"Bruce Holland Rogers - The Krishman Cube" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

"She is a bit eccentric," I observed.
 "Eccentric? She's crazy! I've been working on getting her fired, but the department chairman thinks
she's 'insightful.' Hell, she's a crackpot, a terrible lecturer, and a threat to the other grad students. I had to
move several of them out of her office to keep them from being corrupted."
And he promised to try to get me moved.
"Even her undergraduate students complain about her," he told me as we parted. "She can't ever stay
on the subject."
Near the end of the second day in her office, I decided that Karen Krishman was indeed off the wall,
especially after I had watched, for another whole morning, and for most of an afternoon, her frantic
journeys to and from the bookshelves. I had been unable to get anything done at my desk all day, and
that frustrated me increasingly. But toward four o'clock, Krishman stopped working for a moment and
stood over my desk.
"Yes?" I said, looking up.
"Dr. Quist, I was wondering if you'd be able to help me with something? It's beginning to look as
though I may be called onto the carpet because of my lecture methods."
"And?"
"Well, you've been teaching for quite a few years, and I'd imagine that qualifies you as something of an
expert."
Ah, flattery. What could she ask that I could turn down after that?
"Would you sit in on my lecture in ten minutes and tell me what I ought to change?"
I agreed.
***


She began, just as the last stragglers took their seats, with the following:
"I want to preface what I'm teaching today with something you've all heard from me before. This is a
basic, elementary course, and your text concisely explains everything you'll need to know in order to pass
the exams. If you have questions about any formulae or concepts, I'm almost always in my office and
available. The purpose of these lectures is not to teach you physics, per se, but to teach you that physics,
religion, poetry, history, and the rest of the so-called subjects you are studying here are not separate,
dividable entities. Everything in this universe fits together with everything else, and if you want to break
experience down into artificial components, I suggest you transfer to another section."
And then she was off. That fifty minute lecture still whirls like a delightful mental circus as I try to recall
it. She spoke about the Hindu Genesis, coral atolls, magic, druids, Charles Dickens, Chinese poetry, and
the relationship between science and religion. I can't remember a word of what she actually said, but I
had the impression that ideas, charged with wonder and delight, danced forth from her as colors.
Krishman's lecture was a kaleidoscope of sun-yellow, circus-red, apple-green ideas. The world not only
made sense for those fifty minutes, it was fun as well.
What surprised me the most -- though it shouldn't have after I had heard the music of her mind -- was
that only five or six of her students left when the class was over. These were probably the ones who had
complained to Urvater. The rest of the students stayed behind to ask Krishman questions. This shocked
my sensibilities somewhat, as I was accustomed to seeing students stampede the exits after my own
lectures.
Once again, Krishman's mind was in flight.
She answered question after question about a myriad of topics. At one point, she began to speak
about black holes and how, to an outside observer, an object falling into one would, at a certain point,
seem to slow down and stop, frozen in time.
A student asked, "How do we know you're not making all this up?"
She smiled and said, "I didn't, I assure you. But someone did, just as someone made up energy and
atoms."