The Scientific Dark Academic

dark/chaotic academia but with science too

[the-wolf-and-moon]

NGC 6188, The Dragons of Ara

[darkscienceacademia]

Great beasts of time and space, incomprehensibly huge, yet so small in the grand scheme of the universe.

[darkscienceacademia]

What Does Dark Academia Mean To You?

I may not have posted in a while, or have many followers, but for anyone who reads this, I want to know. 

What does dark academia mean to you?

Because it means quite a bit to me. It’s got an aesthetic, yes, which is a lot of fun and really very beautiful. But more than that, it has called me back to the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of understanding the universe just a little bit better. It draws me to remember the vastness of the world, and at the same time the incomprehensible beauty of it all. It has rekindled a fascination with history and culture and science, with art and music and special friendships.

So tell me, what does dark academia mean to you?

[redistribution0fmatter]

Poets have their desks and pockets filled with poems, artists with sketches, and mine are filled with equations, calculus and books.

After all, we, scientists and you, romantics, aren't so different.

[dark-academia-in-russia]

[thebloggerbloggerfun]

Schrodinger’s Script: If an “I love you” is written into a script and acted out, but doesn’t make it into the final cut, is it or is it not canon?

[consultingcriminal-deactivated2]

Date of origin: 7 Aug 2014

[thebloggerbloggerfun]

Oh fuck me

[darkscienceacademia]

Schrodinger is groaning in his grave

[witch-in-the-wild]

Arabic dark academia

Having tea first thing in the morning, the afternoon, evening, night and whenever you have nothing to do and whenever you have everything to do

Practicing calligraphy, hoarding calligraphy pens and quills like a dragon hoards its jewels

Youre now a calligragon btw

Pretentious hand written letters

Fragments of poetry and prose on the wall

In Egypt you can buy a vintage gramophone (as far as I remember)

Wrinkling your nose at orientalists who have clearly never been anywhere near the culture they're trying to portray.

Appreciating the orientalists who have in fact been there and paint like it. (Sorry to disappoint but there were never sexy slave babes roaming the streets)

Mourning for the scholars of Al Andaluas and times when Arabic was the language of science

Arguing over e'arab (the value of a word with regard to others in the sentence) and balagha (it translates to "eloquence" but is more like a complex version of figures of speech) of words

Arabic being such a complex language you get carried away sometimes

Passing the allotted wordcount so you start going over your paper and compressing a whole sentence, consisting of a conjunction, a subject, a verb and two objects into a word in desperation

Words like فأسقيناكموه (faa'skainakumooh) meaning "and so we have let you drink it" being an example.

Tea over burning coal. Over logs (hatab) tea over bokhour/oud hits different and you know it.

Brewing coffee over low heat and humming to Layali Al Ouns

"No offense but I like real coffee" when someone mentions starbucks

Um Kulthoum and Asmahan are superior you cant change my mind.

NO I DID NOT FORGET ABDUL HALIM HAFEZ I WANTED HIM A BULLET OF HIS OWN.

Fareed al atrash concerts at 3 am.

Nothing you ever cook will be under seasoned.

Reciting poetry to yourself in the mirror

Big chunks of jewelry (usually gold) engraved or woven through with intricate patterns and swirls. Wearing four bracelets in one hand is absolutely fine and under dressing is a myth

Owning swords is not out of fashion (ancient arabs were well known for their swordsmanship) but using them is, unfortunately <3

Wondering how they won wars with these swords. I couldn't even lift it enough to stab myself if I wanted

Extra names. People called شهد honey (shahd), جمال beauty (jamal), زهرة flower (zahra), ليلى night (laila), سماء sky (samaa), مهند/سيف sword (mohanad/saif) and صفاء purity (safaa) like it's the most normal thing in the world (which it should be, along with names of ancient gods)

Poetry from the abbasid era describing palaces and fountains and music so eloquently your heart skips several beats and you wonder how it is still beating at all and if, after all, you have been born in the wrong era.

Classic poetry from the school of Apollo brimming with romance and yearning you have never seen matched.

Poems that tear at your heart and stitch it whole with every bayt (verse? The equivalent for it) and you keep coming back for more.

Stories so well told that you swear you can see the princes and charmers and musicians and dancers all flicker to life in the flames before you

Historical masjids and churches.

Going to the palaces and shrines and towers from the ancient days of yore

Not exclusively (as neither is anything on this list) arabic but BRAIDS and braid jewellery that clinks when you shake your head

The unwavering belief that poetry is meant to be sung.

Singing poetry because it is meant to be sung

Thick eyebrows

Lining already lash lined eyes with kohl.

Beautiful brown eyes. Honey eyes. Chocolate eyes. Freshly turned earth eyes. Eyes that hold all the ethereal beauty of the world.

Hair styled in dark, thick curls or braids

Savouring the way the words move around from your throat to your chest to the tip of your tongue, like liquid gold,

The sweet music from the strings of a qitharah (string instrument)

Scented candles are cute, but have you ever heard of oud (perfume infused wood)? Anyhow one of my Sudanese friends make it AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL.

Wanting to study with the scholars of baghdad and azhar so bad

Recognizing that for all your culture, some of it is inspired by others and that's okay.

Please add what you can to this list. It is far from complete.

[hyperspacefairy-deactivated2021]

I’m sick of the constant battle in my head between the ethereal looking faerie who wears silky gowns with flower crowns and write romantic poems and the half-goth half-nerd alien who have a dark sense of humour and reads sci fi

[darkscienceacademia]

wow yeah same

[darkscienceacademia]

Lovecraft

An author I don’t hear a lot about in dark academia. I’m surprised. Many of his short stories - most, in fact - center around reclusive academic types with a penchant for ancient, secret knowledge. And tragedy almost always follows these conspiratorial scholars, haunting their footsteps and dragging them down to horrific endings. The reader is left with a sense of existential dread at the thought of such great, unyielding, unmerciful forces at work in the universe. Dark, twisted creatures from the edges of our solar system, ancient beings from beyond the stars watching our every move like we watch ants, contemptuously, apathetically. Indescribable monsters that take hold of your mind and warp your dreams until you go mad. 

And none of the villagers believe what the scholars put down in their diaries, or record in their notes. 

A secret knowledge indeed.

[darkscienceacademia]

A Void at the Center of the Galaxy

We look on from light years away at the void that exists at the center of our galaxy, seeing how the great stars sweep out vast orbits around it, hundreds and thousands of times greater than the little solar system we call home. 

The great pull of that void keeps our great family of stars, our galaxy, together, in all its hundreds of thousands of light years of size and all its billions and billions of stars.

[darkscienceacademia]

Hours and Hours

Hours and hours I while away, begging my mind to learn, begging my fingers to write. Both deny me. Obstinate creatures. What wish have I but to learn to trace every line of logic and sense through the rows of black ink, to understand every easy connection between problem and answer! 

Hours and hours I while away, begging my mind to learn, begging my fingers to write. Surely, if this method is wrong, I will simply try again. If I am mistaken, I will turn around, and find a new route. But the snake of perfectionism coils tightly around my hands. No, it whispers, simply, cruelly. And I sit, trying to piece together in my mind what would be so easy to see if written on paper.

Hours and hours I while away, and as the sun sinks down, I am hardly any closer to my goal. Still fingers, noisy mind. 

Obstinate creatures.

[darkscienceacademia]

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Albert Einstein

[darkscienceacademia]

All men, by nature, desire knowledge.

Aristotle

[darkacademiasworld]

Dark Academia Moodboard

[darkscienceacademia]

The small, tidy Ptolemaic universe may have been psychologically comforting, but the universe is under no obligation to make us comfortable.

- Fundamentals of Astrophysics, by B. Ryden and B. Peterson (a lot of stuff like this that I post is from this book, sorry I haven't been citing it)

Because stellar parallax is so freaking small because the distances are so freaking huge, many astronomers, including Tycho Brahe and Ptolemy, thought both that the world was geocentric and that the universe was much smaller than it really is. But our nearest stellar neighbors are more than 270,000 astronomical units away. Such a distance, the thought of such a vast, unthinkable amount of space, may well have driven them mad.

[artessenziale]

Hands by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio:

Bacchus, (1596) The Cardsharps, (1594) The Taking of Christ, (1602) The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, (1601-1602) Penitent Magdalene, (1597) Boy Bitten by a Lizard, (1600) Fortune Teller, (1597) David and Goliath, (1600) Saint Catherine of Alexandria, (1598) Narcissus, (1597-1599)

[darkscienceacademia]

Let us, as scientists, never scorn the arts, nor depreciate their effect on humanity and history.

[redrola]

[compoundchem]

August Kekulé was born #OTD in 1829. He’s most famous for his work on the structure of benzene, though the structure he suggested was later improved upon: https://ift.tt/3i9o8x9 https://ift.tt/2FbL93O