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Herbert von Karajan

Herbert von Karajan (born Heribert Ritter von Karajan; 5 April 1908 – 16 July 1989) was an Austrian conductor. He was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic for 34 years. During the Nazi era, he debuted at the Salzburg Festival, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, and during World War II he conducted at the Berlin State Opera. Generally regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century, he was a controversial but dominant figure in European classical music from the mid-1950s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate, he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.

Genealogy
The Karajans were of Greek ancestry. Herbert's great-great-grandfather, Georg Karajan (Geórgios Karajánnis, Γεώργιος Καραγιάννης), was born in Kozani, in the Ottoman province of Rumelia (now in Greece), leaving for Vienna in 1767, and eventually Chemnitz, Electorate of Saxony.

Georg and his brother participated in the establishment of Saxony's cloth industry, and both were ennobled for their services by Frederick Augustus III on 1 June 1792, thus adding the prefix "von" to the family name. This usage disappeared with the abolition of Austrian nobility after World War I. The surname Karajánnis became Karajan. Although traditional biographers ascribed a Slovak and Serbian or simply a Slavic origin to his mother, Karajan's family from the maternal side, through his grandfather who was born in the village of Mojstrana, Duchy of Carniola (today in Slovenia), was Slovene. Aromanian heritage has also been claimed. Through the Slovene line, Karajan was related to the Slovenian-Austrian composer Hugo Wolf. He also seems to have known some Slovene.

Childhood and education
Herbert Ritter von Karajan was born in Salzburg, Austria-Hungary, the second son of physician (surgeon) and senior consultant Ernst von Karajan (1868–1951) and Marta (née Martha Kosmač; 1881–1954) (married 1905). He was a child prodigy at the piano. From 1916 to 1926, he studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Franz Ledwinka (piano), Franz Zauer (harmony), and Bernhard Paumgartner (composition and chamber music).

He was encouraged to concentrate on conducting by Paumgartner, who detected his exceptional promise in that regard. In 1926 Karajan graduated from the conservatory and continued his studies at the Vienna Academy, studying piano with Josef Hofmann (a teacher with the same name as the pianist) and conducting with Alexander Wunderer and Franz Schalk.

Early engagement
Karajan made his debut as a conductor in Salzburg on 22 January 1929. The performance got the attention of the general manager of the Stadttheater in Ulm and led to Karajan's first appointment as assistant Kapellmeister of the theater. His senior colleague in Ulm was Otto Schulmann. After Schulmann was forced to leave Germany in 1933 with the NSDAP takeover, Karajan was promoted to first Kapellmeister.

Nazi years
In the postwar era, Karajan maintained silence about his Nazi Party membership, which gave rise to a number of conflicting stories about it. One version is that because of the changing political climate and the destabilization of his position, Karajan attempted to join the Nazi Party in Salzburg in April 1933, but his membership was later declared invalid because he somehow failed to follow up on the application and that Karajan formally joined the Nazi Party in Aachen in 1935, implying that he was not eager to pursue membership. More recent scholarship clears up this confusion: "...the truth is that Karajan actually joined the Nazi Party twice. The first time this happened was on 8 April 1933 in Salzburg. He paid the admission fee, received the membership number 1607525 and moved to Ulm. It is said that this accession was never formally carried out. It is also certain that Karajan rejoined the Nazi Party in Aachen in March 1935, this time receiving the membership number 3430914. After the annexation of Austria, the responsible Reich Treasurer of the Nazi Party discovered Karajan's double membership in Munich and declared the first accession invalid. The second was made retroactive to 1 May 1933."

During the entire Nazi era he "never hesitated to open his concerts with the Nazi favorite 'Horst-Wessel-Lied', but "always maintained he joined strictly for career reasons." His enemies called him "SS Colonel von Karajan".

In 1933, Karajan made his conducting debut at the Salzburg Festival with the Walpurgisnacht Scene in Max Reinhardt's production of Faust. In Salzburg in 1934, Karajan led the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time, and from 1934 to 1941, he was engaged to conduct operatic and orchestra concerts at the Theater Aachen.

Karajan's career received a significant boost in 1935 when he became Germany's youngest Generalmusikdirektor, at Aachen, and performed as a guest conductor in Bucharest, Brussels, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Paris. In 1938 Karajan made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic. The same year, he made his debut with the Berlin State Opera conducting Fidelio, and then had a major success at the State Opera with Tristan und Isolde. His performance was hailed by a Berlin critic as Das Wunder Karajan (the Karajan miracle). The critic wrote that Karajan's "success with Wagner's demanding work Tristan und Isolde sets himself alongside Wilhelm Furtwängler and Victor de Sabata, the greatest opera conductors in Germany at the present time". Receiving a contract with Deutsche Grammophon that same year, Karajan made the first of numerous recordings, conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin in the overture to The Magic Flute.

World War II
Karajan's career continued to thrive at the beginning of the war. In 1939, the Berlin State Opera appointed him State Kapellmeister and conductor of concerts by the Prussian State Orchestra. He then became music director of the Staatskapelle Berlin, with which he toured Rome with extraordinary success. The next year, his contract in Aachen was discontinued. His marriage to Anita Gütermann (with one Jewish grandparent) and the prosecution of his agent Rudolf Vedder also contributed to his temporary professional decline, leaving him few engagements beyond a limited season of concerts with the Staatskapelle.

By 1944, Karajan was, by his account, losing favour with the Nazi leadership, but he conducted concerts in Berlin as late as 18 February 1945. A short time later, in the closing stages of the war, he and his wife fled Germany for Milan, relocating with the assistance of Victor de Sabata.

Karajan's increased prominence from 1933 to 1945 has led to speculation that he joined the Nazi Party solely to advance his career. Critics such as Jim Svejda have pointed out that other prominent conductors, such as Arturo Toscanini, Otto Klemperer, Erich Kleiber, and Fritz Busch, fled Germany or Italy at the time. Richard Osborne noted that among the many significant conductors who continued to work in Germany during the war years—Wilhelm Furtwängler, Carl Schuricht, Karl Böhm, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss and Karl Elmendorff—Karajan was one of the youngest and thus one of the least advanced in his career. He was allowed to conduct various orchestras and was free to travel, even to the Netherlands to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra and make recordings there in 1943. He conducted for an audience of 300 Nazi armaments officials at a conference convened by Albert Speer in Linz, Austria, on 24–25 June 1944. In September 1944, he was listed on the Gottbegnadeten list (God-gifted list of artists exempt from mobilisation).

Karajan's denazification tribunal, held in Vienna on 15 March 1946, cleared him of illegal activity during the Nazi period. The Austrian denazification examining board discharged Karajan on 18 March 1946, and he resumed conducting shortly thereafter. Years later, former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said of Karajan's Nazi party membership card, "Karajan was obviously not a Nazi. He was a Mitläufer."

Postwar years
In 1946, Karajan gave his first postwar concert in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic, but was banned from further conducting by the Soviet occupation authorities because of his Nazi party membership. That summer he participated anonymously in the Salzburg Festival.

On 28 October 1947, Karajan gave his first public concert following the lifting of the conducting ban. With the Vienna Philharmonic and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, he performed Johannes Brahms's A German Requiem for a gramophone production in Vienna.

In 1949, Karajan became artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna. He also conducted at La Scala in Milan. His most prominent activity at this time was recording with the newly formed Philharmonia Orchestra in London, helping to build them into one of the world's finest. Starting from this year, Karajan began his lifelong attendance at the Lucerne Festival.

In 1951 and 1952, Karajan conducted at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

West Berlin appointment
During its 1955 tour of the United States, Karajan's past membership in the Nazi Party led to the Berlin Philharmonic's concerts being banned in Detroit, and Philadelphia Orchestra music director Eugene Ormandy refused to shake Karajan's hand. Upon arriving in New York City for a concert at Carnegie Hall, Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic were confronted by protests and picketers.

In 1956, Karajan was appointed principal conductor for life of the Berlin Philharmonic as Furtwängler's successor.

From 1957 to 1964, Karajan was artistic director of the Vienna State Opera. He was closely involved with the Vienna Philharmonic and the Salzburg Festival, where he initiated the Easter Festival, which remained tied to the Berlin Philharmonic's music director after his tenure.

Last years
In his later years, Karajan suffered from heart and back problems, needing surgery on the latter. He resigned as principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic on 24 April 1989. His last concert was Bruckner's 7th Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic. He died of a heart attack at his home in Anif on 16 July 1989 at the age of 81.

Karajan believed in reincarnation and said he would like to be reborn as an eagle so he could soar over his beloved Alps. Even so, on 29 June 1985, he conducted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Coronation Mass during a Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Basilica, on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, and with his wife and daughters received Holy Communion from the hand of the Pope. By the end of his life he had reconciled with the Catholic Church, and requested a Catholic burial.

Marriages and children
Karajan was married three times. Karajan married his first wife, Elmy Holgerloef, an operetta singer, on 26 July 1938. He first worked with her on a 1935 New Year's Eve gala production of Strauss's Die Fledermaus. They divorced in 1942. Elmy died of heart failure in 1983. A statement from his Salzburg office stated that Karajan was "very shocked, affected, and deeply upset by the news. He had never forgotten her; she had been a part of his life." Karajan did not attend her funeral in Aachen.

On 22 October 1942, at the height of the Second World War, Karajan married his second wife, Anna Maria "Anita" Sauest, born Gütermann, the daughter of a well-known manufacturer of yarn for sewing machines. Having had a Jewish grandfather, she was considered a Vierteljüdin (one-quarter Jewish woman). They divorced in 1958.

On 6 October 1958, Karajan married his third wife, Eliette Mouret, a French model born in Mollans-sur-Ouvèze. She had enjoyed a carefree childhood growing up in Provence before being discovered by Christian Dior when she was 18. This laid the foundation for an international modelling career. Karajan first met Mouret in 1957 and was deeply taken with her. Their first daughter, Isabel, was born on 25 June 1960. In 1964, their second daughter, Arabel, was born.

After Karajan's death, Eliette continued his musical legacy by founding of the Herbert von Karajan Centre in Vienna, now in Salzburg and known as the Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute. Her numerous projects focus particularly on the development of young people, and she is a patron of the Salzburg Easter Festival.

Hobbies

Karajan had been a passionate sportsman since he was a teenager. He was a keen skier and swimmer and followed a daily yoga ritual. He won several regattas aboard his racing yacht, christened Helisara. He piloted his Learjet and was a great sailing and car enthusiast, particularly fond of Porsches. He ordered a specially configured Type 930 with Martini & Rossi livery and his name on the back of the Porsche 911 Turbo.

Musicianship
One of Karajan's signature skills as a conductor was his ability to extract exquisite sounds from orchestras. His biographer Roger Vaughan observed this phenomenon while listening to the Berlin Philharmonic play in 1986, after nearly 30 years under Karajan's direction, noting that "what rivets one's attention is the beauty and perfection of the sounds. The softest of pianissimos commands rapt attention. The smooth crescendos peak exactly when they should. The breaks are sliced clean, without the slightest ragged edge."

Conducting style
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Karajan's conducting style was his propensity to conduct with his eyes closed. This is highly unusual for a conductor, as eye contact is generally regarded as of paramount importance to the conductor's communication with the orchestra. Yet, as Vaughan remarked: "[h]ere is one of the fascinating aspects of conducting: there are no rules, only guidelines. The most eccentric approach is tolerated if the results are successful." Indeed, James Galway, who served as principal flutist of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1969 to 1975, recalled that "he [Karajan] achieved most of what he wanted through charm".

But there were reasons for many of Karajan's eccentricities. Conducting with his eyes closed, for instance, was a consequence of memorizing scores; keeping his eyes closed helped him keep focus. Karajan's method of score study, too, was somewhat unusual, as noted by his friend Walter Legge, who remarked:

"He is one of the few conductors I have known who has never made a mark in a score. He will absorb a score quietly sitting on the floor, like a relaxed Siamese cat. Over the years he has learned how completely to relax the body so the mind is absolutely free to do what it wants."

Karajan was also known for his preternaturally keen sense of tempo, even going so far as to have himself tested against a computer to prove it. He insisted that this skill was learned, not inherited, and considered it the bedrock of musical interpretations. In fact, he cited inconsistencies in rhythmic accuracy and control as "one thing that might make me lose my temper. I can accept a wrong note from an orchestra but when everything is getting faster or slower, that I cannot accept."

He once explained to a German journalist why he preferred the Berlin to the Vienna Philharmonic: "If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it, but then they ask why."

Musical tastes
Karajan was a noted interpreter of virtually every standard of the classical repertoire, from the Baroque era to the 20th century. He was an admirer of Glenn Gould's interpretations of Bach, performing the D minor Keyboard Concerto with him on one occasion. The eminent Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon considered Karajan's recordings of the 12 London Symphonies as some of the finest he knew, and his multiple Beethoven cycles are still staples.

Yet Karajan's real interests seem to have lain in the period from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Principal among these were his fascinations with the composers Anton Bruckner and Jean Sibelius. In a 1981 interview with Gramophone's Robert Layton, Karajan remarked that he felt "a much deeper influence, affinity, kinship—call it what you like—[in Sibelius's music] with Bruckner. There is this sense of the Urwald, the primaeval forest, the feeling of elemental power, that one is dealing with something profound." When pressed about this connection toward the end of his life by his biographer Osborne, Karajan echoed some of these sentiments, saying:

"There is in both [Bruckner and Sibelius] a sense of the elemental. But I have often asked myself what it is that drew me to Sibelius's music and I think it is that he is a composer who cannot really be compared to anyone else. ... And you come to an end with him. I think it is perhaps also to do with my love of remote places, my love of mountains rather than cities."

Layton demystifies this relationship somewhat by observing that:

"[s]tring tremolandi and pedal points are, of course, among [the similarities between Bruckner and Sibelius], and we hear Brucknerian echoes in the development section of the first movement of Kullervo, written only a year or so after Sibelius first heard Bruckner's Third Symphony in Vienna."

Yet the most potent assessment of Karajan's interpretation of Sibelius's music came from Sibelius himself, who, according to Legge, said, "Karajan is the only conductor who plays what I meant."

Karajan was also a prolific opera conductor, championing the works of Wagner, Verdi, Richard Strauss and Puccini. Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, was something of a mainstay throughout Karajan's career. In his conversations with Osborne, Karajan recalled that, in the 1930s, when Italian opera was still something of a rarity in Austria and Germany:

"[M]y training in Verdi's Falstaff came from Toscanini. There wasn't a rehearsal in either Vienna or Salzburg at which I wasn't present. I think I heard about thirty. From Toscanini I learnt the phrasing and the words—always with singers, which was unheard of in Germany then. I don't think I ever opened the score. It was so in my ears, I just knew it."

Karajan went on to make two recordings of it—one for EMI in 1956 and another for Philips in 1980—and his colleague Otto Klemperer hailed the Vienna State Opera production as "really excellent". Strauss was likewise a continual force in Karajan's life, not just as a composer, but as a conductor. Karajan recounted their only "proper" meeting, in 1939, to Osborne:

"[A]t the end [of a performance of Elektra in Berlin] he came and said to me it was the best performance of the opera he had ever heard. I said, 'I don't really want to hear this; tell me what was wrong with it.' I think he was surprised by my reaction, so he asked me to lunch the next day. He said, 'You have made the music very clear, the fp here, the accent there; but these are not at all important. Just wave your stick around a bit!' He made a gesture like stirring a pudding. But what he meant was, let the music flow more naturally."

Use of recording technology
Karajan conducted and recorded prolifically, mainly with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic. He conducted other orchestras (including the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Orchestra of Teatro alla Scala, Milan and the Staatskapelle Dresden), but the vast majority of his recordings were made with the Berlin and Vienna orchestras. He also left a considerable legacy of recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra, his last performance being in 1960.

Although he made recordings with several labels, notably EMI, it is Deutsche Grammophon with which he became most associated, making 330 recordings with it. Karajan's 1981 Deutsche Grammophon recording of An Alpine Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic became the first work ever to be pressed on the compact disc format. Even though his repertoire had been extensively covered in analog (LP record), he spent the rest of the 1980s making digital recordings, notably rerecording Beethoven's symphonies (Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic's 1977 analog recording of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 won the Grand Prix du Disque, while their 1984 digital recording of it was not particularly critically acclaimed yet sold considerably more). In the mid-1990s, Deutsche Grammophon released the Karajan Gold series, remixes of Karajan's 1980s digital recordings enhanced by 24-bit processing.

Karajan filmed performances of his work for both Unitel and his own company, Telemondial.

Critical reception
The so-called Karajan sound remains something of a litmus test for critics, dividing them into two competing camps. Two reviews from the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs illustrate this point:

 * Of a 1971–72 studio recording of Tristan und Isolde, the Penguin authors wrote, "Karajan's is a sensual performance of Wagner's masterpiece, caressingly beautiful and with superbly refined playing from the Berlin Philharmonic".
 * Of Karajan's recording of Haydn's "Paris" symphonies, the same authors wrote, "big-band Haydn with a vengeance ... It goes without saying that the quality of the orchestral playing is superb. However, these are heavy-handed accounts, closer to Imperial Berlin than to Paris ... the Minuets are very slow indeed ... These performances are too charmless and wanting in grace to be whole-heartedly recommended."

The New York Times writer John Rockwell wrote in 1989: "He had a particular gift for Wagner and above all for Bruckner, whose music he conducted with sovereign command and elevated feeling."

Legacy
Karajan's concerts came to be considered major cultural events. In a 1982 tour of the United States, musical stars from Zubin Mehta and Seiji Ozawa to Frank Sinatra attended his Carnegie Hall concerts. Karajan was less interested in publicity or legacy than in building the cultural institution of music. "When I am on the podium, I forget all about the public", he said. "I am not interested in publicity. I can only hope there is an advantage to my being known in the world, that through the interest people take in me, they will then move on to an interest in music."

Much of Karajan's legacy is inextricable from his pioneering attitude toward recording technology. He made over 800 recordings, far surpassing the output of other contemporary conductors. Deutsche Grammophon said his albums sold "probably hundreds of millions" of copies. The West German news weekly Der Spiegel reported that he earned more than $6 million annually from record sales and conducting fees in 1989. Karajan amassed a fortune valued at 250 million euros as of 2008, remaining one of top-selling classical music artists two decades after his death.

Notable students
Despite Karajan's significant prowess as a conductor, he was more often seen behind the camera than in the teaching studio, preferring to record rehearsals rather than give masterclasses. He maintained a long friendship with Ozawa, whose success makes him Karajan's most outstanding student. Indeed, Ozawa was reportedly a strong contender to succeed Karajan at the Berlin Philharmonic; Karajan called him the "conductor with the best character" for the position.

Awards and honours
Karajan was the recipient of multiple honours and awards. He became a Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic on 17 May 1960, and in 1961 received the Austrian Medal for Science and Art. He also received the Grand Merit Cross (Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz) of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Karajan was the recipient of numerous Grand Prix du Disque awards. In 1977, Karajan was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. On 21 June 1978 he received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University. He received the Médaille de Vermeil from the Académie française in Paris, the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, the Olympia Award of the Onassis Foundation and the UNESCO International Music Prize. He received two Gramophone Awards for recordings of Mahler's Ninth Symphony and the complete Parsifal recordings in 1981. He received the Eduard Rhein Ring of Honor from the West German Eduard Rhein Foundation, in 1984. He was voted into the inaugural Gramophone Hall of Fame in 2012. He received the Picasso Medal from UNESCO.

From 2003 to 2015, the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden awarded the annual Herbert von Karajan Music Prize in recognition of excellence in musical achievements. In 2003 Anne-Sophie Mutter, who had made her debut with Karajan in 1977, became the award's first recipient. In 2015 the award was replaced by the Herbert von Karajan Prize, presented at the Salzburg Easter Festival.

Karajan was an honorary citizen of Salzburg (1968), West Berlin (1973) and Vienna (1978). Since 2005, his legacy has been managed by the Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute.

Grammy Awards
Karajan's multiple Grammy Awards make him a particularly prominent conductor historically; he received 40 Grammy nominations across nearly 30 years. He was a three-time Grammy Award recipient, winning Best Opera Recording award for Bizet's Carmen in 1964 and Wagner's Siegfried in 1969 and Best Classical Orchestral Performance for a Beethoven symphony cycle in 1978. Karajan's Beethoven cycles remain some of the most popular and enduring worldwide, as well as the most critically acclaimed recordings of the past century.

Monuments
Karajan has remained a visible part of everyday life in the cities he once called home, thanks in part to monuments erected in his honour. In Salzburg, for instance, the Karajan Foundation of Vienna commissioned the Czech artist Anna Chromý to create a life-sized statue of him, which now stands outside his birthplace.

In 1983, a bronze bust of Karajan was unveiled in the foyer of West Berlin's new State Theatre.

In popular culture
Two of Karajan's interpretations were popularized through their inclusion in the soundtrack of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Most famously, the version of Johann Strauss's The Blue Danube heard during the film's early outer space scenes is that of Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic. The version of Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra used in the film is that of Karajan with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Selected discography
Signing a contract with Deutsche Grammophon in 1938, Karajan was noted for his studious perfectionism in his symphonic recordings, as well as numerous opera recordings by Verdi and Puccini, in particular those with Maria Callas. Other Karajan recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic include Also sprach Zarathustra, Der Ring des Nibelungen, and Mahler's Symphony No. 5.

During Karajan's lifetime, the public associated him with the works of Beethoven. Karajan recorded four complete Beethoven symphony cycles, first with the Philharmonia Orchestra for Angel in 1951 to 1955, and then three times with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon in 1961–62, 1975–76, and 1982–84.

Among 20th-century musical works, Karajan had a preference for conducting and recording works from the first half of the century, by such composers as Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Bartók, Sibelius, Richard Strauss, Puccini, Honegger, Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel, Hindemith, Nielsen, Stravinsky and Holst. Performances of works written after 1950 included Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony (1953), which he performed many times and recorded twice. He and Shostakovich met during a tour with the Berlin Philharmonic culminating in Moscow in May 1969.

Karajan said in a 1983 interview with the West German TV channel ZDF that if he had been a composer instead of conductor, his music would have been similar to Shostakovich's. Karajan conducted the Berlin Philharmonic in Hans Werner Henze's Sonata per Archi (1958) and Antifone (1960). In 1960 he performed Ildebrando Pizzetti's 1958 opera Assassinio nella cattedrale. Karajan premiered Carl Orff's De temporum fine comoedia in 1973 with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and recorded it for Deutsche Grammophon.

Controversies
In 2023 the Theater Aachen removed a bust of Karajan from the foyer of the house due to his significant involvement in the Nazi era, planning to replace it with a bust of Mozart.

title: Herbert von Karajan


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Talk:Marquess of Normanby

[Untitled]
My female ancestor was a servant in the kitchen of the the Marquess sometime between 1872-1900. Is there any source for details on the dates and character of her service?

 * I doubt there are public records beyond what would be available for anyone -- census records and so forth. You could try writing a polite letter to the current Marquess; perhaps the family has something. Now, if you want more general information on the workings of aristocratic Victorian households, I'm sure there's plenty of that around. - Loren

Barony
Can someone check the entry as I think the titles are Baron Mulgrave of Mulgrave, Co York, and Baron Mulgrave of New Ross, Co Wexford. I don't entirely trust Burke's being accurate in their entry so I won't amend it until someone can check.Alci12 13:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Marquis of Normanby a vicar?
This church website notes: "1873 - When the Marquis of Normanby was Vicar.. " This seems a little surprising and there seems to be no mention of St Mark's Church, Worsley here. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:20, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Marquess of Normanby


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Talk:Scientific method/Archive 2

This is an archive of discussions from Talk:Scientific method.

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Over 90 articles and more than 30 other pages link here. That is one pretty important article. It is my opinion (and therefore it is philosophically defensible) that this constitutes the most important article in the entire wikipedia:

 * All scientific matters are connected to it
 * It's great choice for "what authoritative encyclopedia article would you take with you to a desert island ?"
 * It played nursemaid to Quantum Mechanics, the most powerful theory every developed.
 * It's all about the logic (and the limitations therein).
 * more than any single thing proper scientific reasoning by wikipedians will free us all to write good text.

I would like this article to become authoritative, so that it would give aid and guidance to us wikipedians, concentrate the kooks for easier management, and become an inspiration for all cooperative endevour. Two16

I would like to remove, or at leats rewrite, the following paragraph:
 * Another criticism of the scientific method (as here presented) is that it fails to acknowledge the incalculable impact that mathematics has had on scientific research and direction. A hypothesis about the physical world that is based solely on implications derived from mathematical analysis can hardly be said to be in accordance with the "observational" phase of the scientific method (a purely mathematical property cannot properly be called a "fact" about the physical universe)...

As written, this is incorrect! No scientist I have ever met has failed to acknowledge the incalculable impact that mathematics has had! The above text sounds more like a disagreement with the way that science textbooks explain the scientific method, which may be a very valid criticism. However, working scientists (at least, in the hard sciences) are themselves aware of the value of math. RK 14:06 7 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * The idea that the physical world can and should be described mathematically is generally attributed to Descartes. It is a philosophical concept every bit as important to the scientific method as the empiricism popularised by Bacon. Saying that science doesn't acknowlege mathematics is like saying fish don't acknowledge water. Perhaps biologists are less aware of mathematics than other scientists, but other than that minor caveat, I say rewrite away. -- Tim Starling 04:34 8 Jun 2003 (UTC)

RK, when you say this text reads more like..., I think that's what it was supposed to be. It is not a criticism of the scientific method as practiced, but a criticism of the scientific method as here presented. That is to say, it is warning that the list of steps given is overly simplistic and does not reflect the beliefs of actual scientists.

Incidentally, many of the comments about politics and religions are somewhat misleading, and the explanation of how the stand-off between America and Russia gives evidence that science is a social construct is just plain backwards. I'd like to remove that one, and suggest that the others be looked at.

On another point, the extra verbiage that was added to the article by the anonymous contributor about six revisions ago is poorly written and makes the article worse. Can we just remove it? --Robert Merkel 05:06 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

That's the part about America and Russia I was referring to. It's gone.

Removed following commentry on the Feyerabend bit:

"Scientists respond by saying that Feyerabend has constructed a series of straw-man arguments that show little comprehension of what science is and how it works."

Not even the philosophers Feyerabend attacked directly accused him of showing "little comprehension of what science is"! Certainly Popper would not have said such a thing since Feyerabend had studied quantum theory under him. Earlier in his carrier Feyerabend was considered first a "raving positivist" and later a popparian (although he denied this to the last!). In short, Feyerabend had about as much science know-how as you could reasonably stuff into one person.

I'm interested in what the straw-man arguments could have been. Do you have references to someone who said this? Then maybe we could flesh out this "scientists say" generalization with something more substantial.

Also removed commentry on Lakatos bit:

"However, only a portion of this is related to the modern scientific method, as the scientific method (as we knwo it today) did not exist until the late 1700s."

No. Lakatos was talking about modern scientific method and nothing else! --Chris

Reverted following changed to Feyerabend's criticism:

"[Feyerabend] claims that they fail as a descriptive account of the historical record; scientists respond by pointing out that the scientific method never even existed until recently, and that this method is prescriptive, not descriptive. Feyeraben also objects to any single prescriptive scientific method on the grounds that science has no single aim."

Feyerabend addresses both points (prescriptive and descriptive) and this is clear from the very next sentence after the inserted text (in bold). I don't quite follow the bit that goes, "the scientific method never even existed until recently". If it is the mention of the "historical record" that was found confusing then perhaps the words "recent history" would help. Even without this clarification I'm not sure I understand what these unnamed "scientists" were "pointing out". --Chris

 * Oops! When I wrote this in the article, I was mistaken. I confused him with someone else that I had been reading about at the same time, and thus erroneously attributed someone else's views to Feyerabend. Thanks for making this change.  I will be adding some more info later today. Interestingly, Feyerabend has changed his positiomn somewhat since making those statements in 1975. He now is criticising those people who overly criticise the scientific method, and defends the method! I will provide citations and quotes later today (when I am at home, with my sources.) RK 18:01 11 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You may still have him confused. Feyerabend popped his clogs in 1995. His last (unfinished) book Conquest of Abundance did not show any remarkable shift from the Feyerabend of 1975. The view that "science has no special claim to proving truth, and no more utility than any other way of thinking about the world" pretty much characterizes even the late Feyerabend and is certainly not a misunderstanding.

 * I think you misread; the quote I gave was from from 1992, written two years before his death. RK 17:47 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The only substantial change Feyerabend made to his views in Against Method is in the matter of cultural relativism. Cultural relativists treat cultures as closed systems. But as humans we have the skills to communicate across cultural boundaries. Culture and tradition is created and destroyed all the time. And those cultures in existence have fuzzy and overlapping boundaries. In other words we can defend and assimilate aspects of a culture. Ironically, cultural relativists mutilate the traditions they are trying to defend by denying their members these skills of change and interaction. So Feyerabend abandoned his relativism admitting it had as many problems as some forms of absolutism. But it would be a mistake to say that he abandoned it if favour of some other or better philosophy. If anything this deeped his commitment to epistemological anarchy.

 * Then what does his quote mean? It is not just me; many others read this as an explicit attack on those people who misuse his work to promote anti-science positions. While he never admitted that a scientific method exists, me made sure to make clear that when it comes to making predictions about the physical world, science actually works, and nothing else does.

Take another look at the Feyerabend article you quote from. Does this really mark a change in F's position or is it you who would like to see one? --Chris

 * I think that Feyerabend wasn't admitting change; he was saying that he was misunderstood. It is an important clarification.  RK 17:47 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Yes, Feyerabend was often construed as being anti-science, not only by mystics, but sometimes by otherwise competent philosophers (see for example http://www.csicop.org/si/9703/end.html). This is certainly a misunderstanding that needs clarification.  He may also have been misunderstood as saying that science is purely a social construct.  This clarification is more a technicality and probably doesn't belong on this page. None of this means that he was willing to admit the superiority of science over other ways of approaching reality. Much of his later work tried to show that science is not an autonomous form of reasoning and is inseparable from the larger body of human thought and inquiry.  --Chris''

 * Actually, I do think this needs to be discussed here. Many previous contributors to Wikipedia have an anti-science view. RK 15:31 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think the style at the start is poor; it needs a good, punchy opening paragraph that summarizes: This is what the scientific method is meant to be. The idea has a history. Lots of people think that it's good, but lots of people have problems with the idea, for different reasons. The fundamental problem for supporters is accounting for the lack of a unifying method per se, and the fundamental problem of the critics is accounting for the success of science itself.

Moreover I strongly disagree that proper scientific reasoning will free us to do anything; I firmly think that the scientific method is something that defies good definition. This should get some more emphasis

--

I've hoisted up the brief description of the scientific method to be the "punchy opening paragraph". On re-reading, I think the article flows better this way. The Anome 09:07 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

--

I feel that the statement of the commonly agreed model of the scientific method should precede the discussion of whether this model is valid, actually occurs in reality, etc. The thing being criticised should be described before the critique. The Anome 10:33 12 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, but there should be an introduction, for the reader who wants a flavor of the article without the whole thing. The first paragraph was a summary; you have a broad defintion, and then a broad statement of controversy. The defintion alone looks naked. User:Iwnbap --

I took out the crude comparison with religion, but someone has insisted it belongs. I still don't think that it belongs here at all. There is very little that's rational about most religion, so enterring into that subject here is a needless diversion. ☮ Eclecticology 23:33 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Ec, I don't know what you intended to write, but what you actually wrote is totally incorrect. You wrote that "Theoretically one of the key differences between religion and science is that scientists are willing (and sometimes, enthusiastic) to change their beliefs when new facts and compelling logic are presented. In contrast, for the religious believer (as Gallileo found out), the tools of the scientific method must be applied to the rationalization of belief." That's a classicaly non-religious point of view! I don't have a problem with you believing this, but most classical religious believers do not hold such beliefs! Please rewrite this, as I don't understand at all the point you are trying to make. Are you saying that scientists believe that certain religious beliefs might have to be altered by new evidence? That's precisely what I have been saying all along. In contrast, the vast majority of religious believers reject this point of view outright, and hold that science will not change any of their beliefs one whit. Please rewrite to make your point clearer. RK 00:04 16 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Removed the whole 'religion compared to science' motif. No one managed to bring the subject back around to scientific method so it goes.  --Chris

Removed the following text:

"The scientific method is the only method proven to gain or improve knowledge about the physical world in which we live."

Proven? Not only does this side-step the whole inquiry into what scientific method is, it also makes a claim that almost no one can relate to. If you tell me that any success I have navigating and understanding the "physical world in which we live" is due to my application of the scientific method then you have a lot of explaining to do.

 * It is a proven historical fact that science alone has given us the knowledge necesary to create semiconductor electronics, transistors, vacuum tubes, computers, rockets, spaceships, polymers, synthetic fabrics, laser-jet printers, etc. Science is the only method proven to give results. No measurable results concerning the natural world have ever come from competing claims, such as religion, mysticism, deconstructionism, etc.  No technologies are based on those belief systems. RK

 * This is not accurate. Accupuncture is a technology with roots in another belief system.  ☮ Eclecticology 20:27 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Ec, please do not contribute to topics of which you are totally ignorant. First off, acupuncture is not a technology.

 * Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. Unless you doubt that there is anything practical to medicine, you should accept that acupuncture is a technology.  ☮ Eclecticology

 * Secondly, it has been proven that acupuncture has never has been able to do what many of its adherents claims for it. Controlled studies show that some of its most dramatic effects do not exist, and are merely a temporary placebo effect.  Few people disagree that it can produce some actual non-placebo effects in some cases, which can be explained by modern physiology. The religious beliefs behind it have made no difference.

 * What proof, what claims? I see a lot of vague straw man allegations about "dramatic effects".  Dramatic effects are often the easiest to disprove.  The fallacy is in believing that only the ones that can be explained by modern physiology are valid.  Chinese science had very complex philosophical underpinnings; it did not depend on religious bullshit as much as the west.

 * Thirdly, the development of acupuncture (the part of it that works) involved centuries, if not milennia, of trial and error, followed by observation and refinement of the technqiue. That is the very essence of the scientific method.  Just because the Chinese people who developed this technique happened to use religious terminology doesn't take away from their actions!  RK 20:34 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * At least it's a concession from you to admit that acupuncture has developed for millennia. What religious terminology? I just checked one of my references and there was no religious terminology there at all.  ☮ Eclecticology 21:13 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

"No other claimed system of knowledge (such as religious revelations, mysticism, deconstructionism) has ever succeeded in obtaining useful knowledge about the physical world, nor have such proposed alternatives ever actually produced any technology based on their beliefs."

This is pure rhetoric. Philosophies of science don't produce technology. People produce technology. How otherwise could technological advances be made prior to the scientific revolution? --Chris

 * Again, you are objecting to a claim that isn't being made. You are reading way too much into this, and then attacking a strawman. RK 12:50 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Scientific method is very imperialistic. It flows from a Greco-Roman, Egyptian and Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition that dismisses anything from outside that tradition as pagan or primitive. Anything from outside that tradition must be subjected to the evaluative rules of the tradition. The philosophical forerunners in the west and in the far east were blissfully unaware of each other when they were developing the most fundamental of their ideas. Left to their natural devices the two traditions would likely have reached many overlapping results, but there would have been, and there are differences. Insisting that the other is wrong solely based on criteria from one's own tradition amounts to cultural imperialism. ☮ Eclecticology 20:27 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * Ec, your paranoia is out of control.
 * Now we're down to ad hominem arguments to justify your imperialism. :-P ☮ Eclecticology 21:13 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

If I can interject into the Ec/RK debate; you're both stating your points far too strongly.

RK - consider, were the Maya/Indian/Chinese astronomers, or ancient hunters, or Roman architects, etc, following the scientific method? - sure there were elements of empiricism about what they were doing, but it's tenuous to argue that they had any formal conception of the modern scientific method. Broad empiricism should not be enough to build an aquaduct by your argument, or chart and predict the movement of the stars, you need a more constrained scientific method. Further there's good argument to say that much of modern physics isn't scientific if you want to pursue the scientific method, consider gedanken experiments etc.

 * Obviously the ancient civilizations you mention did not deliberately adopt or follow the modern scientific method as we know it today...but neither were all these people ignorant savages. They did have some forms of science.  of the work they did involving the physical world, they did effectively use a version of science; they practiced agricultural, architectural, mathematical and engineering techniques for milennia. They started with trial and error, followed by observation and refinement of the technique.  That is the very essence of the scientific method.  And when they followed this scientific pattern, they achieved actual results in the real, physical world!  The buildings they built actually stood!  The aquaducts actually carried water! Their math actually was logical and useful; their astronomical calculations really did describe, to some degree, stellar and planetary motions!  They used empirical techniques. Ex is just very, very confused. RK 13:13 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

 * I only stated that religious beliefs do not produce results that were useful in the physical world...which is totally in accord with what we have here. Roman aquaducts were not built based on a religious revelation from Zeus.  The astronomical tables of the ancient Mayans were not made by literary deconstructionism, or by mystical experiences. Ec simply is attacking beliefs I do not have; he is demolishing strawman arguments, and making ad homenim attacks about me being a "colonialist". RK 13:13 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * My word was "imperialist" not "colonialist". -Ec

Ec - on acupuncture, there are lots of studies showing that acupuncture has a local analgesic effect, but 1) there's no evidence that it has anything beyond a local analgesic effect, and 2) there's no evidence that meridians exist. Google for "Stephen basser acupuncture" for some good summary articles. Also you've a hard time denying that Maya et. al. above did the things that they did without employing some broadly empiricist techniques, and any argument that they got to where they got without some kind of empiricism and some kind of rationalism is going to be a very interesting challenge. User:Iwnbap
 * My point was not one of getting into arguments about the validity of acupuncture. It was an example of a science which developed completely outside of the Western mainstream.  For the purposes of the present discussion it is sufficient for you to accept that accept that acupuncture has some valid claims, and for me to accept that it has some seriously questionable claims.  We've done that.  There is no immediate need to define the precise boundary between those positions.  ☮ Eclecticology

Starting with the first sentence I removed:

"The scientific method is the only method proven to gain or improve knowledge about the physical world in which we live."

To make my original objections clearer, here is an argument against this statement which, although equally crude and simplistic, will hopefully highlight any misunderstanding. Take any activity where you would have to "gain or improve knowledge about the physical world". Let's say rock climbing. During this activity I will explore the cliff face (physical world), hopefully make progress and achieve a concrete result (reaching the top). This leads me to say, either that I am applying the scientific method without being aware of it. Or that the removed statement is wrong.
 * The seriously objectionable word in the quote is "only". -Ec
 * Gaining useful skills isn't quite what I meant. But perhaps I can clarify my thoughts: Even people not aware of the scientific method, do indeed sometimes use this method.  The scientific method is something that occurs naturally to many people, even if it is not culturally or officially taught; it is merely a way of thinking. People often have an idea about how something should work; this in many ways can be a hypothesis. People always try things, often with trial and error; this is a very practical form of experimentation.  And trial and error includes control groups, because it includes doing the same thing in many different ways.  This is followed by observation and refinement of the technique, idea or skill. Well, this is the essence of the scientific method. And when people followed this, they achieved actual results in the real, physical world. These are empirical techniques.  Maybe we should rewrite the article to take into account your productive criticism, and to make clear that something "scientific" is occuring pre-modern science!
 * It's a big step forward to accept that there was something scientific happening in pre-modern science. I can't see any evidence that control groups were always there, but that's a less important issue.  There is some sense to the picture of the climber on the rock face using the scientific method.  He can't, however, sit there forever hypothesizing on the rock face; at some point he needs to test his hypothesis, and that could have fatal consequences.  In evolution we never hear about the billions of unsuccessful genetic mutations because they fail while they are still at the microscopic level.
 * "Pre-modern" science implies a value judgement that somehow anything other than modern science is inferior. "Parallel" science might be a more appropriate term.  Some people just can't handle paradox.  This may explain the great 20th century diificulty in attempting to reconcile the wave and particle theories of light - Ec

Now this is obviously not what RK had in mind when he speaks of "knowledge" and "results" above. Could this sentence be replaced by a more sophisticated argument which adds the formalisms to escape such absurdity? Maybe. RK's examples show what "results" he would like to include, namely those where science surely played an essential role. But the examples offered (computers, rockets, spaceships...) don't tell us anything about scientific method. We don't get to learn which version of the scientific method is under discussion. Saying the words "scientific method" while pointing at scientific breakthroughs doesn't get us any further either.
 * Technology is not science; it is a child of science. It can also be a child of pseudoscience.  Parents don't have to be married to produce children. -Ec

I may indeed have been attacking a strawman. The question is, who made him? So, is there a golden hammer in the scientist's tool box? I think this is essentially the subject of this article. --Chris
 * Thanks Chris. I appreciate the removal of references to religion from this article.  Introducing THAT subject tends to unproductively heat up the discussion.  ☮ Eclecticology 18:23 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I removed this paragraph:
 * In recent years a number of prominent literary deconstructionist, French philosophers, and some radical feminists have written essays attacking the scientific method, science in general, as well as the entire field of mathematics and logic. These essays claim that any form of logical thinking is "colonianlist" or "masculinist", and prevents people from gaining knowledge through "other ways of knowing", including feminine intuition and mysticism. (These views are generally rejected by the majority of philosophers, and have little support in the mainstream feminist community.) Scientists hold that these claims are baseless. They point out that it is science alone that has provided information on the mysteries of the atom, the cell, the solar system, and the observable universe. It is science alone that has provided knowledge to develop thousands of technological advances in medicine, engineering, communications, computers, synthetic fabrics and beyond. They hold that no other system which claims to compete with science has ever actually succeeded in actually producing useful information about the physical world in which we live, or has produced actual technologies.

because it is a misleading oversimplification of the debate. I know of no place in which Derrida or Evelyn Fox Keller makes these wholesale criticisms against science and logic; indeed they often rely on logic and the work of scientists -- and make no bones about it. If this paragraph is not referring to Derrida or Keller, then who is it referring to? There is indeed a complex argument about popular conceptions of science, self-conceptions of scientists, and, most importantly, the use to which science has been put. There are also complex critiques of positivist and empiricist epistemologies. But none of these critiques even hint an implication (let alone explicitly argue) that engineers should not rely on the laws of thermodynamics, or that we shouldn't teach the theory of evolution at school -- or that we should abandon logic and empirical evidence altogether. To suggest so is simply to construct a strawman argument in place of an accurate article. Slrubenstein

title: Talk:Scientific method/Archive 2


text:
Observable universe

The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe consisting of all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at the present time; the electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach the Solar System and Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. Initially, it was estimated that there may be 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. That number was reduced in 2021 to several hundred billion based on data from New Horizons. Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is a spherical region centered on the observer. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth.

The word observable in this sense does not refer to the capability of modern technology to detect light or other information from an object, or whether there is anything to be detected. It refers to the physical limit created by the speed of light itself. No signal can travel faster than light, hence there is a maximum distance, called the particle horizon, beyond which nothing can be detected, as the signals could not have reached us yet. Sometimes astrophysicists distinguish between the observable universe and the visible universe. The former includes signals since the end of the inflationary epoch, while the latter includes only signals emitted since recombination.

According to calculations, the current comoving distance to particles from which the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) was emitted, which represents the radius of the visible universe, is about 14.0 billion parsecs (about 45.7 billion light-years). The comoving distance to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.3 billion parsecs (about 46.6 billion light-years), about 2% larger. The radius of the observable universe is therefore estimated to be about 46.5 billion light-years. Using the critical density and the diameter of the observable universe, the total mass of ordinary matter in the universe can be calculated to be about $8.8 m$. In November 2018, astronomers reported that extragalactic background light (EBL) amounted to $2.764 m$ photons.

As the universe's expansion is accelerating, all currently observable objects, outside the local supercluster, will eventually appear to freeze in time, while emitting progressively redder and fainter light. For instance, objects with the current redshift z from 5 to 10 will only be observable up to an age of 4–6 billion years. In addition, light emitted by objects currently situated beyond a certain comoving distance (currently about 19 billion parsecs) will never reach Earth.

Overview
The universe's size is unknown, and it may be infinite in extent. Some parts of the universe are too far away for the light emitted since the Big Bang to have had enough time to reach Earth or space-based instruments, and therefore lie outside the observable universe. In the future, light from distant galaxies will have had more time to travel, so one might expect that additional regions will become observable. Regions distant from observers (such as us) are expanding away faster than the speed of light, at rates estimated by Hubble's law. The expansion rate appears to be accelerating, which dark energy was proposed to explain.

Assuming dark energy remains constant (an unchanging cosmological constant) so that the expansion rate of the universe continues to accelerate, there is a "future visibility limit" beyond which objects will never enter the observable universe at any time in the future because light emitted by objects outside that limit could never reach the Earth. Note that, because the Hubble parameter is decreasing with time, there can be cases where a galaxy that is receding from Earth only slightly faster than light emits a signal that eventually reaches Earth. This future visibility limit is calculated at a comoving distance of 19 billion parsecs (62 billion light-years), assuming the universe will keep expanding forever, which implies the number of galaxies that can ever be theoretically observed in the infinite future is only larger than the number currently observable by a factor of 2.36 (ignoring redshift effects).

In principle, more galaxies will become observable in the future; in practice, an increasing number of galaxies will become extremely redshifted due to ongoing expansion, so much so that they will seem to disappear from view and become invisible. A galaxy at a given comoving distance is defined to lie within the "observable universe" if we can receive signals emitted by the galaxy at any age in its history, say, a signal sent from the galaxy only 500 million years after the Big Bang. Because of the universe's expansion, there may be some later age at which a signal sent from the same galaxy can never reach the Earth at any point in the infinite future, so, for example, we might never see what the galaxy looked like 10 billion years after the Big Bang, even though it remains at the same comoving distance less than that of the observable universe.

This can be used to define a type of cosmic event horizon whose distance from the Earth changes over time. For example, the current distance to this horizon is about 16 billion light-years, meaning that a signal from an event happening at present can eventually reach the Earth if the event is less than 16 billion light-years away, but the signal will never reach the Earth if the event is further away.

The space before this cosmic event horizon can be called "reachable universe", that is all galaxies closer than that could be reached if we left for them today, at the speed of light; all galaxies beyond that are unreachable. Simple observation will show the future visibility limit (62 billion light-years) is exactly equal to the reachable limit (16 billion light-years) added to the current visibility limit (46 billion light-years).

"The universe" versus "the observable universe"
Both popular and professional research articles in cosmology often use the term "universe" to mean "observable universe". This can be justified on the grounds that we can never know anything by direct observation about any part of the universe that is causally disconnected from the Earth, although many credible theories require a total universe much larger than the observable universe. No evidence exists to suggest that the boundary of the observable universe constitutes a boundary on the universe as a whole, nor do any of the mainstream cosmological models propose that the universe has any physical boundary in the first place. However, some models propose it could be finite but unbounded, like a higher-dimensional analogue of the 2D surface of a sphere that is finite in area but has no edge.

It is plausible that the galaxies within the observable universe represent only a minuscule fraction of the galaxies in the universe. According to the theory of cosmic inflation initially introduced by Alan Guth and D. Kazanas, if it is assumed that inflation began about 10−37 seconds after the Big Bang and that the pre-inflation size of the universe was approximately equal to the speed of light times its age, that would suggest that at present the entire universe's size is at least $3.566 m3$ light-years—at least $1.5 kg$ times the radius of the observable universe.

If the universe is finite but unbounded, it is also possible that the universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the universe. It is difficult to test this hypothesis experimentally because different images of a galaxy would show different eras in its history, and consequently might appear quite different. Bielewicz et al. claim to establish a lower bound of 27.9 gigaparsecs (91 billion light-years) on the diameter of the last scattering surface. This value is based on matching-circle analysis of the WMAP 7-year data. This approach has been disputed.

Size
The comoving distance from Earth to the edge of the observable universe is about 14.26 gigaparsecs (46.5 billion light-years or 14.26 Gpc) in any direction. The observable universe is thus a sphere with a diameter of about 28.5 gigaparsecs (93 billion light-years or 28.5 Gpc). Assuming that space is roughly flat (in the sense of being a Euclidean space), this size corresponds to a comoving volume of about $9.9 kg/m3$ ($13.787 billion$ or $2.725$).

These are distances now (in cosmological time), not distances at the time the light was emitted. For example, the cosmic microwave background radiation that we see right now was emitted at the time of photon decoupling, estimated to have occurred about $1.5 kg$ years after the Big Bang, which occurred around 13.8 billion years ago. This radiation was emitted by matter that has, in the intervening time, mostly condensed into galaxies, and those galaxies are now calculated to be about 46 billion light-years from Earth. To estimate the distance to that matter at the time the light was emitted, we may first note that according to the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric, which is used to model the expanding universe, if we receive light with a redshift of z, then the scale factor at the time the light was originally emitted is given by "$ a(t) = \frac{1}{1 + z}$."

WMAP nine-year results combined with other measurements give the redshift of photon decoupling as z = $4$, which implies that the scale factor at the time of photon decoupling would be $1.5$. So if the matter that originally emitted the oldest CMBR photons has a present distance of 46 billion light-years, then the distance would have been only about 42 million light-years at the time of decoupling.

The light-travel distance to the edge of the observable universe is the age of the universe times the speed of light, 13.8 billion light years. This is the distance that a photon emitted shortly after the Big Bang, such as one from the cosmic microwave background, has traveled to reach observers on Earth. Because spacetime is curved, corresponding to the expansion of space, this distance does not correspond to the true distance at any moment in time.

Number of galaxies and stars
The observable universe contains as many as an estimated 2 trillion galaxies and, overall, as many as an estimated 1024 stars – more stars (and, potentially, Earth-like planets) than all the grains of beach sand on planet Earth. As mentioned earlier, the estimated number of galaxies was reduced in 2021 to several hundred billion based on data from New Horizons. The estimated total number of stars in an inflationary universe (observed and unobserved) is 10100.

Matter content—number of atoms
Assuming the mass of ordinary matter is about $3$ as discussed above, and assuming all atoms are hydrogen atoms (which are about 74% of all atoms in the Milky Way by mass), the estimated total number of atoms in the observable universe is obtained by dividing the mass of ordinary matter by the mass of a hydrogen atom. The result is approximately 1080 hydrogen atoms, also known as the Eddington number.

Mass of ordinary matter
The mass of the observable universe is often quoted as 1053 kg. In this context, mass refers to ordinary (baryonic) matter and includes the interstellar medium (ISM) and the intergalactic medium (IGM). However, it excludes dark matter and dark energy. This quoted value for the mass of ordinary matter in the universe can be estimated based on critical density. The calculations are for the observable universe only as the volume of the whole is unknown and may be infinite.

Estimates based on critical density
Critical density is the energy density for which the universe is flat. If there is no dark energy, it is also the density for which the expansion of the universe is poised between continued expansion and collapse. From the Friedmann equations, the value for $$\rho_\text{c}$$ critical density, is:
 * $$\rho_\text{c} = \frac{3 H^2}{8 \pi G},$$

where G is the gravitational constant and H = H0 is the present value of the Hubble constant. The value for H0, as given by the European Space Agency's Planck Telescope, is H0 = 67.15 kilometres per second per megaparsec. This gives a critical density of $1.22 Gpc^{3}$, or about 5 hydrogen atoms per cubic metre. This density includes four significant types of energy/mass: ordinary matter (4.8%), neutrinos (0.1%), cold dark matter (26.8%), and dark energy (68.3%).

Although neutrinos are Standard Model particles, they are listed separately because they are ultra-relativistic and hence behave like radiation rather than like matter. The density of ordinary matter, as measured by Planck, is 4.8% of the total critical density or $4.22 Gly^{3}$. To convert this density to mass we must multiply by volume, a value based on the radius of the "observable universe". Since the universe has been expanding for 13.8 billion years, the comoving distance (radius) is now about 46.6 billion light-years. Thus, volume ($3.57 m3$πr3) equals $380,000$ and the mass of ordinary matter equals density ($1,091.64$) times volume ($1/undefined$) or $1.45 kg$.

Large-scale structure

Sky surveys and mappings of the various wavelength bands of electromagnetic radiation (in particular 21-cm emission) have yielded much information on the content and character of the universe's structure. The organization of structure appears to follow a hierarchical model with organization up to the scale of superclusters and filaments. Larger than this (at scales between 30 and 200 megaparsecs), there seems to be no continued structure, a phenomenon that has been referred to as the End of Greatness.

Walls, filaments, nodes, and voids
The organization of structure arguably begins at the stellar level, though most cosmologists rarely address astrophysics on that scale. Stars are organized into galaxies, which in turn form galaxy groups, galaxy clusters, superclusters, sheets, walls and filaments, which are separated by immense voids, creating a vast foam-like structure sometimes called the "cosmic web". Prior to 1989, it was commonly assumed that virialized galaxy clusters were the largest structures in existence, and that they were distributed more or less uniformly throughout the universe in every direction. However, since the early 1980s, more and more structures have been discovered. In 1983, Adrian Webster identified the Webster LQG, a large quasar group consisting of 5 quasars. The discovery was the first identification of a large-scale structure, and has expanded the information about the known grouping of matter in the universe.

In 1987, Robert Brent Tully identified the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex, the galaxy filament in which the Milky Way resides. It is about 1 billion light-years across. That same year, an unusually large region with a much lower than average distribution of galaxies was discovered, the Giant Void, which measures 1.3 billion light-years across. Based on redshift survey data, in 1989 Margaret Geller and John Huchra discovered the "Great Wall", a sheet of galaxies more than 500 million light-years long and 200 million light-years wide, but only 15 million light-years thick. The existence of this structure escaped notice for so long because it requires locating the position of galaxies in three dimensions, which involves combining location information about the galaxies with distance information from redshifts.

Two years later, astronomers Roger G. Clowes and Luis E. Campusano discovered the Clowes–Campusano LQG, a large quasar group measuring two billion light-years at its widest point, which was the largest known structure in the universe at the time of its announcement. In April 2003, another large-scale structure was discovered, the Sloan Great Wall. In August 2007, a possible supervoid was detected in the constellation Eridanus. It coincides with the 'CMB cold spot', a cold region in the microwave sky that is highly improbable under the currently favored cosmological model. This supervoid could cause the cold spot, but to do so it would have to be improbably big, possibly a billion light-years across, almost as big as the Giant Void mentioned above.

Another large-scale structure is the SSA22 Protocluster, a collection of galaxies and enormous gas bubbles that measures about 200 million light-years across.

In 2011, a large quasar group was discovered, U1.11, measuring about 2.5 billion light-years across. On January 11, 2013, another large quasar group, the Huge-LQG, was discovered, which was measured to be four billion light-years across, the largest known structure in the universe at that time. In November 2013, astronomers discovered the Hercules–Corona Borealis Great Wall, an even bigger structure twice as large as the former. It was defined by the mapping of gamma-ray bursts.

In 2021, the American Astronomical Society announced the detection of the Giant Arc; a crescent-shaped string of galaxies that span 3.3 billion light years in length, located 9.2 billion light years from Earth in the constellation Boötes from observations captured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

End of Greatness
The End of Greatness is an observational scale discovered at roughly 100 Mpc (roughly 300 million light-years) where the lumpiness seen in the large-scale structure of the universe is homogenized and isotropized in accordance with the Cosmological Principle. At this scale, no pseudo-random fractalness is apparent.

The superclusters and filaments seen in smaller surveys are randomized to the extent that the smooth distribution of the universe is visually apparent. It was not until the redshift surveys of the 1990s were completed that this scale could accurately be observed.

Observations

Another indicator of large-scale structure is the 'Lyman-alpha forest'. This is a collection of absorption lines that appear in the spectra of light from quasars, which are interpreted as indicating the existence of huge thin sheets of intergalactic (mostly hydrogen) gas. These sheets appear to collapse into filaments, which can feed galaxies as they grow where filaments either cross or are dense. An early direct evidence for this cosmic web of gas was the 2019 detection, by astronomers from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research in Japan and Durham University in the U.K., of light from the brightest part of this web, surrounding and illuminated by a cluster of forming galaxies, acting as cosmic flashlights for intercluster medium hydrogen fluorescence via Lyman-alpha emissions.

In 2021, an international team, headed by Roland Bacon from the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon (France), reported the first observation of diffuse extended Lyman-alpha emission from redshift 3.1 to 4.5 that traced several cosmic web filaments on scales of 2.5−4 cMpc (comoving mega-parsecs), in filamentary environments outside massive structures typical of web nodes.

Some caution is required in describing structures on a cosmic scale because they are often different from how they appear. Gravitational lensing can make an image appear to originate in a different direction from its real source, when foreground objects curve surrounding spacetime (as predicted by general relativity) and deflect passing light rays. Rather usefully, strong gravitational lensing can sometimes magnify distant galaxies, making them easier to detect. Weak lensing by the intervening universe in general also subtly changes the observed large-scale structure.

The large-scale structure of the universe also looks different if only redshift is used to measure distances to galaxies. For example, galaxies behind a galaxy cluster are attracted to it and fall towards it, and so are blueshifted (compared to how they would be if there were no cluster). On the near side, objects are redshifted. Thus, the environment of the cluster looks somewhat pinched if using redshifts to measure distance. The opposite effect is observed on galaxies already within a cluster: the galaxies have some random motion around the cluster center, and when these random motions are converted to redshifts, the cluster appears elongated. This creates a "finger of God"—the illusion of a long chain of galaxies pointed at Earth.

Cosmography of Earth's cosmic neighborhood
At the centre of the Hydra–Centaurus Supercluster, a gravitational anomaly called the Great Attractor affects the motion of galaxies over a region hundreds of millions of light-years across. These galaxies are all redshifted, in accordance with Hubble's law. This indicates that they are receding from us and from each other, but the variations in their redshift are sufficient to reveal the existence of a concentration of mass equivalent to tens of thousands of galaxies.

The Great Attractor, discovered in 1986, lies at a distance of between 150 million and 250 million light-years in the direction of the Hydra and Centaurus constellations. In its vicinity there is a preponderance of large old galaxies, many of which are colliding with their neighbours, or radiating large amounts of radio waves.

In 1987, astronomer R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii's Institute of Astronomy identified what he called the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex, a structure one billion light-years long and 150 million light-years across in which, he claimed, the Local Supercluster is embedded.

Most distant objects
The most distant astronomical object identified (as of September of 2022) is a galaxy classified as JADES-GS-z13-0. In 2009, a gamma ray burst, GRB 090423, was found to have a redshift of 8.2, which indicates that the collapsing star that caused it exploded when the universe was only 630 million years old. The burst happened approximately 13 billion years ago, so a distance of about 13 billion light-years was widely quoted in the media, or sometimes a more precise figure of 13.035 billion light-years.

This would be the "light travel distance" (see Distance measures (cosmology)) rather than the "proper distance" used in both Hubble's law and in defining the size of the observable universe. Cosmologist Ned Wright argues against using this measure. The proper distance for a redshift of 8.2 would be about 9.2 Gpc, or about 30 billion light-years.

Horizons
The limit of observability in the universe is set by cosmological horizons which limit—based on various physical constraints—the extent to which information can be obtained about various events in the universe. The most famous horizon is the particle horizon which sets a limit on the precise distance that can be seen due to the finite age of the universe. Additional horizons are associated with the possible future extent of observations, larger than the particle horizon owing to the expansion of space, an "optical horizon" at the surface of last scattering, and associated horizons with the surface of last scattering for neutrinos and gravitational waves.

title: Observable universe


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Autoclave

An autoclave is a machine used to carry out industrial and scientific processes requiring elevated temperature and pressure in relation to ambient pressure and/or temperature. Autoclaves are used before surgical procedures to perform sterilization and in the chemical industry to cure coatings and vulcanize rubber and for hydrothermal synthesis. Industrial autoclaves are used in industrial applications, especially in the manufacturing of composites.

Many autoclaves are used to sterilize equipment and supplies by subjecting them to pressurized saturated steam at 121 C for 30–60 minutes at a pressure of 205 kPa or 2.02 atm (about double atmospheric pressure) depending on the size of the load and the contents. The autoclave was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key, thus a self-locking device.

Uses
Sterilization autoclaves are widely used in microbiology and mycology, medicine and prosthetics fabrication, tattooing and body piercing, and funerary practice. They vary in size and function depending on the media to be sterilized and are sometimes called retort in the chemical and food industries.

Typical loads include laboratory glassware, other equipment and waste, surgical instruments, and medical waste.

A notable recent and increasingly popular application of autoclaves is the pre-disposal treatment and sterilization of waste material, such as pathogenic hospital waste. Machines in this category largely operate under the same principles as conventional autoclaves in that they are able to neutralize (but not eliminate) potentially infectious agents by using pressurized steam and superheated water. A new generation of waste converters is capable of achieving the same effect without a pressure vessel to sterilize culture media, rubber material, gowns, dressings, gloves, etc. It is particularly useful for materials that cannot withstand the higher temperature of a hot air oven.

Autoclaves are also widely used to cure composites, especially for melding multiple layers without any voids that would decrease material strength, and in the vulcanization of rubber. The high heat and pressure that autoclaves generate help to ensure that the best possible physical properties are repeatable. Manufacturers of spars for sailboats have autoclaves well over 50 ft long and 10 ft wide, and some autoclaves in the aerospace industry are large enough to hold whole airplane fuselages made of layered composites.

A thermal effluent decontamination system functions as a single-purpose autoclave designed for the sterilization of liquid waste and effluent.

Air removal
It is very important to ensure that all of the trapped air is removed from the autoclave before activation, as trapped air is a very poor medium for achieving sterility. Steam at 134 C can achieve a desired level of sterility in three minutes, while achieving the same level of sterility in hot air requires two hours at 160 C. Methods of air removal include:

 * Downward displacement (or gravity-type): : As steam enters the chamber, it fills the upper areas first as it is less dense than air. This process compresses the air to the bottom, forcing it out through a drain which often contains a temperature sensor. Only when air evacuation is complete does the discharge stop. Flow is usually controlled by a steam trap or a solenoid valve, but bleed holes are sometimes used. As the steam and air mix, it is also possible to force out the mixture from locations in the chamber other than the bottom.
 * Steam pulsing: : Air dilution by using a series of steam pulses, in which the chamber is alternately pressurized and then depressurized to near atmospheric pressure.
 * Vacuum pumps : : A vacuum pump sucks air or air/steam mixtures from the chamber.
 * Superatmospheric cycles: : Achieved with a vacuum pump. It starts with a vacuum followed by a steam pulse followed by a vacuum followed by a steam pulse. The number of pulses depends on the particular autoclave and cycle chosen.
 * Subatmospheric cycles: : Similar to the superatmospheric cycles, but chamber pressure never exceeds atmospheric pressure until they pressurize up to the sterilizing temperature.

Stovetop autoclaves used in poorer or non-medical settings do not always have automatic air removal programs. The operator is required to manually perform steam pulsing at certain pressures as indicated by the gauge.

In medicine

A medical autoclave is a device that uses steam to sterilize equipment and other objects. This means that all bacteria, viruses, fungi, and spores are inactivated. However, prions, such as those associated with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, and some toxins released by certain bacteria, such as Cereulide, may not be destroyed by autoclaving at the typical 134 °C for three minutes or 121 °C for 15 minutes and instead should be immersed in sodium hydroxide (1M NaOH) and heated in a gravity displacement autoclave at 121 °C for 30 min, cleaned, rinsed in water and subjected to routine sterilization. Although a wide range of archaea species, including Geogemma barossii, can survive and even reproduce at temperatures found in autoclaves, their growth rate is so slow at the lower temperatures in the less extreme environments occupied by humans that it is unlikely they could compete with other organisms. None of them are known to be infectious or otherwise pose a health risk to humans; in fact, their biochemistry is so different from that of humans, and their multiplication rate is so slow, that microbiologists need not worry about them.

Autoclaves are found in many medical settings, laboratories, and other places that need to ensure the sterility of an object. Many procedures today employ single-use items rather than sterilizable, reusable items. This first happened with hypodermic needles, but today many surgical instruments (such as forceps, needle holders, and scalpel handles) are commonly single-use rather than reusable items (see waste autoclave). Autoclaves are of particular importance in poorer countries due to the much greater amount of equipment that is re-used.

Because damp heat is used, heat-labile products (such as some plastics) cannot be sterilized this way or they will melt. Paper and other products that may be damaged by steam must also be sterilized another way. In all autoclaves, items should always be separated to allow the steam to penetrate the load evenly.

Autoclaving is often used to sterilize medical waste prior to disposal in the standard municipal solid waste stream. This application has become more common as an alternative to incineration due to environmental and health concerns about the combustion by-products emitted by incinerators, especially from the small units which were commonly operated at individual hospitals. Incineration or a similar thermal oxidation process is still generally mandated for pathological waste and other very toxic or infectious medical waste. For liquid waste, an effluent decontamination system is the equivalent hardware.

In dentistry, autoclaves provide sterilization of dental instruments.

In most of the industrialized world medical-grade autoclaves are regulated medical devices. Many medical-grade autoclaves are therefore limited to running regulator-approved cycles. Because they are optimized for continuous hospital use, they favor rectangular designs, require demanding maintenance regimens, and are costly to operate. (A properly calibrated medical-grade autoclave uses thousands of gallons of water each day, independent of task, with correspondingly high electric power consumption.)

In research
Autoclaves used in education, research, biomedical research, pharmaceutical research and industrial settings (often called "research-grade" autoclaves) are used to sterilize lab instruments, glassware, culture media, and liquid media. Research-grade autoclaves are increasingly used in these settings where efficiency, ease-of-use, and flexibility are at a premium. Research-grade autoclaves may be configured for "pass-through" operation. This makes it possible to maintain absolute isolation between "clean" and potentially contaminated work areas. Pass-through research autoclaves are especially important in BSL-3 or BSL-4 facilities.

Research-grade autoclaves—which are not approved for use in sterilizing instruments that will be directly used on humans—are primarily designed for efficiency, flexibility, and ease-of-use. They display a wide range of designs and sizes, and are frequently tailored to their use and load type. Common variations include either a cylindrical or square pressure chamber, air- or water-cooling systems, and vertically or horizontally opening chamber doors (which may be electrically or manually powered).

In 2016, the Office of Sustainability at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) conducted a study of autoclave efficiency in their genomics and entomology research labs, tracking several units' power and water consumption. They found that, even when functioning within intended parameters, the medical-grade autoclaves used in their research labs were each consuming 700 gallons of water and 90 kWh of electricity per day (1,134MWh of electricity and 8.8 million gallons of water total), because they consumed energy and water continuously, even when not in use. UCR's research-grade autoclaves performed the same tasks with equal effectiveness, but used 83% less energy and 97% less water.

Quality assurance

In order to sterilize items effectively, it is important to use optimal parameters when running an autoclave cycle. A 2017 study performed by the Johns Hopkins Hospital biocontainment unit tested the ability of pass-through autoclaves to decontaminate loads of simulated biomedical waste when run on the factory default setting. The study found that 18 of 18 (100%) mock patient loads (6 PPE, 6 linen, and 6 liquid loads) passed sterilization tests with the optimized parameters compared to only 3 of 19 (16%) mock loads that passed with use of the factory default settings.

There are physical, chemical, and biological indicators that can be used to ensure that an autoclave reaches the correct temperature for the correct amount of time. If a non-treated or improperly treated item can be confused for a treated item, then there is the risk that they will become mixed up, which, in some areas such as surgery, is critical.

Chemical indicators on medical packaging and autoclave tape change color once the correct conditions have been met, indicating that the object inside the package, or under the tape, has been appropriately processed. Autoclave tape is only a marker that steam and heat have activated the dye. The marker on the tape does not indicate complete sterility. A more difficult challenge device, named the Bowie-Dick device after its inventors, is also used to verify a full cycle. This contains a full sheet of chemical indicator placed in the center of a stack of paper. It is designed specifically to prove that the process achieved full temperature and time required for a normal minimum cycle of 134 °C for 3.5–4 minutes.

To prove sterility, biological indicators are used. Biological indicators contain spores of a heat-resistant bacterium, Geobacillus stearothermophilus. If the autoclave does not reach the right temperature, the spores will germinate when incubated and their metabolism will change the color of a pH-sensitive chemical. Some physical indicators consist of an alloy designed to melt only after being subjected to a given temperature for the relevant holding time. If the alloy melts, the change will be visible.

Some computer-controlled autoclaves use an F0 (F-nought) value to control the sterilization cycle. F0 values are set for the number of minutes of sterilization equivalent to 121 °C at 103 kPa above atmospheric pressure for 15 minutes. Since exact temperature control is difficult, the temperature is monitored, and the sterilization time adjusted accordingly.

title: Autoclave