JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
When I saw this letter to the editor of Nature (in the May-October 1881, volume 23, page 284) I thought immediately of Jackson Pollock--but of course he wasn't even close top being born yet. The boy from Cody, Wyoming was born in 1912, and he went from a Western no-longer-frontier-town to his greatest period of production in about 37 years. Those three years, from 1948-1950, were like lightning, but slow...like seeing the progression of a lightning strike from the ground up, then replayed again backwards, and then faster. And with many more than just a single strike. That isn't what W.M. Flinders Petrie of Bromley, Kent, was talking about of course--still 25 years and a world removed from non-representational painting--but that is what his title excited in me, here in his future. In any event, the article is an interesting read, Pollockless and all. (Another piece of long and interesting reading is found here, with Richard Taylor's theory on Fractal Expressionism and the fractal dimension of Pollock's painting.)
"Having just seen the statement of Prof. Tait (Nature,
vol. xxii. p. 341) quoted, as a final authority, against the possi-
bility of distinguishing the source from the termination of a
lightning flash, I wish to record a storm that I saw.
On May 19 there had been a breeze, hot south-west wind blowing at Gizeh, off the Libyan Desert, at about or over 100° F.; at near sunset a north wind began to come up against it, and there was heavy thunder and lightning all along the line of the mingling of the winds, extending as far as I could see to east and west, and passing a few miles to the north of the Pyramids: the light- ning was solely between the clouds, at a height of about one and a half miles ; the air around me was 94°, though almost dark. I sat on a rock in front of the door of my tomb (from which I could see eighteen miles over the Delta) and quietly watched the lightning. To my sight there were distinctly differences in the duration of the flashes : some appearing instantaneous and others in which I could see a spot of light occupying an appreciable interval to travel from one cloud to another ; and I should be puzzled to draw a hard and fast line between the classes. Does this moving spot-lightning merge insensibly into the variation, of which I saw a fine case years ago near Guildford, where a spark would slowly sail down in the air and then move over the ground before it disappeared?" "In any case can these slow flashes (lasting perhaps half a second), seen as well as instantaneous flashes, be disposed of by that blessed word subjectively, which is so comforting to theorists on many objects? Or may not the confession of our ignorance of the cause of ball-lightning be extended to slow flashes in general, instead of treating them just as meteorites were put out of court a century ago?" W. M. Flinders Petrie Bromley, Kent
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