, and immediately starts renegotiation talks about how his winning bid was too high, and really, only classic Broncos go that high. BEFORE HE EVEN SEES THE JEEP. I calmly tell him that if he wants to walk, the second bidder is already willing to pay the winning bid amount, and he actually came and saw the Jeep in person, so no worries. go ahead and walk.
So he drops that line and we go look at the jeep. He opens the hood. Says it looks kinda dirty in there, and I should have done a better job cleaning it before he came down and he slams the hood shut as hard as he could. Then he starts shaking wheels by hand, kicking the exhaust pipe, banging on the tail lights, HANGS off the roll bar and then, he grabs the steering wheel from the ground and VIOLENTLY starts shaking the whole jeep by it. He BENDS the bracket that holds the wheel the dashboard. and THEN, he has the gall to look at me and say “that’s broken, I’m not paying for this jeep”.
OK, get off my property. Do it now. Right now. You want out of the contract? You’re out of the contract. I want you standing in the street before you you hurt my Jeep or yourself, and I want it now. No harm, no foul. Get out. Keep the $1000 non-refundable deposit, just leave.
After that insanity, I went back inside to contact the second bidder and leave feedback for this clown. And wouldn’t you know it? The clown who won is already a leading bidder in a classic Bronco auction. I would have gladly excused his bid, but instead he came all the way down and broke my rig. So I left him bad feedback, and he went BALLISTIC.
Turns out the Bronco seller reserved the right to reject bidders with bad feedback, so he knocked the clown off the auction and he didn’t win that either, and he was PISSED. ;)
I still have several articles open on my pdf reader that are worth mentioning before I officially end my reading of The British Journal for the History of Science, and before tackling other articles from other journals and books.
In discussions over the historiography of the “Scientific Revolution,” almost all the authors I have recently read have mentioned Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams’ “De-centring the ‘big picture’: The Origins of Modern Science and the Modern Origins of Science” (1993). They argue that a big picture of the history of science cannot be avoided, and that “big pictures are both necessary and desirable.” Indeed, the “big picture” is crucial, if not necessary, for giving any localized, “small picture” meaning. But in saying this, Cunningham and Williams also want to expose and reconstruct the aims of the founders of the “old big picture” of the history of science (Herbert Butterfield and his followers), which maintained that “science…[is as] old as humanity itself.” This was a single, grand, and sweeping history of science.
Without usurping this “old big picture,” Cunningham and Williams want to promote a different account, one that emphasizes the idea that our world is fragmented into a plurality of local, autonomous discourses, and based on principles of postmodernism and poststructualism. They then rehearse the problems which have arisen with the concept of the “Scientific Revolution” since Butterfield. Modern notions of the scientific revolution derive from conceptions of science in the early and mid-twentieth century, including positivist definition of “science as a particular method of enquiry” that produces “knowledge in the form of general causal laws”; as essentially moral, “as the embodiment of basic values of freedom and rationality, truth and goodness”; and as a “universal human enterprise,” which emanates from some innate, human curiosity. In the 1940s, historians of science incorporated these characterizations of science as they developed the concept of the scientific revolution. In short, they projected their own contemporary definitions of science onto past.
According to Cunningham and Williams, such a view of the “Scientific Revolution” is no longer tenable. The “new big picture,” they argue, should view science as a contingent enterprise reflecting the aims and morals of a particular social group in a particular historical time; one among a plurality of ways of knowing the world, it must be seen as limited, bounded in time and space and culture. In their estimation, the origins of science “can be located in Western Europe in the period sometimes known as the Age of Revolutions—approximately 1760-1848.” “Every feature which is regarded as essential and definitional of the enterprise of science,” they write, is identifiable during the Age of Revolutions: “its name, its aim, its values, and its history.” On this view, “the history of science becomes a relatively short and local matter.” This realization, they maintain, is “de-centring,” in the sense that we realize “that external objects have permanence, that other people can have different knowledge, interests, feelings, and so on.” It is a shedding of egotism. “To see science as a contingent and recently-invented activity is to make such a de-centring, and to acknowledge that things about our primary way-of-knowing which we once thought were universal are actually specific to our modern capitalistic, industrial world.”
For those interested in the history of the publication, teaching, reception, and use of natural theology in the nineteenth century, Aileen Fyfe’s essay “The Reception of William Paley’s Natural Theology in the University of Cambridge” (1997) is essential reading. Studying the examination papers of the University of Cambridge, contemporary memoirs, autobiographies and correspondences, reveals, Fyfe argues, that Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) was not a set text at the university in the early nineteenth century. “Theology proves to have been a relatively minor part of the formal curriculum, and natural theology played only a small role within that.”
Writing in his dedication page in Natural Theology, William Paley (1743-1805) maintained that three of his books contained “the evidences of Natural Religion, the evidences of Revealed Religion, and an account of the duties that result from both.” The most recent was his Natural Theology (1802), preceded by his A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794) and the Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). By all measures, Natural Theology was a great success, going to “through fifteen editions in as many years, and while the print runs are not known, this suggests sales of around 15,000 copies.” Reviews from Edinburgh Review, Monthly Review, Monthly Magazine, and Churchman’s Magazine found it most agreeable, and some even “mentioned its educational potential.” Some reviewers from the Evangelical Magazine, however, worried that Natural Theology would lead readers to “dangerously conclude that no other religion [that is Scripture] is necessary to their eternal salvation.” English politician, philanthropist, and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade, William Wilberforce (1759-1833) wrote in the Christian Observer that Paley’s assertions were “both untenable and unsafe…We are the more suspicious of the sentiment…because we recollect that it was made the ground of the theological system of [the noted deist and radical] Thomas Paine.” As Fyfe write, some “Evangelicals associated Paley’s work with deism…[and] with [the] radicalism after the French Revolution.”
Despite these criticism, Paley’s Natural Theology was immensely popular. Moreover, when Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) emerged, “natural theology did not suddenly end in 1859,” a point Jon H. Roberts cogently confirms in his entry in Ron Numbers’ (ed.) Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (2009). But as far as being a set text at Cambridge, Paley’s Natural Theology was not used. Natural theological questions “rarely occurred in university or college examination,” and thus natural theology never quite achieved “equality with revealed theology.” As Fyfe concludes, “natural theology did not have very much formal recognition in the mathematical University of Cambridge at a time when Evangelicalism was spreading and deism was threatening. It could have been recognized only as a defense for theology or as an implicit background assumption for the natural sciences.”
Those curious about “geographies of reading”—I stand convicted—may turn to David N. Livingstone’s corpus, particularly (but not most importantly) his “Science, Religion, and the Geography of Reading: Sir William Whitla and the Editorial Staging of Isaac Newton’s Writing on Biblical Prophecy” (2003). “Writings of eminent scientists,” Livingstone claims, “can be mobilized in the cause of local cultural wars.” And indeed they have.
Isaac Newton’s insistence that nature follows mathematical laws, for example, was marshalled by seventeenth-century churchmen both to mount assaults on atheism and to curb radical inclinations towards religious enthusiasm. At the same time, the Newtonian system was also enlisted in contemporary debates about the role of the monarchy, the nature of the state and the constitution of the social order. In more recent times, American creationists have called upon the doctrines of earlier scientists as self-justification for their own credo, while those inclined towards theistic evolution have likewise sought reinforcement from earlier advocates of a Christianized Darwinism.
These are tactics in the “attempt to create a suite of canonical scientific texts to serve the needs of some particular sensibilities.” In this way Livingstone wants to draw our attention “to the consumption sector of the scientific knowledge circuit, to the different ways texts were received in different localities and to the spaces in which theories were encountered and textual meaning made.” From Robert Chambers, Alexander von Humboldt, to Charles Darwin’s corpus, “the meaning of texts…shifts from place to place, and at a variety of different scales.”
Six years after his death, Isaac Newton’s commentary on the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation was published in 1733 as Observations upon Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John. In Two Parts. Nearly two hundred years after this first appearance, William Whitla, professor of Materia Medica at the Queen’s University of Belfast, in 1922 made Newton’s text available again to the reading public, under the title Sir Isaac Newton’s Daniel and the Apocalypse with an Introductory Study of the Nature and the Cause of Unbelief, of Miracles and Prophecy.
Whitla was fascinated with the prophetic writings of the Jewish prophets. He was also good friends with William Bramwell Booth, General of the Salvation Army, and dedicated the new book to him. Whitla wanted to use the book against those who were undermining the authority of the sacred text. Newton, who “in strong and childlike faith lent his mighty intellect to the study of this fascinating record.” As Livingstone puts it, “the aim was to muster biblical prophecy Newtonian-style in the conduct of current culture wars.” With the outbreak of the First World War, W.B. Yeats fearing the “reversal of Christian values,” and the 1920s “heresy trail of J. Ernest Davy in Northern Ireland, Whitla saw all these “ominous signs” as “an unmistakable mark of the ‘latter days’ which are to terminate the present dispensation.” Moreover, the “moral leprosy” of biblical critics was spreading “into the heart of the Church itself.” Whitla would use Newton to counter this European crisis.
Ironically Whitla did not “broadcast the fact that Newton had come to doubt the accuracy of the textus receptus of the New Testament”; and neither did he mention that Newton had rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Whitla also used Newton for anti-Catholic propaganda, re-staging Newton’s own anti-Catholicism, equating the Papacy with the “autocracy of the most satanic character.” Whitla thus valorized Newton’s text as a Protestant polemic. “All of this serves,” Livingstone concludes, “to underscore the salience of textual performance, spaces of reading and sites of reception in elucidating the dynamic geographies of scientific knowledge and religious belief.”
And finally, an intimate and complex relationship between religion and scientific practice is demonstrated in Matthew Stanley’s recent “By Design: James Clerk Maxwell and the Evangelical Unification of Science” (2012). Stanley argues that Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), known for his formulation of a set of equations that united electricity, magnetism, and optics into a consistent theory, “saw a deep theological significance in the unification of physical laws.” This search for unification was connected to Maxwell’s “particular evangelical religious views.”
Stanley also wants to compare and contrast Maxwell’s own design argument with Paley and those of the modern Intelligent Design (ID) theory. According to Stanley, “both Paley and [Michael] Behe [known for his molecular arguments of “irreducible complexity”] argue that a certain level of complexity could never be explained by naturalistic science, and thus the search for such explanations must stop.” Although Maxwell embraced claims of natural theology, “his evangelical religiosity gave him a rather different perspective.”
Maxwell believed that nature was like a book, with each element a manifestation of a deeper unifying principle. The connections between laws were a sign from above: “…the laws of nature are not mere arbitrary and unconnected decisions of Supreme Power, but that they form essential parts of one universal system, in which infinite Power serves only to reveal unsearchable Wisdom and eternal Truth.” The interrelationship of natural laws “was a way that God communicated His existence, and it was the unity of laws that revealed this communication.” Indeed, the “unity of nature was…guaranteed by theology.” Thus whereas “Paley emphasized complexity as the indicator of God’s hand, Maxwell emphasized unity.”
Stanley notes that Paley, Behe, and Maxwell would all agree that Darwinian evolution was not a reliable scientific theory. For his part, however, Maxwell argued that “Darwinian evolution relied on pre-existing variation, and thus perfectly uniform molecules could never have evolved.” His rejection of Darwinian evolution thus relied on his understanding of unity in nature, not complexity.
As a conservative evangelical Christian, Maxwell had specific notions about the nature of God. Victorian evangelicalism, Stanley tells us, was a “‘religion of the heart,’ with an emphasis on conversion, sin and grace, and moving away from the rationalizism of the Enlightenment in an attempt to resurrect the lost, primitive Church uncontaminated by human failings.” In the summer of 1853, Maxwell gained a newfound evangelical outlook. Maxwell wrote:
I maintain that all the evil inﬂuences that I can trace have been internal and not external, you know what I mean—that I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me, and that if I escape, it is only by God’s grace helping me to get rid of myself, partially in science, more completely in society,—but not perfectly except by committing myself to God as the instrument of His will, not doubtfully, but in the certain hope that that Will will be plain enough at the proper time.
Divine grace, submission to God, Christology, and Scripture were constantly upon his mind, as his letters to friends and relatives show. From this evangelical perspective, Maxwell saw humanity as “fallen, sinful and fallible.” But “God gave humans the ability to see his actions,” if they would only “embrace Him fully.” Revelation was ultimately mysterious, but so was nature, according to Maxwell: “I have endeavoured to show that it is the peculiar function of physical science to lead us to the confines of the incomprehensible, and to bid us behold and receive it in faith, till such time as the mystery shall open.” In his inaugural lecture at Aberdeen in 1856, Maxwell clearly shows how his theology of nature was manifested in his physical science:
Is it not wonderful that man’s reason should be made a judge over God’s works, and should measure, and weigh, and calculate, and say at last ‘I understand I have discovered—It is right and true’…we see before us distinct physical truths to be discovered, and we are conﬁdent that these mysteries are an inheritance of knowledge, not revealed at once, lest we should become proud in knowledge, and despise patient inquiry, but so arranged that, as each new truth is unravelled it becomes a clear, well-established addition to science, quite free from the mystery which must still remain, to show that every atom of creation is unfathomable in its perfection. While we look down with awe into these unsearchable depths and treasure up with care what with our little line and plummet we can reach, we ought to admire the wisdom of Him who has arranged these mysteries that we ﬁnd ﬁrst that which we can understand at ﬁrst and the rest in order so that it is possible for us to have an ever increasing stock of known truth concerning things whose nature is absolutely incomprehensible.
Stanley writes, “Maxwell’s God was a teacher who wanted his students to learn all the details of the world, which He organized in such a way as to help them in their studies.”
Posted in Andrew Cunningham, Historiography of Science, History of Reading, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Matthew Stanley, Research, Scientific Revolution, William Paley on January 7, 2014 by jamescungureanu. Leave a comment	
For this blog entry I’ve decided to include the project statement I’ve written for the painting on the left and the 14 small cut paper works that accompany it. All of the pieces that inspired this piece of writing can be found on the 2010 Portfolio page.
Today is the day our bioluminescent probes drill through the ice and bedrock to the caves below. Our infrared imagery is showing the possibility for life! These submerged Lovelies are living without oxygen. These permeable darlings reproduce in ways we can scarcely grasp…but what matters is they’re truly living.
As we slithered and probed with the help of our light-snakes, we discovered, as so many colonists discover, that we were not the first to probe these depths. A garden of broken glass shards came in and out of view as our we wavered between excitation and confusion…
For the past year, I have been saturating my ears with science fiction podcasts as I work in the studio. In my free time, I scour science magazines and watch documentaries about life that exists and could exist in such remote locations as the waters on Saturn’s moon, Titan. When preparing my body of work for Life: Expressions of Living, I knew I wanted to pull from this pool of research as I set out to prepare humanity for a paradigm shift in our understanding of what life is and where it could exist.
As I gathered the elements for my imaginary expedition, my ongoing interest in human discards crept into my cave. I began to remind myself how often in history have we assumed that our expedition to a new world is the first of it’s kind, but only to find the ruins of a previous presence. I began to pull in subject-matter from my own visual archive to litter the cave to remind the viewer that our refuse often wanders into the unknown before our exploration even begins.
The small cut paper works that surround the central canvas function as emotional snapshots taken by the bioluminescent probes. As the probes explore the cave, they illuminate microscopic societies immersed in mating rituals. I started each of these works with the goal of using simple shapes and patterns to represent my “Lovelies” interacting with each other and their environment. The abstract language that I’m building in my cut paper work is often inspired by a small section in my acrylic paintings I feel inclined to explore further. Through my work, I seek to use color and pattern as a means to pose questions and tell stories.