Why do physicists admire Burgess and cite him as a scientific author

According to Alberto Rogo, Borges He was the first writer Those who have ventured into parallel worlds. Before any other science fiction writer. Exactly as it appears. This is not so Albert Reed Become a fan of Jorge Luis Borges (well, a fan of Borges Yes he is) but he is a famous doctor of physics who was born in Tucuman and was a researcher at the University of Chicago and is today a professor at the University of Auckland.

Rojo has published over 90 research papers in the most prestigious scientific journals and is also the author Physics in everyday lifeAnd the Opportunity in everyday life s Borges and quantum physics (Twenty-first century publishers). He is also a musician and has recorded three albums: VisitAnd the for my shadow s shadows. He played alongside Mercedes Sosa, Charlie Garcia and Pedro Aznar. This time he did not take the guitar, but in Borges Festivalsponsored by Download booksAnd the red We got to talk to the audience about how to get into the accounts and the wonders that exist Between science and Borjani literature.

Here are some of the things he said:

Borges It is a miracle that occurred in the Río de la Plata and it is a miracle that affects other disciplines, especially science. Some time ago, a long time ago, I put a name Jorge Luis Borges Its a research tool that scientists use to see how many jobs they appear in, which is useful for scientific careers. The surprise that I got then was because of the fact As a scientist, Borges has appeared 4,400 times.

At that time I was studying physics at the Balseiro Institute and I had read BorgesAs well as my colleagues and friends who read it in their stories and poems. At that time we used the book called Thermal physics. Which explained that problem that says what is the probability on the time scale that The monkey types a keyboard randomly and writes, in this random way, a file village. In the book that explained the problem, Quoted footnote Babylon library Story of the Borgesnot as a fictional quote, but as a quote from a literary scholarly authority.

Something like this happened with Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Tripswhere he suggested that Mars has two existing satellites, in his book, very close to those that would not be discovered until many years later. It is a strange harmony between art, literature and the science of the moment. Borges He can also read an idea somewhere and then turn it into a wonderful work of Burgani, for example, Babylon librarywhich takes part of an idea world libraryby Kurd Lasowitz, a story from 1901. It’s the same idea BorgesHowever, the number of pages for each book in each library varies. So, in Borges’ book, the Bible coexists with Hamlet somewhere, along with random books. Lasowitz’s story was not well known because it was written in a mathematical fashion, and Borges was more allusive. Borges then takes an existing mathematical idea and gives it the burgundy form..

dilemma Borges It is a very interesting case, written by Stephen Jay Gould, thus describing the incomprehension of eternity without beginning. The Book of Sand is a book that has neither beginning nor end and endless pages.

The issue that interests me is the case of the economist Herbert Simon who visited Argentina in 1967, when he was not yet a Nobel Prize winner, who asked to meet Borges And that he told him that he contributed to his theory about the different possibilities of decisions. They gathered and the interview was published in Primera Plana magazine, held at his house and told how decision-making was inspired by the labyrinths that Borges sanctuary.

In my book the first chapter is written on Funes and I comment that there is no time for Funes, time is microscopic. I won’t stop there but I also wanted to point this out sometimes Borges I can make small mistakes in physics.

in sand book It is presented as a strange fact that in the book it appears, let’s say, page 40,000 and the next page is 999. But in reality, that would be something ordinary and unusual because if there were an infinite number of pages for me, The numbering goes from 1 to infinity, and if some page is chosen at random, it is likely to be a number between 1 and 1000, It’s very likely about 500 or 400 pages because compared to infinity, they are more likely to be chosen at random.

For example, if Clara and Alicia flip a coin to choose between heads and tails, Alicia won’t know what position the coin will be until Clara opens her hand and finds out that position. However, this is due to our ignorance of many variables: the angle, the mass of the coin and a lot of other variables that we don’t know about, that we can’t access, there are many reasons that get mixed up. If she had knowledge of those bodily variables, Alicia could use the human brain with both eyes simultaneously.

Once we went with my family on vacation to Mar del Plata and at the Dora Hotel, Borges gave a lecture. He was next to him on the table wake up singingWho was a very important person in his life. I didn’t know at the time. Then in biography Maria Esther de Migueltells that conference Dora, that wake up singing He went to ask his permission to sell assets the thousandwhich – which Borges He gave it to him when he wrote it and it looks like he needs the money.

María Esther de Miguel says so wake up singing He took a bottle of white wine and in a picture I have now, there’s the bottle, so I think it’s very likely he’s referring to that conference. My father encouraged me to approach him to ask any questions BorgesBut I felt embarrassed. He, who was a philosopher, approached him and asked him some really interesting questions. However, my father loved Ortega y Gasset and asked him about the Spanish philosopher and Borges He replied that he met him and looked like a zero. I took the opportunity to tell him if he knew that in the world of physics it has been well studied and widely read and is useful for our studies. Borges He laughed and said, “What smart physicists are.”

*The Borges Festival runs until Friday 12, always online. Talks are free but pre-registration is required on the festival page. Her full schedule is available at https://www.festivalborges.com.ar/.

Read on