Goal-Digger's Thesis (I)

Joseph wasn't too concerned about winning or losing a betting match with Napoleon. He remembered something about Napoleon making a paper to the French Academy of Sciences from a movie he had seen about him in his last life. It seems that at that time, Napoleon wrote an article on the analysis of social problems, and when it was submitted, it sank without a trace. So Joseph felt that it was at least unlikely that he would lose this betting match himself.

This thesis, though, is still a fine one to prepare. If it is normal research, the first thing that needs to be done is naturally an experiment. But for Joseph, who had traversed the world, the matter could be put off for a while. The first thing he had to do was to prepare some mathematical tools for the arguments and calculations that would follow.

This complicates matters because the two or three decades from the 1870s to the beginning of the 19th century were a time when mathematics, especially French mathematics, took a great leap forward. During this time, a series of mathematicians came out of France that made Joseph to the point of sucking in a breath of cold air and half a day of trepidation when he thinks about them to this day. Even after becoming a traverser, as soon as he thought of them, Joseph immediately remembered the fear of being dominated by Fourier, Laplace, and Lagrange, and a chill rose up from his tailbone to the back of his neck. And Fresnel's ability to perfectly explain double-slit diffraction is inextricably linked to the achievements of these great and terrible guys. If one were to replicate Fresnel's argument directly, one would pretty much have to get several key mathematical breakthroughs out of the way first.

"It's really 'in order to solve the Korean problem, we need to go to Manchuria; in order to solve the Manchurian problem, we need to go to China; in order to solve the Chinese problem, we need to go to the United States.' When did I become acting like one of those brainless Showa staff officers who have a habit of solving a small problem by creating a bigger one?" Joseph couldn't help but mock himself twice. But considering the impact the experiment left on history, under the influence of vanity, Joseph was still going to write just that. Of course, whenever possible, he still wants to solve the problem as best he can with the math he already has. In principle, it's not unfeasible. It's just that the whole argumentation process would be incredibly unwieldy and cumbersome. It's like a question that could have been done by multiplication, but you're trying to turn it into something you can do by addition. 

As it turned out, after trying to do this for a few days, Joseph realized that if he really wanted to completely bypass these mathematical tools, which were not yet available, he feared that he would need more space.

"Some of the necessary math tools still have to be developed, otherwise, we can't really use addition to calculate multiplication." Joseph thought this way.

After nearly a month of this, using relatively unwieldy means to bypass some high-level tools and incidentally inventing some "low-level" tools, Joseph finally finished his thesis. Looking at the thesis, which was so thick that it looked like a book, Joseph nodded with satisfaction and said: "Finally, I managed to cut the length in half. A paper with breakthroughs not only in physics but also in math is a superb experience. The only shame is that it didn't get real-world feedback."

Joseph transcribed another copy of this paper and mailed one of them. The other copy was held up for Armand to see.

As soon as he saw the pile of math symbols in the paper, Armand cringed: "Joseph, I said what have you been up to all this time, so that's what you've been doing. Well, I can barely read the front of this, you think light should be a wave, not a particle - that's not quite the same as Sir Isaac Newton's view yah. Your experiment is also very interesting. I recognize all the symbols in the back, but I honestly don't understand what they mean when put together. Surely ... you're not supposed to be showing this to me, it's supposed to be for my uncle?"

"Yes," Joseph said, "I would like to hear what Mr. Lavoisier has to say about that."

"Well, then, tomorrow is Sunday, and I'll bring this paper over to show him."

...

"Good morning, Mr. Lavoisier, can I get you anything?" An attendant said to Lavoisier, a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a famous chemist, as he busied himself pulling open the door.

"Ah, Mabeuf, is Mr. Laplace in today?" Lavoisier asked as he handed his cane to the attendant.

"Yes, Mr. Lavoisier, Mr. Laplace is in his office." The attendant replied.

"Very well, please bring me a pot of black tea to his office in a few minutes." Lavoisier said as he walked down the hallway, striding toward Laplace's office on his left.

"Yes sir, I'll bring it right over to you."

Lavoisier walked up to the door of Laplace's office, reached out his hand, and knocked gently; there was no sound from inside. Lavoisier smiled weakly and knocked gently on the door again. However, there was still no sound from inside.

Lavoisier gave the door a gentle push, and it opened. He walked in and saw Laplace sitting at his desk, head down, shaking his quill and calculating something. On his desk, there was a mess of used manuscript paper thrown all over the place.

Lavoisier didn't say anything either; he just walked over, pulled over a chair, and took a seat across from Laplace's desk, waiting quietly.

At that moment, Mabeuf walked in, carrying a pot of black tea.

"Ah, Mabeuf, just leave it here and pour me a cup." Lavoisier said.

Mabeuf set the teapot on a nearby table, poured another cup of tea, and served it to Lavoisier.

"Well, it's all right here. You can leave now." Lavoisier took the tea and smiled.

Mabeuf then bowed slightly and then gently walked out, closing the door gently and vainly with his hand.

Lavoisier sipped his tea as he watched Laplace calculate, and Laplace, who hadn't looked up the whole time, hadn't even realized that a man was sitting on the opposite side of his desk.

After a few more moments, Laplace reached the quill in his hand into the ink bottle once more and then failed to write the numbers on the manuscript paper as he had hoped - the ink bottle had run out.

"Living hell! I should have gotten a bigger size ink bottle." Laplace said while looking up and spotting Lavoisier sitting across the table.

"Mr. Lavoisier, what are you doing here? How long have you been here?" Laplace asked.

For quite some time, Laplace worked as an assistant to Lavoisier, and together, they determined the specific heats of many substances. In 1780, the two of them demonstrated that the amount of heat required to break down a compound into its constituent elements was equal to the amount of heat given off by those elements to form the compound. This can be seen as the beginning of thermochemistry, and, moreover, it was another milestone in the move toward the law of conservation of energy, following Braque's work on latent heat. So, the two have a pretty good relationship.

"Ah, I've been here a while. Why, it seems to me you're checking out that 'Bonaparte Light Spot'?"

"Yes, Mr. Lavoisier." Laplace stood up and said, "You've already read that paper? It's so counterintuitive to our instincts. But, damn it, it actually did manage to observe ... in the experiment which means that if his whole derivation is correct, then light really must be a wave. Well, Hooker would be rolling in his grave with joy."

Lavoisier said: "Yeah, I've read that paper, in yesterday morning. The paper was written by a classmate of my art-loving nephew, well, you've met him, a classmate of his named Joseph Bonaparte. He gave me this paper to read through Armand. I have to say that the conclusions of this paper are a bit counterintuitive, but those two experiments are really impressive. Especially that 'Bonaparte Light Spot'. Well, I guess the youngster submitted this paper to the Academy of Sciences as well, trying to get the prize money. Well, all else aside, for two experiments alone, I think it's worth six hundred francs, if not more."

"The few new math tools he's built in this paper alone are worth it." Laplace said, "But the wave alone is a conclusion that a lot of people are just going to have a hard time accepting."

"Hard to accept? Because Sir Isaac Newton said light is a particle?" Lavoisier said, unimpressed, "Aristotle had a whole bunch of mistakes. Is Sir Isaac Newton the Pope who never makes a mistake? But you know, I always have a lot on my plate. And there was so much math in this paper that, even though he figured out some trickery, the calculations were still too much. I have my research too, so yesterday I just verified his experiments and then looked at his arguments in general, as far as the specific mathematical details go, I haven't had time to go into them in detail. You know, I'm not as good as you when it comes to math, and if it comes to speed of calculation, there's no one in the world, I don't think, who's better than you. That's why I'm going to get you to verify it in detail. I didn't realize you were already doing this."