The Parthenon Report: Shifting paradigms and a New Era
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that we’ve driven them out of their temples,
doesn’t mean at all that the gods are dead.
– IONIAN, Constantine Cavafy
In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published his masterwork “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, which presented the revolutionary idea that periodic and rather sudden “paradigm shifts” provide whole new ways of understanding things that we have never considered before. He also stated that there are often competing paradigms in circulation – irreconcilable accounts of reality with one account necessarily replacing its predecessor. Consider for example the radical ideas of the earth revolving around the sun, of equal rights for all human beings, or that humans evolved over millions of years and was not created in just six days.
Opinion | Readers critique The Post: Examples of highly effective — and ineffective — art washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Last week, China’s Zhurong rover successfully trundled onto the surface of Mars, and returned its first images of the red planet to Earth. It has become the third rover operating on Mars, joining NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance; hopefully next year they will be joined by a fourth, the European-Russian Rosalind Franklin.
Hopefully, anyway. The successful landing of Zhurong and Perseverance, and the runaway, years-long triumph of the Curiosity, Spirit and Opportunity rovers, means we risk becoming a little blasé about these missions. They require a tremendous coincidence of expended treasure, technological mastery and simple luck. Temperamental scientific equipment is put through the hell of rocket launch and landing, and then called upon to function in exotic and unpredictable conditions, operated by remote controls with a minutes-long lag. But function they do – Opportunity was launched in 2003 and transmitted until 2018, when it was silenced by a dust storm. Perseverance w
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Given that we are nearing the end of Historic Preservation Month, it s especially appropriate now to honor people who have ensured the preservation and restoration of numerous historic sites. Among these champions are two women who you ve likely heard of but who are not particularly well known for their efforts in preservation, per se: Jackie Kennedy and Doris Duke.
Although we often associate both Doris Duke and former First Lady Jackie Kennedy as being fashion icons, socialites, and all-around women of taste, they also played key roles in the preservation of historic homes and sites across the globe, including what is arguably the most famous dwelling in the United States the White House as well as the Olana State Historic Site and numerous properties in Newport, Rhode Island.