One of the best things about the history of the atom is that every model looked convincing, until an experiment exposed what it couldn’t explain.
Thomson’s “plum pudding” atom gave way to Rutherford’s nucleus. Rutherford’s picture was refined by Bohr’s quantized orbits. Then quantum mechanics changed the question entirely: electrons were no longer tiny planets following neat paths, but objects described by probabilities, wavefunctions, and limits such as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
That’s a useful reminder of how science actually progresses. A model doesn’t have to be perfectly true to be useful. It just has to explain the evidence better than what came before, and remain replaceable when nature disagrees.
Sometimes progress in physics is less “we finally figured it out” and more “our old picture was surprisingly good… until it wasn’t.”
This is a photo of some rocks and sand.
It was taken earlier today, with a camera 247,000,000 km away.
It was taken on Mars.
And now you're looking at it on your screen.
Sociologist Richard Sennett wrote a wonderful book about the value of hand craftsmanship in his 2008 book The Craftsman. He traces the long history of why people have valued handmade goods for hundreds of years, even through periods of major technological or industrial advancement, and weaves together an engaging intellectual history involving figures like Aristotle and John Ruskin.
One of the book’s recurring themes is the value of imperfection. Sennett notes that the authors of the Encyclopédie praised the “character” of handmade goods, such as the slightly irregular bubbles in hand-blown glass bottles. He connects this idea to Voltaire, who warned us of the relentless pursuit of perfection. If we learned to embrace these imperfections, Sennett suggests, perhaps we would develop more realistic expectations about life.
This creates an interesting tension at the heart of craftsmanship. A good craftsperson strives to make something as well as they possibly can, yet must ultimately accept that perfection is unattainable because they are imperfect, like all human creatures. Toward the end of the book, Sennett discusses craftsmanship in religious terms. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, he notes, excessive pride is a sin because it risks putting the self in God's place. In this sense, the craftsperson embodies both aspiration and humility.
In Sennett's framing, craftsmanship is not necessarily about whether a machine can replicate the results exactly, but about a human's role in production and what that process can teach us about ourselves. It's not just about materiality, but also spirituality.
Zoom in on this image.
The violin, the bow, the torn envelope, the rusty hinges, the nail it all hangs from: none of it is real, and it was painted 140 years ago...
This is The Old Violin by William Harnett, made in 1886. Harnett started out as an engraver of silverware, cutting tiny patterns into forks and spoons, and that patience never left him. He painted every object at its actual size, filled the canvas edge to edge, and left almost no trace of a brushstroke, so that your eye has nothing to tell it you're looking at a picture.
When this painting was shown in Cincinnati in 1886, people couldn't stop reaching for it: they tried to touch the violin, or pinch the corner of the envelope, just to find out whether it was really there. In the end, the exhibition had to post a policeman next to the painting to stop visitors from trying to take the violin and bow off the wall.
A local publisher fell in love with it, bought it on the spot, and turned it into a print made from seventeen separate colors. Copies spread across America, and the painting that fooled a city became one of the most famous images in the country. Today it hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, still asking every visitor the same question it asked in 1886: are you sure that's not real?
I started my newsletter because the past is full of masterpieces like this one, and so few people ever stop to show us why they matter. Every week I try to. If that is something you'd like to be part of, simply subscribe! And if you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.
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We live in a world where elephants return to the bones and bodies of their family members to mourn them, where ravens play together just because they can, where elephants make pools with their feet and those pools become homes and watering holes for other critters.
We live in a world where orcas teach their babies different hunting techniques and each technique varies across cultures, and that wisdom is passed down through generations.
We live in a world where fireflies synchronise their flashes and turn the forests into a light show. We live in a world where every year a monarch butterfly migration paints the sky in colour as hundreds of millions of butterflies fly thousands of kilometres to a forest none of them has ever seen, but the memory of the way has been passed down to them through the generations, guiding them home.
We live in a world where spiders balloon through the skies shooting silk threads into the wind and they travel vast distances without knowing where they'll land. Where flamingos form gather in ‘flamboyances’ and thousands of them move together making the waters look pink.
We live in a world where trees communicate and send distress signals to each other to warn of danger and where leafcutter ants march in long green processions, carrying leaves much too heavy for their bodies so they can build fungus gardens… gardens they have tended for fifty million years. We live in a world where ancient prehistoric creatures like sharks and crocodiles and platypus roam the seas and lands, and just by existing, they nourish the planet.
We live in a world of sunsets and rainbows and lunar eclipses and birdsong and the smell of morning dew.
There is so much magic in the world. We should really try to keep more things alive. Because what else is there if not this?
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