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| Inscription of Palo Alto Rock |
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| Rosetta Stone |
如果你有机會參觀大英博物館,你一定不會錯過一塊黑色的石頭,它是有名的 Rosetta Stone. 這石頭是在 Napoleon 遠征埃及時,一位法國軍士發現的,時年 AD 1799. 這塊石頭上面刻有三種不同的文字,其中有古埃及文和希臘文. 當時已無人能識古埃及文,所以這次的發現,堪稱是劃時代的. 它使當代學者能以利用希臘文重新銓釋和解讀古埃及文化. 我 1982 年時在倫敦看到Rosetta Stone,砰然心動,見証這有厂史性的珍貴文物.
前些日子同學討論到一些語文的功用和表達方式的效能,見仁見智,尤其是中文和英文的不同和高下. 大家大抵同意在詩詞方面,中文精簡卻有很多含義,比英文高明不少. 可是在法律和科學方面,英文準確度的確勝出. 不過在文學,詩歌領域裡,也涉及主觀問題,因為英文詩有不同的表現法,硬要比高下,未免強人所難. 比較合理的評語應該是'各有千秋,相得益彰'.
有一天我們的文明也許會毀於一旦,在這洪荒宇宙,比較能夠留下來的是石頭. 所以我想這也許是個好想法,就像 Rosetta Stone 一樣,我們選一種人類的文化遺產,以三种不同的語言,同時刻在一塊石頭上,藏諸名山,善加保存, (served as a Time Capsule). 我暫稱這塊石頭叫 Palo Alto Rock, 別號 NTUEE64 Stone or '人類文明之石'.
在我欣賞中外文學,詩詞,歌謠中,發現有很多診貴的材料可選. 以下是其中之一,冶音樂,文學,詩詞於一爐,極富文明價值. 這是海涅 (Heinrich Heine) 的詩 'Auf Flügeln des Gesanges' ('On Wings of Song'), Mendelssohn 把它譜成一曲, 極富盛名. 我用 Excel ,並排列出三种語言,可以互相翻譯和銓釋,並且可欣賞不同語言的視覺感受及衡量其精簡程度. 音樂是看不出來,祗能用現今科技, DVD光碟一張, inserted in the rock. 也許有一天,外太空的高度文明物種可以 decipher 我們的音樂.
音樂
彫刻文
4 comments:
You may wonder why the treasure French got in the first place but displayed in the British Museum in London. The truth is that French got it in 1799 by army. But in the subsequent campaign, British navy defeated French in 1801 and so the Rosetta Stone fell into the hand of British Army per Capitulation of Alexandria. The Rosetta Stone was then transferred & displayed in the Great British Museum in London since 1802. It is said that Rosetta Stone is one of the most-visited object in this museum. 文明人打戰,把文明寶藏擅加保存,也是文明人一大善舉. 法國人在這次埃及遠征雖然沒有成功,但也收穫不少. 其實法國遠征陸軍並沒戰敗,英國完全是靠海軍納爾遜(Nelson)將軍打贏這場戰役. 這有點像以前波斯人,硬攻下 Thermopylae,打進雅典,但海軍在 Salamis 被希臘人打敗(480 BC),祗好黯然班師回朝.
PS0: 在倫敦 Trafalgal Square, 鴿子成群,但有四隻雄獅護衛. 中間一個大柱子,高聳入雲,上面有個 statue. Who is this? 他乃是鼎鼎大名 Horatio Nelson.
PS1: Joseph Fourier ( our EE hero) was one of the French officers participated in this expedition. He studied some heat transfer phenomena on cannon firing & eventually came up with the theory of Fourier Series & Transform. As I said before most of those French scientists & Engineers are honored with their names engraved on the four sides of Eiffel Tower in Paris were active during the French Revolution & Napoleon played a major part of it. It is a very influential period in history.
There are various versions of translation of Heine's poem in English & Mandarin. After some searches & evaluation, I picked those I like & put them on Excel for easy comparison.
Talk about the communication between human being & aliens from outer space, it is no easy matter. Language is especially complicate. The easiest & clever one I know is from Carl Friedrich Gauss, our another EE hero. He suggested to use the famous Geometrical Diagram of Pythagorean Triangle. It is a graph, easy to decipher by eyes or any kind of visual devices.
This is a very compelling idea, and a creative one! I also believe we should strive to leave behind some kind of legacy, and the appropriate clues to allow interested parties to learn about our culture. Although, I think your creation should be called the Shing Lin Rock!
I heartily agree on your choice of a Heine poem. Goethe may be the most famous German poet of his time, but I personally find Heine's poems more subtly expressive and able to bring forth a greater palette of emotional complexity.
Your comment about the French expedition and the British Museum display illustrates the tricky and often shady world of museum acquisitions and rights. They are debated constantly, as so many acquired treasures were wrested as the prizes of war.
As for language, yes, it is complicated, but I wonder whether Gauss' suggestion will hold true for intelligent life that is completely different from ours? They may see the world through an absolutely foreign paradigm to us, possibly rendering what is "simple" and "visual" to us, totally undecipherable to them (or they could take it to mean something else entirely).
But I believe this is what makes the world so special - if everything were predictable, we wouldn't continually think and innovate. Vive la difference!
It is nice to see Susan's comment. I agree that the aliens from outer space may be beyond our imagination. To our human understanding, the most common language among people on earth are music & math. We call music a universal language. But to the aliens this may not be true comparing to math. All aliens must deal with the nature & cosmos like us. The only way to understand the nature & be able to advance their technology to communicate with us is the science, and math is the language of science. This may be the reason Gauss think a math figure like Pythagorean Triangle (PT) must be universal. If aliens see the PT and scratch their head, they probably are far inferior to us on technology. However, if they say Aha! & smile, we'd better watch out. They may know more than we do.
Gauss' suggestion may not be very convincing to some people, but at least it is a good try & I haven't seen any other better suggestion. In 1977, NASA sent out Voyager I & II to the outer space with a gold plated disc which contains some visual figures by da Vinci with male & female figure of homo sapiens. It was also a good try but they might regret that they didn't include the famous Pythagorean Triangle, c^2 = a^2 + b^2, universal rule of plane geometry. The space is not a plane but at least plane is a subset of a curvature space.
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