There are several other instances of physics (both correct and incorrect/outdated) mentioned in Ulysses, per Manos, including Bloom misunderstanding the science of X-rays his confusion over parallax trying to figure out the source of buoyancy in the Dead Sea ruminating on Archimedes’ “burning glass” seeing rainbow colors in a water spray and pondering why he hears the ocean when he places a seashell to his ear. When he directed sunlight into the mirror, it captured and projected the mirror’s vibrations via reflection, which were then transformed back into sound at the receiving end of the projection. Bell’s device never found immediate application, but it’s arguably the progenitor to modern fiber-optic telecommunications. Bell’s voice was projected through the instrument to a mirror, causing similar vibrations in the mirror.
Unlike the telephone, which relies on electricity, the photophone transmitted sound on a beam of light. While Manos was unable to trace a specific source for this term, there was a similar device that had been invented some 20 years earlier: Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, co-invented with his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter. In Chapter 15 (“Circe”), one of the characters says, “You can call me up by sunphone any old time”-a phrase that also appears in Joyce’s handwritten notes for the chapter. In addition to the DecemAmerican Institute of Physics news release which provides some detail about the physics in Ulysses, there’s Jennifer Ouellette’s Aparticle for Ars Technica where in addition to the material in the news release, she adds some intriguing information, Note: Links have been removed, Ulysses exemplifies what physics students (science and non-science majors) and physics teachers should realize, namely, physics and literature are not mutually exclusive. Joyce’s friend Eugene Jolas observed: “the range of subjects he enjoyed discussing was a wide one … certain sciences, particularly physics, geometry, and mathematics.” Knowing physics can enhance everyone’s understanding of this novel and enrich its entertainment value. The fact that Ulysses contains so much classical physics should not be surprising. Ulysses, however, was ranked number one in 1998 on the Modern Library “100 Best Novels” list and is, in whole or in part, in the literature curriculum in university English departments worldwide. The physics community is familiar with the name James Joyce mainly through the word “quark” (onomatopoeic for the sound of a duck or seagull), which Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019 – Physics Nobel Prize 1969) sourced from Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.
Ulysses by James Joyce (1882–1941) has a surprising amount of 19th-century, classical physics. This paper is behind a paywall but there is a freely available abstract The Physics Teacher 60, 6–10 (2022) DOI: Published online: January 1, 2022 Physics in James Joyce’s Ulysses by Harry Manos. Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper, Manos shows how Joyce uses the optics of concave and convex mirrors to metaphorically parallel “Ulysses” with Homer’s “Odyssey,” and how Joyce uses physics to show Bloom’s strengths and weaknesses in science. “‘Ulysses’ exemplifies what physics students and teachers should realize - namely, physics and literature are not mutually exclusive,” Manos said. In The Physics Teacher, by AIP Publishing, Manos reveals several connections that have not been analyzed before in the Joycean literature between classic physics prevalent during that time and various passages of the book. “Ulysses” chronicles the ordinary life of the protagonist Leopold Bloom over a single day in 1904. It also contains a surprising amount of 19th-century classical physics, according to Harry Manos, faculty member at Los Angeles City College. James Joyce’s book “Ulysses” is widely considered a 20th-century literary masterpiece. From a DecemAmerican Institute of Physics news release highlights an intriguing article in The Physics Teacher, Thankfully, since it’s a literature topic, timing doesn’t matter quite as much as it does for other topics. This article came to my attention in April 2023 but the material is from 2021/22. James Joyce, Ulysses, and 19th century physics I have two stories about penguin physics with the latest research being published in June 2023. Apparently, penguins perform some interesting feats from a physics perspective. So James Joyce included some physics in his novel, Ulysses (serialized in The Little Review from March 1918 to December1920 and published as a novel in February 1922)?
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