"Charles L. Harness - The Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

Ruy Jacques broke in: "There is only one point on which I must disagree with you." He turned a
disarming smile on his wife. "I really don't see how the scientist fits into the picture at all. Do you,
Martha? For the artist is already supreme. He dominates the scientist, and if he likes, he is perfectly able
to draw upon his more sensitive intuition for those various restatements of artistic principles that the
scientists are forever trying to fob off on a decreasingly gullible public under the guise of novel scientific
laws. I say that the artist is aware of those "new" laws long before the scientist, and has the option of
presenting them to the public in a pleasing art form or as a dry, abstruse equation. He may, like da Vinci,
express his discovery of a beautiful curve in the form of a breath-taking spiral staircase in a chateau at
Blois, or, like D├╝rer he may analyze the curve mathematically and announce its logarithmic formula. In
either event he anticipates Descartes, who was the first mathematician to rediscover the logarithmic
spiral."

The woman laughed grimly. "All right. You're an artist. Just what scientific law have you discovered?"

"I have discovered," answered the artist with calm pride, "what will go down in history as 'Jacques' Law
of Stellar Radiation'."

Anna and Bell exchanged glances. The older man's look of relief said plainly: "The battle is joined; they'll
forget you."

Martha Jacques peered at the artist suspiciously. Anna could see that the woman was genuinely curious
but caught between her desire to crush, to damn any such amateurish "discovery" and her fear that she
was being led into a trap. Anna herself, after studying the exaggerated innocence of the man's wide,
unblinking eyes knew immediately that he was subtly enticing the woman out on the rotten limb of her
own dry perfection.

In near-hypnosis Anna watched the man draw a sheet of paper from his pocket. She marveled at the
superb blend of diffidence and braggadocio with which he unfolded it and handed it to the woman
scientist.

"Since I can't write, I had one of the fellows write it down for me, but I think he got it right," he explained.
"As you see, it boils down to seven prime equations."

Anna watched a puzzled frown steal over the woman's brow. "But each of these equations expands into
hundreds more, especially the seventh, which is the longest of them all." The frown deepened. "Very
interesting. Already I see hints of the Russell diagram..."

The man started. "What! H. N. Russell, who classified stars into spectral classes? You mean he scooped
me?"

"Only if your work is accurate, which I doubt."

The artist stammered: "ButтАФ"

"And here," she continued in crisp condemnation, "is nothing more than a restatement of the law of
light-pencil wavering, which explains why stars twinkle and planets don't, and which has been known for
two hundred years."

Ruy Jacques' face lengthened lugubriously.