Words + Images

Math. English. Religion.

As I’ve been cleaning up I stumbled upon a small cache of papers Steve had written for these courses fifty years ago. I wish I had found them earlier so I could have asked him some pointed questions. The only things he ever told me about his undergraduate years was dating and of climbing the school walls to practice rock climbing. Why he saved these five papers I can’t even imagine. To even make my way through the first paragraphs of some of the papers I have to stop and google to fill in my ignorance. I now know after reading “Caliban and Thersites: A Comparison” that Thersites was a deformed warrior or as Steve wrote:

“Caliban from The Tempest and Thersites of Troilus and Cressida are two of Shakespeare’s less lovable characters. Their major similiarity is that they are deformed. In this paper we will explore the effects of their deformaties on their characters.

In the list of characters of Troilus and Cressida Thersites is described as “a deformed and scurrilous Greek.” Wesbster’s definition of “scurrilous” is “using or given to the language of buffoonery; being vulgar and evil.” This does not quite seem to fit. Thersites does not use the language of buffoonery; this can be established easily by comparing his language to Ajax, who is indeed a buffoon. While Thersites is vulgar, certainly, he cannot be called evil; Iago of Othello is evil, and Thersites does not measure up. …”

Now I did happen to ask Steve a few years ago, assuming but of course he would have read Shakespeare, what was his favorite play and he said The Tempest. He received a B on the paper with the professor writing, “A brief study but it contains original thinking …”

Now I had heard tell of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. So for his paper, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as Existentialist Characters,” Steve begins:

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are among the most shabbily dealt with of all the characters in Shakespeare’s plays. They don’t seem totally believable, which makes them probably unique among Shakespeare’s creations. Tom Stoddard, in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, has developed a more modern explanation for their existence, in existential terms.“

And concludes:

“The obvious connection Stoddard is making is between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of Hamlet and the existential vision of the human condition. There are obvious parallels between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot ...”

To which Steve’s professor commented that would make a great topic for a full length study. Steve received a B. The paper on Ghandi was the most lengthy. Received a B. And then there are the A papers …

Steve was a wonderful writer and a great editor for me up until the end. His feedback for me, depending on the writing project, was to not assume what the reader knows but to guide them along. Of all the papers his “Axiomatic Models and the Universe,” I have enjoyed most of all. In part as I read I hear his voice. He wrote so clearly about complex ideas though of course for him it wasn’t complex.

“Implicit in the structure of any axiomatic model is the concept of causality. If we ask Newton why the planet Mars is in a particular place at a particular time, he might say that it follows a defined orbit. What causes it to follow this orbit? It moves in such a way that the centripetal force pulling it away from the sun equals the gravitational force pulling it in. When we ask what causes these forces, we are told, “They are inherent in matter.” We have returned to the axioms. In general, if in the model a proposition A implies a proposition B, then in the “real world” the event related to A is the cause of the event related to B.” Let us perform a thought experiment. We shall create a universe ...”

From the professors’ comments and questions in the margins you could tell he was thoroughly engaged. On the final page the professor notes that it was a very interesting and imaginative paper, well writte, nicely constructed and an excellent effort. A-

The final paper is handwritten on lined paper. It is yellowed and crumbling. As much as Steve complained about his handwriting it was quite legible back then. No title but it opens, “This paper is an attempt to apply the scholastic method, as J. C. Murray explains it, to try to explore what seems to be an intersection between formal logic and theology.“

Now Steve and I didn’t talk about this stuff. We didn’t need to but one night early on … shortly after I’d met him and said I wasn’t interested … I was walking along and I sat on a bench and looked up at the sky. There was a rainbow around the moon. And for some reason, of all the people I knew, I decided to call this quirky science guy I’d just met. I described to him what I saw and then he proceeded to tell me about a light bending and splitting and so on and so forth. I cut him off and said indignantly, “Hey, I was describing something beautiful.” And he replied matter of factly, “And so was I.”

Perhaps I will scan them and share with his children so they can glimpse another side of their father. It was a lovely surprise to find them today.