Historically Tiresome

 For some reason, the lyrics to The Sound of Silence have been doing the rounds inside my head. It's funny how they managed to write an entire song on silence and the sound (or lack thereof) associated with it. Then again, some of the most significant discoveries in history have been made unintentionally, so I suppose that's a recurring feature. 

Come to think of it, I've known people who have written songs on how they are unable to write songs, or played a blinder of a game when they felt nowhere near fantastic. But I digress; let's talk about something specific. 

I know a lot of people who don't like history in general. There are also many people who like art history, or medieval history, or just modern history. Let's talk about that, then. History is the flavour of the day, but not for long. Thanks to COVID-19, future generations will have an entire chapter added to their history and biology books. This is one of the few instances where I'm lucky I'm out of school. 

Da Vinci, Socrates, Michelangelo, Tesla, Louis Pasteur- these are some names I'm picking at random, so don't be offended if you hate all of them. I hate most of them while studying, but I love reading about them. Don't be surprised to hear that- that's practically what every nerd or bookworm does. 

Anyway, there's something in common between all of them. No, I'm not referring to the maleness (and subsequent baldness) of these people. They were all multifaceted, and you cannot limit their contributions to any one field. In the modern-day scenario, I'd say someone like Satyajit Ray is multifaceted- he has contributed in too many fields to be known by his film-making alone. The same goes for these people. 

I personally hate Louis Pasteur, and I'll tell you why. I am a student of microbiology, you see. Most of the topics we have had to study so far have involved some amount of history, however small. The most frequently recurring name is that of Pasteur. He seemed to have an inexplicable urge to discover everything. Unfortunately, he almost succeeded.

Immunology, chemistry, biology, vaccines- this guy just couldn't keep his nose out of any field. Except mathematics, that is. Then again, that's probably because Newton would have demonstrated gravity to him using a coconut instead of an apple. That's something science students have wanted to do often enough, but we're born in the wrong millennium for that.

Pasteur didn't have a long nose, as it happens. He belonged to an era when the English loved to put on elaborately absurd wigs and have their portraits made while they sucked sour lemons. They still do that, but they've decided to let Donald Trump handle the hairstyles. He preferred colourful hair, and we've seen how that turned out. Had he decided to keep his hair white and curled, he would have managed to become a colonizer like the British. He didn't, so all he ended up with was memes and jokes. 

Moving on now. Leonardo da Vinci was another multifaceted genius. Painting, sketching, trouble with the law- he did it all. He got into trouble at that point of because he was homosexual, but that is actually true for several geniuses throughout history. Da Vinci was just unlucky he wasn't a noble or born in the current century. 

So which fields did da Vinci poke his nose (and other parts) into? I've already mentioned some of them, but there's a comparatively lesser-known fact about him. His diaries were written as mirror images. Basically, he wrote his diaries in a way such that they could only be read when held in front of a mirror. That's something Pasteur didn't do, thankfully, so it's another anecdote we haven't had to remember while studying. 

There are several sportspeople who have multiple sports with equal proficiency. Some examples include Dennis Compton, Ian Botham, AB de Villiers. etc. I'm afraid I don't know too many names here, but I do know that these people didn't bother to poke their noses into different fields- they chose to stick entire legs. Rugby, hockey, football, tennis or cricket- they have managed to play more than one game. 

It's a different matter when it comes to playing something professionally- it's more a time management issue than a skill deficiency. Much like the topic of soap operas, I won't be able to mention a lot of things in one post alone. However, similar to soap operas, the characters in history have always managed to do everything. They just didn't act as dramatically, I suppose. Stay safe, everybody. Adios!