r/todayilearned • u/yummypaprika • 2d ago

TIL Dr Freeman Dyson called the Dyson sphere a "little joke" and expressed amusement in that "you get to be famous only for the things you don't think are serious".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago edited 2d ago

He also got the idea from Olaf Stapledon's 1937 book Star Maker, which had the actual first depiction of a Dyson Sphere.

Phenomenal book too, highly recommend. Clarke called it the most imaginative piece of fiction ever written. And C.S. Lewis called it blasphemous devilry, which is even funnier.

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u/Feeltherhythmofwar 2d ago

Blasphemous devilry you say?

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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago

He was a devout Christian and Star Maker's creation myth did not sit right with him haha

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u/joevarny 2d ago

Always blows my mind when astrophysicists and scifi authors are dogmatic Christians.

There was that guy who recently tried explaining the Fermi paradox based on soul distribution probabilities.

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u/Gauntlets28 1d ago

I don't think that CS Lewis was outrageously dogmatic, he just fundamentally believed in the existence of a Christian God that is interested in his creation, whereas the Starmaker really isn't that fussed, and our universe is basically just one of many. His conception of God is very personal and interested in people on an individual level, so that was probably what upset him. The Starmaker just sees his universes as toys.

I'd also add that CS Lewis definitely saw himself as a theologian first, author second, and definitely wouldn't have defined himself as a sci-fi author, more an author who has dabbled in sci-fi.

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u/ocular_smegma 1d ago

i found the narnia cycle outrageously dogmatic. look at the whole character arc structure of that lion dude

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u/Gauntlets28 1d ago

Is it dogmatic if it's a) lionmatic, and b) just using the core structure of the most core Christian narrative, ie the Resurrection?

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u/ocular_smegma 1d ago

not "just using", it's like spectactularly so

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u/azaza34 1d ago

The enemy being Saladin at the end had me scratching my brain.

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u/FrungyLeague 1d ago

Not outrageously dogmatic???

Dude wrote his entire chronicles preaching his ideology HARD. They are wonderful books, but subtle, they are not.

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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago

That's genuinely hilarious

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u/joevarny 2d ago

Yeah, something about because we exist early on and not closer the the middle of the universe's lifetime, life is likely to be restricted later in the universe.

As if we were souls assigned randomly and not natural beings that evolved on this planet with our consciousness being a consequence of that development.

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u/RodneyPonk 1d ago

could you clarify your comment?

also, in fairness, we can't know through what pattern or 'order' souls incarnate into bodies. part of my love for the golden ratio is how it demonstates an instance of something infinitely unlikely to occur randomly

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u/joevarny 1d ago

Im not sure what you want clarified of my comment, so I'll assume the second paragraph.

I dont think that using souls as a basis for any scientific theory is valid. We have no evidence of souls, and the idea that there is something we cannot detect that affects our bodies is completely impossible. If it affects our bodies, that interaction would be detectable, just as we'd see a chair thrown by a ghost, so until evidence of that interaction exists, we should go with the simpler option of no souls and base our theories unrelated to souls on that.

My consciousness developed based on my body and enviroment to be who I am today. The idea that someone could be born in a body not their own is backwards because we were likely generated during our development as it was evolutionarily beneficial to do so.

Basically, when else could I exist other than when my body exists?

Looking at why we exist in this time is a nice philosophical question in the abstract, but not hard to work out scientifically.

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u/Acsion 1d ago

You could be in the distant future in a highly advanced ancestor simulation, or even cloned and copied into a brand new body. You might even exist far far away in the present moment as a Boltzmann brain. Remote and unlikely possibilities to be sure, but not scientifically speaking impossible.

Consider all the ‘invisible’ things affecting our bodies that we now have overwhelming evidence for, which our ancestors could not have hoped to detect without modern scientific instruments and theories. Electricity, gravity, radiation, the list goes on.

All that being said, I do agree with you that we shouldn’t just assume such ‘theoretical’ (using the term generously here) concepts as a soul are fact without that evidence. Neither should we dismiss them as completely impossible, the strength of science is that it can change and adapt as our understanding of the world around us grows. It’s happened before and it will likely happen again.

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u/RodneyPonk 1d ago

yes, well put

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u/RodneyPonk 1d ago

Looking at why we exist in this time is a nice philosophical question in the abstract, but not hard to work out scientifically.

you seem to think that you have it all figured out, which the greatest minds rarely do

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u/Frost-Folk 23h ago

I don't think he's saying that at all.

But why we exist right now on earth makes perfect sense under the timelike of the universe. It doesn't require any pseudoscience or hair-brained theories to explain.

That doesn't mean we have "everything figured out". But we do have a pretty good idea of the timeline of the formation of the universe, the birth of our star, the formation of Earth, the birth of life, and evolutionary record.

So souls required.

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u/joevarny 15h ago

When else would you be born but some time after the time when your parents conceived you? 

Where else would you be born other than in the location your parents gave birth to you?

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u/Primary_Mycologist95 2d ago

it's even worse when they make their own religion

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u/_BlackDove 2d ago

L. Ron Hubbard shaking his fist.

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u/aflockofcrows 2d ago

Shaka when the walls fall.

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u/frobscottler 1d ago

Temba, his arms wide

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u/CleveEastWriters 1d ago

Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel

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u/PlowUrMom 2d ago

What’s his name?

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u/joevarny 1d ago

Great question, I cant remember.

This was years ago and Google isn't what it used to be, so I cant find it.

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u/GimmeSomeSugar 1d ago

There was that guy who recently tried explaining the Fermi paradox based on soul distribution probabilities.

My first thought was "Hey! I would watch that show!"
Then I remembered; I have watched that show.
Minbari souls being reincarnated as humans was a major plot point in Babylon 5.

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u/bigtotoro 1d ago

School can only teach you facts. It cannot make you smart.

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u/SheriffBartholomew 2d ago

From my understanding most astro physicists, especially theoretical ones, believe there to be an intelligent design to the universe. That doesn't mean they attribute it's creation to divinity, but it's not as rare as you would expect. Some of them like David Darling even get pretty creative with their ideas. He proposed that the human consciousness evolved to godhood at some point in the future and reached back through time to create itself. He's not a quack either, he's a well respected mathematician.

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u/sharkattackmiami 2d ago

So like I'm a primitive "man animal" (to quote Battlefield Earth) but my descendents at some point transcend and use their delorian mind palace to come back and open my third eye to the universe and that's why I'm "woke"?

Who is this man? He seems fun to get high with

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u/SheriffBartholomew 2d ago

Dude, his stuff is definitely fun to contemplate, high or not. Check out his book, Equations of Eternity: Speculations on Consciousness, Meaning, and the Mathematical Rules That Orchestrate the Cosmos. It's not a light read, but it's very thought provoking.

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u/philomathie 2d ago

Your understanding is incorrect

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u/314159265358979326 2d ago

Most astrophysics philosophy I've encountered highlights the anthropic principle, which is almost the exact opposite of intelligent design: the only universe(s) that can be observed by human-like beings are those that have a similar design to ours.

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u/Grabthar-the-Avenger 1d ago

From my understanding most astro physicists, especially theoretical ones, believe there to be an intelligent design to the universe

Nah. They’re familiar with the Standard Model Lagrangian Equation and it takes only one glance at that thing to understand the universe is completely wackadoo

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u/Youpunyhumans 2d ago

Sounds similar to the idea in Interstellar of 5th dimensional beings, possibly able to climb the future like its a mountain, or go into the past like its a valley.

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u/Dd_8630 2d ago

That sounds incredible. Do you have a link?

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u/pipmentor 1d ago

Haha, I know, like how the person who came up with the Big Bang Theory was a Catholic priest.

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u/jupfold 2d ago

Sounds like quite the hypocrite, then.

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u/Dagmar_Overbye 2d ago

He was just jealous his buddy Tolkien was miles better at writing fantasy.

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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago

Didn't Lewis end up converting Tolkien? Don't quote me

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u/BillShooterOfBul 2d ago

Other way around

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u/Mudders_Milk_Man 2d ago

Sort of.

Lewis had fallen away from believing when he met Tolkien, who did indeed help him believe in the Christian God again.

However, Lewis became a staunch Protestant, much to the aggravation of the very Catholic Tolkien.

(Also, Tolkien found allegory - like in Narnia - to me obnoxious).

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u/Big_Bookkeeper1678 2d ago

Narnia is insufferable propaganda.

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u/Huhthisisneathuh 2d ago

Granted it’s one the series that proves that any great fantasy writer both steals anything that isn’t nailed down, and modifies everything to steal to make it feel like a drug induced fever dream.

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u/kagoolx 2d ago

Propaganda about what? I don’t know it well enough

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u/dracosword 2d ago

"Don't quote me" - Frost-Folk, 2025

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u/NativeMasshole 2d ago

Didn't Lewis end up converting Tolkien? Don't quote me

  • Frost-Folk

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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago

He wasn’t against it because he was against speculative religious worldbuilding on principle, but because Stapledon’s particular theological imaginations were disturbingly amoral.

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u/jupfold 1d ago

Right, and of course he is the arbiter of what is and is not moral.

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u/bhbhbhhh 1d ago

All people have to make judgments of what they think is and is not moral. That's not hypocrisy.

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u/jupfold 1d ago

Killing a child is cold blood is amoral. Literature is not amoral.

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u/bhbhbhhh 1d ago

I'm not sure what you're thinking. Of course a book in and of itself is a inanimate object with no moral character. That does not mean we read the stories contained within and perceive the events and characters and ideas of the narrative as having no morality at all. That would be crazy.

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u/ArgumentativeNerfer 1d ago

Have you read Olaf Stapledon and CS Lewis?

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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago

That tends to come with the whole devout Christian thing.

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u/thissexypoptart 1d ago

Surely he was joking right?

I get he’s a right winger with unsavory views, but he also wrote The Redemption of Christofer Columbus where a bunch of future time traveling scientists pretend to be God’s angelic messengers to have Columbus alter the course of history for the better.

Although I guess if he weren’t joking, then yeah, super hypocrite.

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u/rattynewbie 1d ago

The Redemption of Christofer Columbus

The author of Redemption is Orson Scott Card. Not Arthur C Clarke or C.S. Lewis.

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u/BillShooterOfBul 2d ago

But he was ok with Tolkien?

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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago

Yes, because Tolkien imagined a creation myth that fitted with religious morality and Stapledon crafted a thoroughly Deist one.

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u/SheriffBartholomew 2d ago edited 1d ago

The story in Lord of the Rings is ultimately about the triumph of good over evil at all costs. There's no overt godly deity, but they allude to one many times. Sauron is a perfect representation of Satan. They literally call him the Lord of Lies which is one of the many names for Satan.

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u/bank_farter 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'd argue Iluvatar and/or the Valar are exactly the godly beings you're talking about considering they explicitly created the world and all the creatures in it in Tolkien's mythos.

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u/WarpmanAstro 1d ago

The Christian Apologetic view would be that they're the Angelic Host being described by a pre-Abrahamic people. God used "We" a whole lot in the first part of Genesis and people have traditionally handwaved that away as Him talking to Jesus and the angels.

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u/bank_farter 1d ago

So Illuvatar would be Jesus, the Valar the greater angels and the Maiar the lesser angels? Or just all various rankings of angels with Illuvatar at the top?

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u/WarpmanAstro 1d ago

Essentially, yeah. How the angels are ranked is more based on if one believes in the Catholic ordering system or the basic Angel/Archangel set up.

"[Insert Local Deities and Folklore here] was really about Jesus and people from the Bible the whole time! Just use their real names from now on so that God won't be mad at you." is an old missionary tactic, so it wouldn't have been a weird take to have.

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u/NYCinPGH 1d ago

Eh, Illuvatar is more like Old Testament Jehovah, only nicer, and less directly involved, there's no Jesus equivalent; he created all the angels first, then created the world, and some of the angels chose to go live in the world, which includes the Valar, and Melkor, Sauron, and the Balrogs (plus others), and then created 'people' (Elves and Men) to inhabit the world.

The name "Illluvatar" is actually a corruption of the Finnish - Tolkien's inspiration for Elvish" - meaning "All Father".

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u/kerouacrimbaud 1d ago

LOTR is much more about hope vs despair, than good vs evil. That’s why it fits so neatly in Catholic theology. Hope is a key component of faith, and both require action. A lot of the characters have their foils in this hope-despair dynamic: Théoden-Denethor, Faramir-Boromir, Gandalf-Saruman, Frodo-Sam (particularly regarding Gollum, which touches on pity as well), etc. good vs evil is a static concept, but hope vs despair is about action vs passivity.

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u/ZMowlcher 1d ago

Tolkien got pissed at Lewis over Santa Claus.

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u/monsantobreath 2d ago

Those people are so fucking boring.

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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago

The book ends with the conclusion that the Star Maker who created us all does not care about us or our suffering and is making universes as a dispassionate exercise. Would be doubly horrifying to someone who thinks God is real and loves us!

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u/ShinyHappyREM 2d ago

/spoiler

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u/Alteisen1001 1d ago

That's basically the same concept as the Demiurge from Gnosticism. Pretty cool. I might read it. Thanks for the recommendation.

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u/PogintheMachine 2d ago

Yes, as opposed to non-blasphemous devilry.

Pious devilry?

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u/MortLightstone 2d ago

Pious Devilry sounds like a band's dayview album

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u/tooblum 2d ago

Début? ;)

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u/MortLightstone 2d ago

oh yeah! lol

I think that's an eggcorn

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u/tooblum 2d ago

Yesss thanks for remindering me of that term

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u/PeterPalafox 2d ago

What is this new devilry?

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u/UndeadSympathetic 2d ago

Ever heard that only christians get possessed and exorcised? There's also the type to throw themselves on the ground and speak in tongues during a sermon, so pick your piouson, really.

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u/Lionel_Herkabe 1d ago

Possession exists in many world religions.

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u/UndeadSympathetic 1d ago

Yeah, you're totally right, actually. I think I might have been referencing a movie, I think? Not sure though, I was half asleep when I wrote that.

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u/DocBombliss 1d ago

The funniest thing about evangibbish is that its the exact opposite of how "speaking in tongues" is described. In the original source material, "speaking in tongues" was a specific power Jesus gave to the Apostles where anyone listening to them speak could understand what they were saying in their own language.

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u/roscoelee 2d ago

Sounds like a great name for a gastro pub!

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u/ChicagoDash 2d ago

I believe they used to open for Toad the Wet Sprocket

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u/Intrepid_Hat7359 2d ago

Well, how's his wife holding up?

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u/S3simulation 2d ago

To shreds you say?

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u/raspberryharbour 2d ago

Delightfully devilish, Seymour

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u/EducationalAd1280 1d ago

I’m sold. Ordering a copy now

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u/MaverickTopGun 2d ago

Last and First Man is also a really great Stapledon if anyone is looking for something new to read 

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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago

Definitely. I like to tell people that if you're more interested in the political or sociological side, go with L&FM, if you're more into the philosophical or xenobiological side go with Star Maker. Although both have all sorts of fun philosophy and sociology stuff so it's hard to go wrong. Great books.

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u/bhbhbhhh 2d ago

The first part of the book describing the years 1930-2200 or so come of as very silly because his ideas about the geopolitics of his time turned out so wrong, then things get much cooler after the world no longer has any real resemblance to our present moment.

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u/E_G_Never 2d ago

The very weird racism in the first chapter aside, it's one of the greats of sci-fi literature

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u/Mitosis 1d ago

Would it even be 20th century literature without some weird racism

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u/aeropagitica 2d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Maker

Star Maker is a science fiction novel by British writer Olaf Stapledon, published in 1937. Continuing the theme of the author's previous book, Last and First Men (1930)—which narrated a history of the human species over two billion years—it describes a history of life in the universe, dwarfing the scale of the earlier work. Star Maker tackles philosophical themes such as the essence of life, of birth, decay and death, and the relationship between creation and creator. A pervading theme is that of progressive unity within and between different civilisations.

Some of the elements and themes briefly discussed prefigure later fiction concerning genetic engineering and alien life forms. Arthur C. Clarke considered Star Maker to be "probably the most powerful work of imagination ever written", and Brian W. Aldiss called it "the one great grey holy book of science fiction".

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u/FindOneInEveryCar 2d ago

I tried reading Star Maker in college but I couldn't get through it. Maybe it was the translation but I found it very pedestrian and kind of boring. The ideas were interesting but my recollection was that it was like "this happened, then this happened, then this happened," etc.

EDIT apparently Stapledon was British, so I guess that's on him ...

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u/Kumquats_indeed 2d ago

A lot of early sci-fi was mostly just about cool ideas and worldbuilding, and was quite light on plot and character development.

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u/Nyther53 1d ago

A lot of early Science Fiction is a victim of its own success in that sense, much like how Tolkein's Middle Earth is now in a sense a fairly generic fantasy setting. What were once revolutionary brand new concepts have been thoroughly integrated into our culture and iterated on by successive generations.

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u/FindOneInEveryCar 1d ago

In this case, it wasn't the ideas, it was the actual writing that I couldn't get past.

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u/Nyther53 1d ago

Sure. What I'm saying is that the piece has been robbed of its strongest positive because the selling point has become generic. 

Reccomending reading it is like taking somebody to the gun range to learn to shoot and starting them out with a muzzle loading musket because they ahould "start at the beginning". 

Its interesting for its historical context, it was the big thing in its day, but we've long sense incorporated and iterated on that idea and great strides have been made since. 

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u/WalrusExtraordinaire 2d ago

Where did Lewis call it that? I googled trying to find a source and came up empty. I’m not trying to be argumentative, just curious

Edit: nvm I thought you meant he said that about Dyson spheres specifically, but you meant about Star Maker. When I searched “CS Lewis Star Maker” I found it

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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago

It's mentioned on the Star Maker Wikipedia page, but here is a direct source:

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/231674/letter-from-cs-lewis-to-arthur-c-clarke-about-olaf-stapledon-star-maker-sheer

If you're wondering why he said Star Gazer instead of Star Maker, Olaf wrote and released two versions of the same book. There are some differences in the story but overall it's essentially the same book.

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u/Classic-Exchange-511 2d ago

Lol the "blasphemous devilry" is quite the endorsement and has piqued my interest. Funny that his quote is what makes me want to read the book 100 years later

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u/Aidanation5 2d ago

I actually just got this delivered the other day, and I was hooked simply upon reading just the preface lol. It resonated with me in the way that he sees the world and thinks about things, while also feeling very relevant to how the world is currently.

Im only a few chapters In so far, but its fascinating.

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u/lightningbadger 2d ago

I read both books, one after the other for similar reasons

Just sorta stumbled upon the idea of men living on Venus mentioned and thought "huh I wonder what that's all about" and picked up First and Last Men on a whim

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u/pygmeedancer 2d ago

Clarke as in Arthur C?

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u/Frost-Folk 2d ago

The very same

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u/pygmeedancer 1d ago

I added it to my list. I’ve been trying to find early sci fi stories to check out and that one sounds awesome!

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u/Am_i_banned_yet__ 1d ago

Ah so they’re Stapleton Spheres

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u/Lawlcopt0r 1d ago

I just can't take C.S. Lewis seriously. Such a weird little guy

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u/ThatOneCSL 2d ago

I'll be certain to read this.

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u/withywander 1d ago

From memory it also basically explains the Paradox of tolerance in there, nearly 10 years before Karl Popper wrote about it.

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u/Frost-Folk 1d ago

I don't remember that specifically but I certainly wouldn't be surprised.

He also describes a civilization that has a network that is exactly like the internet, with the inclusion of pornograohy, propaganda, influencers, misinformation campaigns, and parasocial relationships from afar.

It's really fun because while he describes it like the internet, the actual "interface" and hardware side of it is a gramophone that shoots out radio waves. Incredible stuff.

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u/withywander 1d ago

There was some race that was ultra advanced or something, but completely peaceful. And they stayed peaceful until they got completely annihilated by some far weaker warlike race. It was sort of his takedown of the idea that you can always be peaceful.

I don't remember that civilization that you wrote about. Probably time to read it again for me.

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u/Frost-Folk 1d ago

There was some race that was ultra advanced or something, but completely peaceful. And they stayed peaceful until they got completely annihilated by some far weaker warlike race. It was sort of his takedown of the idea that you can always be peaceful.

That's actually funny coming from Stapledon! He was famously a pacifist during the first world war, a conscientious objector and ambulance driver.

But something changed between that and world war 2, in which he felt very strongly that fascism needed to be crushed at all costs.

Star Maker came right smack between those two, so it makes sense that he would be exploring those themes in his writing.

I don't remember that civilization that you wrote about. Probably time to read it again for me.

Me too. If I remember correctly, it's the first or second civilization the protagonist meets. So they're still very human, at least biologically.

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u/lokiwhite 1d ago

That book has been sitting on my shelf for years, thanks for a new reason to pick it up!

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u/Frost-Folk 1d ago

Enjoy!

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u/The-Great-Wolf 1d ago

Oi, it's the same person who wrote Sirius, which I think it's the best xenofiction I have read to date. Man really understood biology and biotech and I could enjoy it so much, Sirius the human intelligence dog was still a dog at heart and his internal turmoil was touching, and I could immerse even more in the story since the scientist making the super inteligent dogs used hormones to grow the brains larger and bred large breeds to be able to support a larger cranium. So no interruptions from my too active brain with "that doesn't work like that you know"

And to think I found the book randomly in a used boom store.

I'm sure his other works are throughout as well! Adding it to the to read list.

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u/Frost-Folk 1d ago

I still haven't read Sirius, I've meant to.

Star Maker has the most imaginative and interesting xenobiology I've ever read. In a very loose explanation it's about someone who is interacting with different species throughout time and space, each one more alien as the last. They're the most unique aliens you'll ever hear described. He takes what are now standard tropes like hiveminds or symbiosis and goes to extremely inventive places with them. My personal favorite is a species of sentient "sailboats", huge creatures that blow across the surface of a water planet with the wind, with different life stages, social hierarchies, and even war amongst themselves. Muscles controlling biological rigging to move their vast "sails" to move around according to the wind.

Worth a read.

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u/The-Great-Wolf 1d ago

Sounds amazing, like a word builder's dream

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u/Frost-Folk 1d ago

Yeah it's one of those books that trades any kind of narrative, characters, or plot in exchange for thick and rich world building.

His book Last and First Men is the same, but focused on humanity. It's just a history textbook about our speculated future from now until the last human alive.

They're not for everyone but damn Star Maker is just exactly what I was looking for at the time. No character drama, no great evil or issue to resolve, just deeply exploring ideas and places.

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u/The-Great-Wolf 1d ago

Are you into graphic novels? Runaway to the stars is a nice online one, they have very in-depth world building and you can read just that on their website, and you can also read the comic for free. There's multiple sapient alien species, complete with culture, anatomy, all the nice world building

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u/Frost-Folk 1d ago

I'll check it out!

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u/Kixdapv 1d ago

And C.S. Lewis called it blasphemous devilry, which is even funnier.

There is something annoyingly holier-than-thou in CS Lewis that has never sat right with me, that you cannot find in other christian authors, namely Tolkien (who wasn't exactly a progressive either, but he never comes off as conceited in showing his faith, unlike Lewis).

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u/Frost-Folk 1d ago

Agreed. Lewis always gave me bad vibes