Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: we're back with part three in our series on dust. Now,
Speaker 3: if you haven't heard the previous episodes, you might want
Speaker 3: to go back and check those out first. This will
Speaker 3: probably make a little more sense if you have those
Speaker 3: in the pocket. In part one, we talked about how
Speaker 3: to define dust. We talked about our perpetual roommates, the
Speaker 3: pyroglyphid dust mites. We talked about atmospheric dust and its
Speaker 3: complex relationship to weather and climate. That was Part one.
Speaker 3: In Part two, we talked mainly about dust bunnies both
Speaker 3: within the home and in outer space, as well as
Speaker 3: how some historical attitudes toward dust dust in the home
Speaker 3: may have affected trends in interior design choices and even
Speaker 3: some literary themes and horror. And today we are back
Speaker 3: to talk more dust.
Speaker 2: That's right, and you know we're gonna so we mentioned
Speaker 2: how we'll eventually get to some magical mythological ideas religious
Speaker 2: ideas about dust that's still on the way. That's going
Speaker 2: to be a future episode. This particular episode, I'm going
Speaker 2: to continue looking at Victorian dust. We're gonna get a
Speaker 2: little philosophic, but we will also talk briefly about Dracula,
Speaker 2: but in a way that connects directly to what we're
Speaker 2: talking about here. So yeah, to kick things off, I'd
Speaker 2: like to just pick up more or less where we
Speaker 2: left off with the theme of Victorian attitudes toward dust,
Speaker 2: a topic that I've ended up finding far more fascinating
Speaker 2: than I expected. All Right, So in the last episode
Speaker 2: I briefly mentioned a source an article or paper by
Speaker 2: e Lean Cleary titled Victorian Dust Traps, and I went
Speaker 2: ahead and sought that out. It's collected in her book
Speaker 2: The Sanitary Arts, Esthetic Culture, and the Victorian Cleanliness Campaigns,
Speaker 2: which is in itself a very interesting book, highly recommended
Speaker 2: if anyone wants a deeper dive into the topic of
Speaker 2: Victorian cleanliness. Now, Victorian London was indeed a world in
Speaker 2: the throes of the Industrial Revolution. The Victorian period, of course,
Speaker 2: is so named for the reign of Queen Victoria the
Speaker 2: Rain in Question eighteen thirty seven through nineteen oh one,
Speaker 2: but her rule encompassed much of the industrialization of English life.
Speaker 2: So we have a period here marked by rapid advancements
Speaker 2: in industrial technology. Population swelled, a new business leader class emerged,
Speaker 2: challenging the aristocracy for that top spot over a swelling
Speaker 2: working class and virtually non existent middle class. So you
Speaker 2: had vast socioeconomic differences going on, impacting the manner in
Speaker 2: which the spoils and the horrors of industrialism were distributed
Speaker 2: to a large degree, because while upper classes obviously enjoyed
Speaker 2: more freedom, everyone breathed the same air and ultimately the
Speaker 2: same dust and dust. You know, dust doesn't care who
Speaker 2: you are, dust doesn't care what part of society you
Speaker 2: come from. Now a lot has been written about Victorian sanitation,
Speaker 2: like that in and of itself is a huge topic
Speaker 2: because again the throes of industrialization, all these changes, changes
Speaker 2: in population, changes in technology. We've touched on some of
Speaker 2: these technologies in the past, especially on invention. You know,
Speaker 2: how are you going to keep everything sanitary? Like the
Speaker 2: story of sanitation is ultimately the story of any civilization
Speaker 2: or any empire, going way back in ancient times. Now.
Speaker 2: According to Lee Jackson, author of Dirty Old London that
Speaker 2: cided on MPR's Fresh Air in twenty fifteen, this other
Speaker 2: points out that by the eighteen nineties there were approximately
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand horses and a thousand tons of dung
Speaker 2: a day in London.
Speaker 3: That's just horse dung.
Speaker 2: That's just horse dung. We're not even getting into people
Speaker 2: or anything. That's just horses living and pooping in the city.
Speaker 2: And London's capacity for managing all of that was vastly insufficient.
Speaker 2: So in the streets the dung essentially became the mud,
Speaker 2: and naturally, if it's dry enough, that dung also becomes
Speaker 2: the dust of London, or part of the dust of London,
Speaker 2: to be clear. On top of that, the other points
Speaker 2: out that London was a quote city of cesspools, with
Speaker 2: each house typically hosting a believe it was like a
Speaker 2: six foot deep, four foot wide cesspool for all of
Speaker 2: the home's toiletry waste and I think various other wastes
Speaker 2: as well, but a keynote the toiletry waste. And then
Speaker 2: you had all of the coal lash produced by domestic
Speaker 2: households in addition to coal lash produced by industry. Now
Speaker 2: it was really fascinating. There was actually a system of
Speaker 2: dust yards and dust men. They would come to your
Speaker 2: house and haul off your dust or they would haul
Speaker 2: off dust from the street and so forth. And then
Speaker 2: there were the night soil men as well. These were
Speaker 2: the people who would arrive in the middle of the
Speaker 2: night to haul away your night soil from your cesspool.
Speaker 2: Because the stinch of these activities, especially the night soil
Speaker 2: removal here was legally deemed too odorous for daylight hours,
Speaker 2: so in the night they would come haul it away,
Speaker 2: put it in baskets, haulowed up out of that pit
Speaker 2: and take it out where it could be used in
Speaker 2: the countryside. The manure night soil it goes out to
Speaker 2: help ultimately grow more food for the growing population of London.
Speaker 2: I was reading an article by clearly A chill Me
Speaker 2: of ground Shore, who wrote a piece about the dust
Speaker 2: yards for this is in twenty fifteen for two Day's Conveyancer.
Speaker 2: And this article points out some interesting facts about the
Speaker 2: dust yards. And I have some other sources I'm going
Speaker 2: to refer to about the dust yards here, But in
Speaker 2: the eighteen fifties, the average amount of coal burn by
Speaker 2: each household in London was estimated at eleven tons per year.
Speaker 2: According to this article, coal lash was in demand by
Speaker 2: the brick industry for brickmaking, though it was also needed
Speaker 2: for fertilizer. Both of these needs were increased by urban expansion,
Speaker 2: so for food, for construction for all of those bodies
Speaker 2: in the city. So in order to help meet these needs,
Speaker 2: we actually see an early example of a large scale
Speaker 2: zero waste system, essentially a recycling program, though one that
Speaker 2: of course is driven purely by economics here and also
Speaker 2: one that is without any kind of modern health, environmental,
Speaker 2: or labor standards. So, for instance, children would work at
Speaker 2: these dust yards along with adults.
Speaker 3: And we know in many modern contexts, such as mining
Speaker 3: and certain types of industrial settings, occupational exposure to dust
Speaker 3: is a major health hazard and you have to take
Speaker 3: special precautions to, you know, if you're a worker in
Speaker 3: a cement factory or in a mine or something, to
Speaker 3: protect yourself from exposure to dust, to protect your lungs.
Speaker 3: And so I would imagine some of those risks were
Speaker 3: probably involved here as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So we have to be we have to
Speaker 2: be careful about patting them on the back too much
Speaker 2: for this program because again a lot of these standards
Speaker 2: were not in place, and it was purely driven by economics.
Speaker 2: But still dust yards were in many ways recycling centers
Speaker 2: where the dust was hauled off to by the dustmen
Speaker 2: and the street sweepers. The dust yards entailed and organized
Speaker 2: sifting and separation of different elements in the dust, radiating
Speaker 2: out from like a central heap. I included an old
Speaker 2: like illustration here for you, Joe. You can find these
Speaker 2: online too, if you look up Victorian dust yard. And
Speaker 2: here we see examples of women out sifting through the dust.
Speaker 2: It looks like there is a child there as well.
Speaker 2: There's a man shoveling dust as well, and various animals
Speaker 2: milling about.
Speaker 3: I do not see masks no in the picture. However,
Speaker 3: it looks like a grand old time. They're just like
Speaker 3: hanging out with ducks and pigs, and everybody's yeah, it
Speaker 3: looks looks great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little more upbeat, I guess. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: going back to the writings of Cleary, she writes that
Speaker 2: these dust yards, along with various other things in and
Speaker 2: around London again product of industrialization and just life in general.
Speaker 2: You had slums, you had docs, you had brickyards, all
Speaker 2: of this going on within London, and this helped to
Speaker 2: establish a kind of moral geography of city life. Again,
Speaker 2: morality here being very tied up with ideas of hygiene
Speaker 2: and cleanliness and of course class. So while there was
Speaker 2: in many respects just one London and certainly one atmosphere
Speaker 2: and one smoggy sky, there was also this kind of
Speaker 2: attempt to regulate the clean moral city within the industrial husk.
Speaker 2: And the home especially, she points out, was increasingly thought
Speaker 2: to constitute a quote self contained moral universe that can
Speaker 2: in some sense be hermetically sealed from the pre germ
Speaker 2: theory threats of miasma and spontaneous generation. And the home
Speaker 2: was a haven, a safe place where all that disease,
Speaker 2: all that horror could be shut out, or at least
Speaker 2: there's the hope that you're shutting it out, and maybe
Speaker 2: like the heartfelt belief that you were able to shut
Speaker 2: it out of your home, and probably like the immediate
Speaker 2: unreal geography surrounding your home. But then, as we touched
Speaker 2: on in the last episode, you get the growing acceptance
Speaker 2: of germ theory, and is this caught on in the
Speaker 2: public mindset. It changed all of this. It kind of
Speaker 2: inverted this view of where the health threats are to
Speaker 2: your way of life. So I want to read a
Speaker 2: bit here from cleary that I thought was very insightful.
Speaker 2: Quote Miismatic theories of bad air, foul smells, and spontaneous
Speaker 2: generation continued to dominate sanitary discourse in the eighteen seventies
Speaker 2: and eighties, but as germ theories entered circulation, the impenetrable
Speaker 2: Victorian home became an increasingly anxious fantasy rather than a
Speaker 2: reliable domestic construct. Sanitary geographies of the city turned inward,
Speaker 2: eventually producing analogous geographies of the over decorated, architecturally busy
Speaker 2: Victorian interior. Even purpose built environments could contain pockets of
Speaker 2: potential contamination and illness. In fact, the architectural flourishes and
Speaker 2: decorative fittings so identified with mid Victorian style became sites
Speaker 2: of suspicion and fear as the nineteenth century waned. In
Speaker 2: these new domestic geographies, I argue the decorative dust trap
Speaker 2: rivaled the urban fever nest as a primary locust of
Speaker 2: pollution anxiety, emerging as a contested site of cultural value
Speaker 2: and meaning in a variety of Victorian texts.
Speaker 3: Mmmm, okay, so explain that a little the dust trap
Speaker 3: mirrors the outside world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So instead of having these pockets of town that
Speaker 2: you would avoid or kind of cut yourself off from,
Speaker 2: or even I guess I'm reading into it here but
Speaker 2: kind of pretend or not there, which I think is
Speaker 2: something that goes on in a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of cities even to this day. But instead of just
Speaker 2: relying on that kind of a sanitary geography, as she
Speaker 2: terms it, suddenly you're applying that line of thinking to
Speaker 2: your own home and you're thinking about those dust bunnies
Speaker 2: under the bed, You're thinking about those corners in the
Speaker 2: house where dust is kind of swept to and it accumulates,
Speaker 2: or even like clearly brings an example up in the
Speaker 2: book of a just a Victorian text on how to
Speaker 2: hang like paintings or pictures of some sort in your house,
Speaker 2: even that exercise would have warnings about dust traps, about
Speaker 2: trying to do it in such a way as to
Speaker 2: not permit these dust traps to occur.
Speaker 3: And the argument is that this view of the interior
Speaker 3: geography somewhat coincides with or is influenced by the emergence
Speaker 3: of germ theory, like the correct understanding that disease is
Speaker 3: to a large extent caused by tiny organisms that are
Speaker 3: invisible to the eye and all around us.
Speaker 2: Right, and of course we know that new information, even
Speaker 2: when it is accurate, it doesn't mean that reactions to
Speaker 2: set accurate information are always you know, completely as as
Speaker 2: on point, I guess you would say.
Speaker 3: You can respond to true information in an irrational way.
Speaker 2: Right now, not to say that anything that we've I
Speaker 2: certainly didn't find much in the way of anyone arguing, hey,
Speaker 2: let the dust build up in your house, it's good
Speaker 2: for you. But it does seem like there's a certain
Speaker 2: amount of sort of dust anxiety overreach at the time,
Speaker 2: or dust mania. But she also points out that this
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that dust was just seen as a threat.
Speaker 2: I mean, because again, dust is ubiquitous and and you also,
Speaker 2: I think, have this kind of like you know, modern
Speaker 2: fascination with the world. I mean, in the same sort
Speaker 2: of scientific awakening that is making it possible to understand
Speaker 2: what's going on with disease also with sort of illuminating
Speaker 2: this idea of learning more about the world around you.
Speaker 2: So she points out that dust, you know, is complex
Speaker 2: in the way that we view it. Even at the
Speaker 2: time quote when particles of dirt were illuminated by sunlight
Speaker 2: or other atmospheric conditions, victorians could simultaneously experience the transformative
Speaker 2: beauty and the contaminating agency of dust. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to turn to an example of that here in just
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I can experience that duality depending on
Speaker 3: the context in which I see the dust. For example,
Speaker 3: there are certain filmmakers that really love to show say
Speaker 3: maybe a strong beam of light cutting through a dark
Speaker 3: environment and you see little particles of dust floating in
Speaker 3: that Beam's It's a beautiful effect when achieved in film.
Speaker 3: If I see that same effect inside my house, it
Speaker 3: feels a little gross.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or if it is beyond a particle and it
Speaker 2: becomes like visible cat here, Yeah, you know, it's like
Speaker 2: I'm trying to like take my contact that's the worst.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I've washed my hands, I'm going to take
Speaker 2: a contact out or put one in, and somehow I've
Speaker 2: already gotten the cat here attached to my finger, and yeah,
Speaker 2: that is floating around and is part of the whole
Speaker 2: dust bunny scenario.
Speaker 3: Of course, I'm trying to think, what who do I
Speaker 3: have in mind? Who there's like a director who really
Speaker 3: loves like a beam of light with dust floating in it.
Speaker 3: But I can't think of who it is.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's a motif you see from time
Speaker 2: to time, and it can be it'd be quite beautiful.
Speaker 2: There is this kind of sense of sort of revealing
Speaker 2: the particles of nature, you know, there's kind of like this,
Speaker 2: even even though we are not obviously looking at atoms
Speaker 2: or anything, you know, in that beam of light, there
Speaker 2: is this kind of like revelation. It's like, oh, there
Speaker 2: are smaller realms than this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're not literally seeing the smallest things. I mean,
Speaker 3: in the same way that consciousness of dust is equated
Speaker 3: to consciousness of germs. You're not literally seeing the germs,
Speaker 3: but it like reminds you that you're surrounded by things
Speaker 3: on a scale that's very small, and that most times
Speaker 3: you don't most of the time you don't see or
Speaker 3: notice them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, I don't think it's it's it's
Speaker 2: that much of a stretch to put ourselves in this mindset,
Speaker 2: this mindset where she says that that that these like
Speaker 2: the dusty corners of these homes were quote simultaneously places
Speaker 2: of artistic imagination and filthy accumulation. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: I need to throw in some examples of this, and
Speaker 2: I've leave, and she mentions a number. I already mentioned
Speaker 2: the picture hanging guide, and I was thinking, well, I
Speaker 2: need to probably bust out some Charles Dickens here. But
Speaker 2: then I discovered that there are examples of both attitudes
Speaker 2: toward dust in the Victorian horror classic novel Dracula by
Speaker 2: Bram Stoker from eighteen ninety seven.
Speaker 3: Okay, eighteen ninety seven would be very late Victorian, but
Speaker 3: still technically under the wire.
Speaker 2: It gets in under the wire, and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: it's definitely all that time and that culture. Okay, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a little from Dracula here. Didn't
Speaker 2: think I was going to get to do that. So
Speaker 2: anytime we get to discuss Dracula without warning, it's nice.
Speaker 2: So the first bit, this is from early on. This
Speaker 2: is in Dracula's castle. I was not alone. The room
Speaker 2: was the same, unchanged in any way since I came
Speaker 2: into it. I could see along the floor in the
Speaker 2: brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed
Speaker 2: the long accumulation of dust.
Speaker 3: All right, so this this is Harker writing about being
Speaker 3: in draculus castle. We're here clearly that the dust is
Speaker 3: viewed as a kind of as a signal of something wrong,
Speaker 3: like that this is not a place that is occupied
Speaker 3: by living people, that it is only unnatural beings that
Speaker 3: dwell here, and that the way in which they dwell
Speaker 3: is not really life right.
Speaker 2: And so I was looking into this a bit more,
Speaker 2: and I found an excellent paper that gets into this
Speaker 2: and other related topics. This is from Lily s May
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety eight. It's titled Foul Things of the
Speaker 2: Night Dread in the Victorian Body. And so we have
Speaker 2: another passage here, and this is also from Draculus Castle
Speaker 2: from the same point of view. I thought I would
Speaker 2: watch for the Count's return, and for a long time
Speaker 2: set doggedly at the window. Then I began to notice
Speaker 2: that there were some quaint little specks floating in the
Speaker 2: rays of the moonlight. They were like the tiniest grains
Speaker 2: of dust, and they whirled around and gathered in clusters
Speaker 2: and a nebulus sort of way. I watch them with
Speaker 2: a sense of soothing and a sort of calm stole
Speaker 2: over me. I lean back in the embrasure in a
Speaker 2: more comfortable position, so that I can enjoy more fully
Speaker 2: the aerial gamboling.
Speaker 3: Oh, I would not have remembered this moment at.
Speaker 2: All, but yeah, but it's like a nice little you know,
Speaker 2: caught up in the moment, just sort of noticing dust
Speaker 2: and out of context that it's been a long time
Speaker 2: since I've read Dracula in full. I am not sure
Speaker 2: if this is meant to be just dust or if
Speaker 2: this is some hint of the Count's doing. But as
Speaker 2: we'll discuss, we can easily wrap all of this up
Speaker 2: under the same heading.
Speaker 3: But it's funny that in Dracula's Castle the dust is
Speaker 3: clearly meant to show a lack of life that there is,
Speaker 3: that this castle is not currently occupied by living beings
Speaker 3: who and it's and the fact that everything is covered
Speaker 3: in dust is a sign of disuse and decay and unnaturalness.
Speaker 3: At the same time, dust is overwhelmingly associated with life
Speaker 3: and activity of the city of the period.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and maybe this is what we get a
Speaker 2: glimpse of in this this second quotation here, Yeah, where
Speaker 2: it sounds lively. You know, he's talking about it in
Speaker 2: terms of motion and in life and interaction. Okay, so
Speaker 2: those are both from Dracula's Castle, but we also glimpse
Speaker 2: dust in London as well. This is from Lucy's perspective
Speaker 2: much later on in the book. The air seems full
Speaker 2: of specs floating and circling in the draft from the window,
Speaker 2: and the lights burn blue and dim. What am I
Speaker 2: to do? God shield me from harm this night? I
Speaker 2: shall hide this paper in my breast, where they shall
Speaker 2: find it when they come to lay me out. My
Speaker 2: dear mother gone. It is time that I go to Goodbye,
Speaker 2: dear Arthur. If I should not survive this night, God
Speaker 2: keep you, dear, and God help me.
Speaker 3: This is interesting in the air being full of dust
Speaker 3: almost it's like an indicat that death is imminent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, almost, like there's almost kind of like a
Speaker 2: fairy fire kind of vibe to it, you know. Now.
Speaker 2: Later on in the novel, as pointed out by May
Speaker 2: in that write up, Dracula's London layer is said to
Speaker 2: have walls quote fluffy and heavy with dust, which I like.
Speaker 2: It's almost like there's a strong sense that Dracula's presence
Speaker 2: alone makes the place dustier than it could have logically been.
Speaker 2: And then, of course you know what happens at the end.
Speaker 2: Dracula is staked Dracula is slain and quote his whole
Speaker 2: body crumbled into dust.
Speaker 3: This would go back to that theme we talked about
Speaker 3: at the beginning of the first episode, how most often
Speaker 3: in literature it seems that imagery of dust is used
Speaker 3: to signify a kind of worthlessness. And yeah, so when
Speaker 3: a body in a story crumbles into dust, it seems
Speaker 3: to it seems to indicate it almost a magical signal
Speaker 3: of good riddance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we definitely have that going on. There's
Speaker 2: no denying that you know from dust you came, does
Speaker 2: you become? And this creature of on life is now
Speaker 2: reduced to dust. And yet May stresses that throughout that, Okay,
Speaker 2: we have this time period in which we have all
Speaker 2: these attitudes about dust, and we also have the titular
Speaker 2: vampire here, who is an infectious creature. And much has
Speaker 2: been written comparing like the infectious nature of vampires to
Speaker 2: various pathogens, sometimes to syphilis and other maladies, and May
Speaker 2: stresses that quote terror of contamination by minute particles of
Speaker 2: corruption is thoroughly reinforced in Stoker's novel. I was looking
Speaker 2: around briefly at screen grabs, and I'm like, what is
Speaker 2: the dustiest Dracula movie that we have, And I'm not
Speaker 2: sure offhand. You know, he turns into dust at the
Speaker 2: end of a lot of these movies. But I was wondering, like,
Speaker 2: which one has the dustiest sets. Now I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have keep an eye open for that.
Speaker 3: I feel like the Todd Browning Dracula emphasizes dust in
Speaker 3: Legosi's castle. There's less dust that I recall once they
Speaker 3: move on back to London.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm not sure about the ninetiese version from
Speaker 2: Francis Ford Coppola. I do. I am long overdue to
Speaker 2: rewatch that one, But if I were to guess, I
Speaker 2: would maybe expect some fine dust in the castle. But
Speaker 2: maybe they end up avoiding it in London because there's
Speaker 2: like a sense I feel like they probably shot London
Speaker 2: with a certain air of modern gleaming there. But then again,
Speaker 2: if you end up going into a crypt, what's the
Speaker 2: first thing you're at least tempted to do? Set wise,
Speaker 2: that's dust everything, right, give it that n nice Gothic air.
Speaker 3: We could quite possibly do the Copola Dracula on Weird House.
Speaker 3: It is weirder than it needs to be, and I
Speaker 3: don't know, there are things about that you could argue
Speaker 3: are not good, but I think it's a heck of
Speaker 3: a good time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's greatness within it for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyways, more on Dracula, inevitably later on in another episode
Speaker 2: of one of our shows, but in the larger picture again,
Speaker 2: as we've already touched on, Clary argues that the aversion
Speaker 2: to dust and dust traps in architecture, art and design
Speaker 2: helped fuel a more minimalist, modernist aesthetic, free from the
Speaker 2: various nooks and crannies that might allow dust to accumulate.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that would make sense because I'm not a
Speaker 3: you know, I don't have a great knowledge about interior design,
Speaker 3: especially historically. But what I picture the interior of a
Speaker 3: Victorian home, especially like an upper class one, I picture
Speaker 3: it as a very craggy landscape. There's just like a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff going on, a lot of like nooks
Speaker 3: and crannies, Yeah, and things poking out in places that
Speaker 3: would just be like hard to access with a broom
Speaker 3: or a duster. And yeah, and I contrast that very
Speaker 3: much with what I think of as like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: the mid century modern interior style in American homes, which
Speaker 3: is just like a lot of clean surfaces places that
Speaker 3: would be easy to get dust out of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and clearly also discusses some other ideas, a much
Speaker 2: deeper dive that we can get into here, but she
Speaker 2: also explores some other like class based and economic factors
Speaker 2: may have played in like if nothing else, if there's
Speaker 2: this new in general, you don't want your house to
Speaker 2: be super dusty. There's this new emphasis on keeping things
Speaker 2: from getting too dusty, and therefore there's kind of this
Speaker 2: additional cost to having furniture like this or household molding
Speaker 2: like this, because it is harder to clean, and then
Speaker 2: you're potentially having to pay more or put more into
Speaker 2: the into the battle against that dust. So, yeah, anytime
Speaker 2: you have shifts in design like this, there are multiple
Speaker 2: things going on, but it is interesting to think about
Speaker 2: how this may have played a role in all of that.
Speaker 2: It's also interesting to think about this idea of like, Okay,
Speaker 2: you know hermetically fel the home. The home is separate
Speaker 2: from the world surrounding you, be that an urban environment
Speaker 2: or a rural environment, or some mix of the two.
Speaker 2: And you know, we're still sort of feeling ourselves out
Speaker 2: and having different shifts in all of this. While I
Speaker 2: haven't run across anything that has said, yes, let the
Speaker 2: dust build up in your house, we have seen examples
Speaker 2: of studies that have argued that exposure to cats and
Speaker 2: especially dogs, especially at a young age, can help bolster
Speaker 2: the immune system. You know, there's a lot about the
Speaker 2: complexity of the microbial world that we're still figuring out,
Speaker 2: and we're still figuring out how where we are in
Speaker 2: that whole equation and where our artificial environments and our
Speaker 2: cities currently stand in all of that as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, for today's episode, I got to thinking about
Speaker 3: dust in the context of a of an age old
Speaker 3: philosophical problem, and I was thinking about it like this, So,
Speaker 3: of course dust is everywhere, there's some amount of it
Speaker 3: in pretty much all environments and all homes. But at
Speaker 3: what point does something actually become dusty? We talked about
Speaker 3: this in part one of our series, this weird phenomenon
Speaker 3: where you know, you look at a desk surface, or
Speaker 3: a lamp or a shelf in your house and it
Speaker 3: can seem like, well, it's not dusty at all, no
Speaker 3: intervention needed, you know, it's fine, no notes, until suddenly
Speaker 3: one day you notice it needs dusting. In fact, it
Speaker 3: doesn't just need dusting. It is now revolting. How did
Speaker 3: I let it go this far?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm reminded again. We talked about Hollywood dust machines.
Speaker 2: What if you didn't have one and you just had
Speaker 2: to wait for things to set to get dusty again.
Speaker 2: What would that be like? It's like, okay, not yet,
Speaker 2: not yet, Okay, now now it's dusty again.
Speaker 3: But would that ever happen if you were watching it constantly?
Speaker 3: It seems like, you know, it's the trying to watch
Speaker 3: a pot boil, except it would take months, I guess.
Speaker 3: But it is weird how, at least to me, things
Speaker 3: tend to go from not noticeably dusty to too dusty,
Speaker 3: And presumably this is not usually because of a massive
Speaker 3: quantity of dust being deposited all at once. Instead, there's
Speaker 3: something going on with our perception. Some amount of dust
Speaker 3: is always present, and that amount is slowly accumulating a
Speaker 3: little by little, and it doesn't register as dustiness to
Speaker 3: us until it is past a certain threshold, and maybe
Speaker 3: the light strikes it in the right way, maybe we're
Speaker 3: in the right mood or mental state to see it,
Speaker 3: and suddenly it does look dusty. Now we're here, and
Speaker 3: it occurred to me that this is actually a specific
Speaker 3: manifestation of a famous dilemma in philosophy known as the
Speaker 3: Sobriety's paradox or the paradox of the heap. The word
Speaker 3: sobrieties spelled sories, from the Greek word for pile or heap.
Speaker 3: It is named after the most famous example used in
Speaker 3: these these thought experiments, and that example is a heap
Speaker 3: of sand. So I'll illustrate the dilemma like this. Imagine
Speaker 3: one million grains of sand piled up together on the ground.
Speaker 3: Is this a heap of sand? I think most people
Speaker 3: would say, yes, it is that. That's not a very
Speaker 3: controversial thing to call it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just the summoning the word million instantly makes
Speaker 2: you think, well, that's a lot. That sounds heapworthy. Though
Speaker 2: then I begin to second guess myself and think, well,
Speaker 2: grains are small. What does a million grains of sand
Speaker 2: pile together look like?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it doesn't matter what the number is actually,
Speaker 3: but I think we you know, imagine you say you
Speaker 3: start with a heap of sand, whatever you think a
Speaker 3: heap is. Now you remove one single grain of sand
Speaker 3: from that heap. So if you start with a million,
Speaker 3: you're left with nine hundred ninety nine nine ninety nine.
Speaker 3: Is it still a heap? Yes, in fact it would.
Speaker 3: It would seem not only wrong but silly to suggest
Speaker 3: that removing one grain of sand makes a heap into
Speaker 3: a non heap. One grain does not make the difference clearly.
Speaker 3: But assume you repeat the process a million times, remove
Speaker 3: one grain, ask if it's still a heap. Eventually you
Speaker 3: would have only one grain of sand left, and by
Speaker 3: that point you know it is definitely not a heap. Obviously,
Speaker 3: nobody would call a single grain of sand a heap,
Speaker 3: And yet it seems impossible to identify any particular point
Speaker 3: along the way where removing one more grain of sand
Speaker 3: would make it no longer a heap. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: we went from one hundred and thirty eight to one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty seven grains. Now it's not a heap anymore.
Speaker 3: That obviously doesn't seem right. But if you can't identify
Speaker 3: the number at which it ceases to become a heap
Speaker 3: of sand, what is a heap? You could use the
Speaker 3: same process to question the concept of dustiness. Is this
Speaker 3: lamp dusty. I'm looking at a lamp right now that
Speaker 3: it's pretty dusty. I should have dusted it before we
Speaker 3: started recording here. So yes, it's definitely dusty. But if
Speaker 3: I were to remove one grain of dust at a time,
Speaker 3: is there a point at which it would become no
Speaker 3: longer dusty? Well, certainly there is. There's some point you
Speaker 3: would get to where everybody would say, yeah, that's not
Speaker 3: a dusty lamp. But you can't say where that point is.
Speaker 3: You know you'd hit there before you get to zero
Speaker 3: grains of dust or one grain of dust, But where
Speaker 3: is it? And no single subtraction of a grain of
Speaker 3: dust ever makes sense as the threshold, And so you
Speaker 3: can note that it doesn't matter which way you go.
Speaker 3: We've been talking about subtraction. But you can illustrate the
Speaker 3: paradox by addition as well. So you can start with
Speaker 3: one grain of dust, add another grain, add one pyroglyphic
Speaker 3: dust might fecal pellet at a time, and it's hard
Speaker 3: to say when the surface goes from not dusty to dusty.
Speaker 3: The Sobriety's paradox is usually thought of as relevant to
Speaker 3: the philosophical problem of vagueness. It can arise in connection
Speaker 3: to any term that makes sense and is useful, but
Speaker 3: is also vague, And so we can think of examples
Speaker 3: from multiple parts of speech. So when you think of
Speaker 3: adjective adjectives, you can think of tall, short, long, wide, narrow, loud, quiet, bald, hairy, crowded, sparse,
Speaker 3: all of these where you know, you can make a
Speaker 3: list of thousands of words like this, all of them
Speaker 3: could be subject to a Sobriety's attack. Is a seven
Speaker 3: foot tall person tall? I think basically everybody would say yes,
Speaker 3: Now subtract a millimeter? Is that person still tall? You
Speaker 3: can't find a clear cutoff. But also the Sobriety's paradox
Speaker 3: goes a bit deeper because you can apply it or
Speaker 3: a similar principle to concepts that you might not think
Speaker 3: of as readily, concepts that are not usually considered a
Speaker 3: type of measure or as counting. Based one example in
Speaker 3: a paper that I was reading by a philosopher named
Speaker 3: Diana Rathman, any color descriptor, for example, red red color
Speaker 3: is usually thought of as visible light at a frequency
Speaker 3: of you know, somewhere around four hundred and thirty to
Speaker 3: four hundred and forty terra herts. It's a frequency of
Speaker 3: reflected visible light, and you can place that range in
Speaker 3: different places. You know, some websites I was looking at
Speaker 3: said red is between like four hundred and four hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty tarra hertz, or it just said it's four
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty tarra hertz or four hundred and forty.
Speaker 3: So there's obviously a range of frequencies that most people
Speaker 3: will look at and say, yeah, that's red, and there
Speaker 3: are ranges of other frequencies that most people will look
Speaker 3: at and say that's definitely not red because it's blue
Speaker 3: or it's orange or something. But whatever your starting point,
Speaker 3: if you say start within the common red range, you
Speaker 3: could vary the frequency of the reflected light rays one
Speaker 3: at a time, you know, one hurts at a time,
Speaker 3: one tear, heurts at a time, up and down the spectrum.
Speaker 3: At what point is a color no longer red and
Speaker 3: instead orange or purple? There are just tons of in
Speaker 3: between colors. So either you have to impose a hard
Speaker 3: frequency cutoff or some other kind of arbitrary rule that
Speaker 3: does not conform to our true experience of seeing colors,
Speaker 3: or you have to say that all colors are red.
Speaker 3: You know, even blue is red, or even invisible gamma
Speaker 3: rays are red too. Or you could say that red
Speaker 3: like doesn't exist or is not a meaningful concept. But
Speaker 3: I think that's obviously wrong because red is a perfectly
Speaker 3: useful concept. We use it all the time. You could say,
Speaker 3: can you hand me the red the hammer with the
Speaker 3: red handle, and people know what you mean, they pick
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The only time that kind of a request causes
Speaker 2: confusion is when you are straight over into an area
Speaker 2: where you could make a case for it being a
Speaker 2: different color, right, And even then you'd have to have
Speaker 2: some other situations. The situation have to be more complex
Speaker 2: than that, or you'd have to be particularly fussy to say, oh,
Speaker 2: don't you mean the fusia hammer, like, I mean, if
Speaker 2: there's one hammer there, you know which one they want, right,
Speaker 2: pick the closest one to red.
Speaker 3: Right. So I don't think it's a good solution to
Speaker 3: this paradox to say, actually red does not exist and
Speaker 3: heaps do not exist, because clearly, I mean, we use
Speaker 3: these concepts successfully. They are useful and meaningful. There are
Speaker 3: objects that are red but not orange, or red but
Speaker 3: not blue for that matter, And there's no and at
Speaker 3: the same time, there's no good way to mark a
Speaker 3: universal cutoff point between the frequencies of light that are
Speaker 3: red versus orange.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now we've already established that the Sobiety's paradox applies to
Speaker 3: concepts like heap or pile. Those It's clear how it
Speaker 3: works there, because those are concepts that involve an implicit
Speaker 3: counting of things. But also, if you think about it,
Speaker 3: it doesn't only apply to collection categories. Most nouns are
Speaker 3: defined by some unspecified quantity of mass or measure, or
Speaker 3: some unspecified degree of quality. In fact, some philosophers have
Speaker 3: pointed out that you can attack the identity of basically
Speaker 3: any object with a Sobriety's decomposition. So you know this
Speaker 3: is a VHS copy of Highlander two the quickening. Now
Speaker 3: take one atom away from it. Is it still Highlander two?
Speaker 3: Is it still the VHS? I obviously yes, one atom
Speaker 3: doesn't make a difference, And you, obviously at the same time,
Speaker 3: cannot do this forever, because like a single carbon atom remaining,
Speaker 3: or just a little fleck of black plastic from the
Speaker 3: VHS would not be a copy of highland Er two
Speaker 3: on VHS. But it is impossible to pick a boundary
Speaker 3: where removing a single atom at a time makes a difference.
Speaker 3: So these paradoxes arise from common words in terms that
Speaker 3: don't have strict physical or mathematical definitions. Some words, not most,
Speaker 3: but some words do have strict physical or mathematical definitions.
Speaker 3: For example, the word trio. You could refer to a
Speaker 3: trio of sand grains, and there would be three of them.
Speaker 3: If there are more or less than three, it's not
Speaker 3: a trio, but a heap of sand or a dusty lamp.
Speaker 3: Those those terms are vague and they don't entail numerical specificity.
Speaker 3: Now you might respond to this by saying, well, you know,
Speaker 3: this is this problem of vagueness in the soariety's paradox.
Speaker 3: It just arises because you know, we're being sloppy, right,
Speaker 3: We're using vague words and concepts, and we could speak
Speaker 3: more specifically. We should be more specific with our language
Speaker 3: and avoid these philosophical problems. But is that achievable and
Speaker 3: is that even desirable? The majority of the descriptive words
Speaker 3: we use, again, do not have physically and mathematically precise
Speaker 3: definitions and are, to varying extents subject to this kind
Speaker 3: of vagueness and Furthermore, I would argue that they have
Speaker 3: to be because it would be impossible to build a
Speaker 3: language system that was actually usable in which all terms
Speaker 3: and expressions had physically precise and mathematically precise definitions. And
Speaker 3: if you doubt this, just try it. See if you
Speaker 3: can communicate with somebody about everyday matters using no terms
Speaker 3: that could invoke a Soroiety's paradox, or only terms with
Speaker 3: physically precise definitions. I think if you do this, language
Speaker 3: just becomes impossibly inefficient and non expressive. You just can't
Speaker 3: really communicate this way, so we actually need vague terms
Speaker 3: like dusty, even though we can't tell you exactly how
Speaker 3: many dust grains or pyroglyphic feces are in. At the
Speaker 3: same time, I think it's important to be aware of
Speaker 3: the Sobriety's paradox because people try to invoke versions of
Speaker 3: it or similar types of logic, I think, for purposes
Speaker 3: of deceptive argumentation or to try to affect your thinking
Speaker 3: with fallacies. For example, one classic way to try to
Speaker 3: resolve the Sobriety's paradox that I think is not valid,
Speaker 3: you know, with the heap of sand, is to say
Speaker 3: that the paradox proves that heaps cannot exist. Since n
Speaker 3: plus one grains of sand starting at one never constitutes
Speaker 3: a heap, and since you can't tell me at what
Speaker 3: number it becomes a heap, heaps do not exist. You
Speaker 3: can imagine a kid pulling this with his parents when
Speaker 3: they tell him to clean his dusty bedroom. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: how many grains of dust constitutes dustiness? Mom? You know,
Speaker 3: tell me or your argument is invalid.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, that's going to end well for you.
Speaker 2: Kid can't lose your switch privileges exactly.
Speaker 3: So I mean it does sort of in a way
Speaker 3: involve an interesting question in philosophy that that you know,
Speaker 3: raises deeper questions about the vagueness of language, But it
Speaker 3: doesn't prove what it's supposed to prove. It doesn't prove
Speaker 3: that heaps or dustiness do not exist. But people do
Speaker 3: try to use this argument that way. You know, in
Speaker 3: a silly example, you could argue that no macroscopic object exists,
Speaker 3: since you could you could do a soroiety's paradox on
Speaker 3: them by adding or subtracting one atom at a time.
Speaker 3: And people do use arguments like this to attack what
Speaker 3: I think are basic valid observations, but that they might
Speaker 3: not like. So, like a billionaire could could say I'm
Speaker 3: not rich by doing a society's paradox with one dollar increments.
Speaker 3: Oh well, if you had one more dollar, would that
Speaker 3: make me rich? Obviously, it doesn't undermine the idea that
Speaker 3: somebody can have a billion dollars and that that means
Speaker 3: they're quite wealthy. It just because you can't pick a
Speaker 3: single dollar incre meant where they become wealthy.
Speaker 2: Well, unless you are a taxing body, I guess, right,
Speaker 2: and then you can put certain thresholds right, But but
Speaker 2: then you kind of run into that situation too, where
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, so really, if I made a dollar less,
Speaker 2: it would be it would be different, it would be
Speaker 2: a different bracket, and so forth. I guess. The thing
Speaker 2: is we for like legal purposes and so forth, or
Speaker 2: even like rule based systems, you know, we sometimes have
Speaker 2: to decide on what the cutoff point is, you know,
Speaker 2: like that's right, you have to be this tall to
Speaker 2: ride this ride. And if if you are just a
Speaker 2: little too short or a little too tall for the
Speaker 2: ride or whatever, like, then yeah, you get into this
Speaker 2: gray area. But sometimes you do have to call.
Speaker 3: It, well, yeah, I think much in the same way
Speaker 3: that we've talked about on the show before, that like
Speaker 3: life is impossible without relying on heuristics for judgment, which
Speaker 3: can often be quite inaccurate. And so there are certain
Speaker 3: domains where you have to override that natural reliance on
Speaker 3: heuristic and involve laborious analytical thinking. Domains like science or
Speaker 3: philosophy or something where if you just go on heuristics,
Speaker 3: you're going to get the wrong answers. So you can't
Speaker 3: do that. And at the same time, it's not possible
Speaker 3: to live life by by judging everything based on laborious,
Speaker 3: you know, deliberate analytical thinking. I think in the same
Speaker 3: way you cannot have a language and a culture and
Speaker 3: a life without relying on vague terms. But like when
Speaker 3: it comes to the law, vague terms create a lot
Speaker 3: of problems, so you have to go out of your
Speaker 3: way to try to reduce them. And even then, there
Speaker 3: are still lots of vague terms in the law. Like
Speaker 3: in the law, you have concepts of reasonableness and stuff
Speaker 3: you know that just that ultimately is saying, like you know,
Speaker 3: later jurists, insert your interpretation here as to what reasonableness means.
Speaker 2: You know, earlier you mentioned like short and bald and
Speaker 2: hairy as examples, and that has only made me think
Speaker 2: too of various works of fiction or even nonfiction where
Speaker 2: an individual a character is described, and sometimes you'll have
Speaker 2: an author who says little more than that, you know,
Speaker 2: describes them perhaps as like a short, bald, hairy man
Speaker 2: walked across the street, and that does give you like
Speaker 2: enough material to sort of run with it and help
Speaker 2: generate an image in your mind for that character. But
Speaker 2: it's going to vary greatly from one writer to the next.
Speaker 2: There are some writers who will, you know, go into
Speaker 2: great detail, telling you exactly how hairy they are, exactly
Speaker 2: how bald, and exactly how short, you know, drawing on
Speaker 2: all the tools of literature to make it very clear
Speaker 2: and perhaps very engaging or funny or terrifying or whatever
Speaker 2: in doing so. Or sometimes they'll say something that they're
Speaker 2: really not saying much at all, but they'll say something
Speaker 2: very specific. You know, it'll be one specific metaphor or
Speaker 2: analogy that will that will give you just enough to
Speaker 2: go on and form that kind of concrete idea in
Speaker 2: your head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is interesting, and I guess it is a
Speaker 3: feature of each author's individual literary style, how much sort
Speaker 3: of laxity and tolerance they want to allow in their descriptions,
Speaker 3: you know, how much they want to rely on vague
Speaker 3: terms that could allow a wide range of interpretations. If
Speaker 3: you call a character bald, that could be interpreted as
Speaker 3: them having a completely shaved head, or it could just
Speaker 3: suggest significantly thinning hair and so forth. And so some
Speaker 3: authors might be comfortable with that whole range, and other
Speaker 3: authors want to impose a more kind of I don't know,
Speaker 3: authoritarian take on the reader's imagination and say here's exactly
Speaker 3: what you should imagine. I'm going to tell you how
Speaker 3: many hairs there are?
Speaker 2: You know, I was trying to think of an example
Speaker 2: of you know, I mentioned how sometimes it's very specific,
Speaker 2: but in a way that is not giving you a
Speaker 2: whole lot of detail either. And I'm trying to think
Speaker 2: of a specific example, and I had to look up
Speaker 2: here online to find one. I believe this is a
Speaker 2: book I've read. But in Raymond Chandler's Belong Goodbye, the
Speaker 2: character of Philip Marlowe's describing somebody and says he had
Speaker 2: a face like a collapsed lung. I mean, what are
Speaker 2: you perfect it's somehow it's perfect, and yet like, what
Speaker 2: does it mean? How do you? How do you? How
Speaker 2: would you do a sketch based on that? I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it works. It's distinct enough to work, and it's amusing.
Speaker 3: I really appreciate things like that. You might call those
Speaker 3: more kind of spiritual analogies, because you can't imagine that
Speaker 3: it means. Literally, it looks like the tissue of a
Speaker 3: collapsed lung, but there's something, there's something of a collapsed
Speaker 3: lung eness about it. Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: But this is a great area of contemplation. Touches on
Speaker 2: some of the other paradoxes that we've discussed and discussed
Speaker 2: in the show before, you know, topics of like infinity,
Speaker 2: like in what is infinity plus one? The ship of
Speaker 2: theseus and so forth.
Speaker 3: And to be fair to the sarri these paradox literature,
Speaker 3: it goes a lot deeper. I didn't take us deep
Speaker 3: into the weeds on it, but there have been, for example,
Speaker 3: some philosophers who have tried to use this paradox to
Speaker 3: attack the very foundations of logic, saying like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: so there's principle in classical logic that says either a
Speaker 3: statement or its negation is true. So you know, it's
Speaker 3: got to be the case that either A or not
Speaker 3: A is true. And if you've got something like the
Speaker 3: paradox of the heap, then you've got potentially something that
Speaker 3: is neither a heap nor not a heap. And so
Speaker 3: some people have said, well, then maybe there's something wrong
Speaker 3: with logic, and people have come back and argued that way,
Speaker 3: and so again, I didn't get deep into those dilemmas,
Speaker 3: but if you want to look it up, it's out there.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 2: this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our third
Speaker 2: episode on Dust, and we will be back for at
Speaker 2: least a fourth episode. So if you're trying to figure
Speaker 2: out exactly how long we're going to go on Dust,
Speaker 2: we don't know. We don't know where the heap ends
Speaker 2: on this one, but there will at least be one
Speaker 2: more episode on Dust, maybe two more episodes, who knows.
Speaker 2: We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, we'll just
Speaker 2: remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science podcast, with core episodes dealing with science and culture.
Speaker 2: In the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail, on
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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