The Natural Philosophy of Dragons

"Mum, is there somewhere on permies.com I can post about all my experiments with light and space and colour and stuff?"

Iggy is one of my plushy dragons. Which, as some of you know, represent aspects of my psyche. I seem to have rather a lot of them. A multiplicity you might say. And Iggy is the young dragon who represents my more experimental, technical sort of side. The side that likes to figure out how the universe works, what the Meaning of Life is, all that sort of stuff. The dragons help me to concentrate on just one aspect of myself at a time a little more deeply. And then when I'm working on Something Big and I have the mental capacity, I let them all work together a bit more and I either go into total mental overload or, just occasionally, manage to solve a mystery, or write a story, or something like that.



"Well what exactly did you have in mind, Iggy?"

"Well there's the thread about The Dragons Play Towers of Hanoi and discover colour theory, pinkness and powers of 10 which people seemed to like. And then we had the Smaugust 2025 art challenge which lots of people joined in on. And the two posts in there about the Doppler effect and about red shift and blue shift got me thinking about things. And I'd like to explore them a bit more. And thought it might be good to share what I learn, just in case anyone else finds it interesting. Or inspiring. Or something..."

I thought for a while. It wasn't sure it was a very good fit for permies. Especially as dragons don't always interpret things the same way as most people do. But that's not necessarily a bad thing in itself. And at the very least it might be fun.

"I think we could probably fit it in somewhere. Where do you think it should go?"

We looked at the current list of all forums to see if we could find a fit.

"There's one about science and research." Iggy noticed triumphantly.

I had a look to see what the forum was supposed to be for.

This forum is a place for those interested in using and learning about science as a tool to better understand and test permaculture techniques. It is not a place for discussing the relative merits of science vs other ways of viewing the world and will be moderated hard to keep discussion on topic so that it will become a useful resource for anyone wishing to learn more and participate in research.

"I don't think your experiments are going to fit there, Iggy. They aren't directly related to permaculture. In fact I'm not even sure how I'd describe your experiments. Is it science if dragons do experiments? Is it physics if it's do with light and space?"

Iggy thought for a while.

"It's a bit like science. But it's more thought experiments than actual physics. Sort of a philosophical science."

"Maybe a bit like physics was long ago in Isaac Newton's time, when it was known as Natural Philosophy?"



"I like that name - maybe we can call the thread The Natural Philosophy of Dragons so that people know it's our ideas, not necessarily mainstream science," suggested Iggy. "I'm still not sure where it fits though..."

But I think I knew just the place for it.

"There's a forum called ethics and philosophy in the cider press. It sounds just the place for it to me!" I told him.

"Is there?" Iggy sounded surprised, but very pleased. "I think that would be just perfect! Do you think Paul will mind?"

"I shouldn't think so." I assured him. "Just make sure to write nicely and try to be as honest and helpful as you can. And find ways to do as much good as possible with what you find out."

"That sounds fair!" agreed Iggy. "Can you make the post for me?"

"Ok, I'll start the thread with an introductory post as soon as we've had lunch. And then you can think of what you experiments you want to do and how we could go about them."

The dragons were busy planning an adventure and squabbling about who was going to take part in it. I thought I ought to check in to see what they were were up to.

"Iggy, what is everybody doing?"

"I want to do an experiment and we're figuring out the logistics!"

"Dare I ask what the experiment is about?"

"Well when went up to space to visit Draco and play ball with Shiva for celestial day in the smaugust challenge, I noticed that Vermelha and Índigo seemed to be waving at me when they zoomed past at the speed of light. But when I asked them about it, they said they weren't waving, just zooming. And I know that light waves, but I wasn't sure how it did it. So I thought it would be fun to take a close look. So we're planning a trip up to visit Draco again and Shiva is going to meet us up there and we're trying to decide who should come."

"And have you decided?"

"Well I need to go because it's my experiment. And we need someone for Shiva to throw and turn into a photon of light. And I'm not very good at drawing so Rosa offered to come. And then Rubeus says it's a bit far for Rosa so he wants to come and supervise."

"I think keeping it fairly simple is a good idea. Do Vermelha and Índigo both want to go?"

"I think they'd both like to, but strictly speaking I think we only need one of them..."

"How are you going to keep track of the waving?"

"Dunno..."

"How about I put a dab of ink on one of their wing tips?"

"That might work!"

"Hey you two!" I called to Vermelha and Índigo. "Which of you wants to have a mark put on their wing tips so we can see if you wave when you get turned into a beam of light?"


"Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" squealed Índigo, spotting the blue marker pen I'd just picked up. "Blue is my colour!"

So I carefully marked the tip of one her wings and Vermelha agreed to let Índigo be the one to take part in the experiment.

I guess they'll be setting off tonight. I'll let you all know what they find out!

The dragons were gone most of the night but somehow they managed to get up bright and early the next morning to start drawing what they'd seen.

Rosa had taken herself off to her art station and was busy mixing shades of blue to make a background, and not letting anyone else near her lest it disturb her artistic muse. Iggy had managed to extract some supplies from her before she'd shut herself off and had taken over the bed, supervised closely by Roxa, who had sourced a steel rule for him and wanted to make sure he used it properly, and Índigo, who was keen to prove that she was NOT waving as she'd been zooming along at the speed of light.

Iggy very carefully marked out where he thought he wanted the lines to go with the help of a pencil, lined them up carefully and spaced them out with the help of the steel rule so they looked nice and even just like the way he'd seen them up in space, and then when he thought it looked just right, he went over the lines with the same blue marker pen that I'd used on one of Índigo's wing tips.

This was the result...



He glanced nervously up at Roxa, who stared at the picture for a minute.

"Um, it looks like a sine-wave to me..." Roxa suggested. "Are you sure you weren't waving, Índigo?"

"I was NOT waving!" Índigo insisted.

"I think it might look the same if you were flapping your wings, like you do when you fly.." suggested Iggy

"We were in space. You don't have to flap your wings to fly when you are in space. And anyway, Shiva threw me so I didn't need any extra wing-power."

"Maybe you flapped them anyway, out of habit?"

"I DID NOT FLAP MY WINGS!"

Poor Índigo was getting a bit annoyed, and indignant, by now.

"I held them out, like this." Ìndigo demonstrated "And then zoomed along at the speed of light when Shiva threw me."

Ìndigo spread out her wings and stretched out her neck and zoomed around the bed as fast as her little legs could carry her. She's surprisingly long when she does that. I guess dragons are rather serpentine creatures in their way...

Iggy watched her carefully until he got dizzy. He had to admit that her wings did not flap. And now there was no sign of the waviness that he'd seen so clearly up in space.

He couldn't figure it out, so he pushed his picture towards me and asked for my opinion on what was happening.



"Well, let's have a think. Índigo, are you sure you were flying in a straight line?"

"Absolutely sure! Shiva threw me like the best quarterback there ever was. I was flying as straight as an arrow. And faster than a speeding bullet."

Roxa stared at the picture and thought very hard when she heard about arrows and bullets, but she wasn't quite sure where her thoughts were trying to lead her.

"And where were you, Iggy, relative to Ìndigo?"

"I went back quite a way, and set myself up at a right angle to where she was going to pass. I wanted to concentrate on just one short section so I could see it as it really was, without letting my head turn."

"That's a very good, scientific sort of approach." I agreed. "And where was Rosa?"

"Oh she was much closer. She wanted to see Ìndigo zooming up towards her and then zooming off into the distance. I think it will look all distorted like that though and I wanted to see it properly."

I thought for a moment.

"Do you know the story about the blind men and the elephant?" I asked him.

"What elephant?"

"The elephant the blind men went to see."

"How can they see an elephant if they're blind?"

"Hang on. Let me go and find a video of it...  Ah - here it is! I think we should watch it."



Iggy listened carefully to the story. He understood its meaning, but he didn't quite agree with it.

"But mum, none of them were actually wrong. They just weren't completely right. They didn't have the whole picture."

"So what should they have done, to get a more complete picture?" I asked him.

Iggy thought for a moment.

"I think they needed to communicate more. Share their findings instead of arguing about who was right. Because all of them had an insight to contribute, and together they could build a much better picture of what the elephant really was."

"So what do you think we should do next?"

The dragons on my bed glanced over to where Rosa was busy sprinkling white paint over her blue background to make stars.



"I think Rosa might have a better picture. If she ever finishes. She's still perfecting the background and hasn't even started on drawing the light wave yet."

"Maybe she won't even see it as a wave." I suggested. "She's likely to have a completely different perspective..."

And so Iggy went off to read up about orthogonal and perspective viewpoints while Índigo went over to tell Vermelha all about her adventures and Roxa snuck into Austin's room to see how the feathers on his arrows were attached, and to peer down the barrel of his air rifle and to do a bit of research on how to throw a football.

And I will be back to let you all know how Rosa gets on, and to show you her painting. When she finishes it.  She may be some time...

Rosa says she's been working hard and hopes to have her work of art finished soon.  

Especially if she can rope Austin in to help because his hands are a bit steadier than hers...

Rosa roped Austin in to help.

He'd bought her a new marker pen too, and together they penciled in what Rosa had seen when Índigo had zoomed past at the speed of light. Then Austin had helped steady Rosa's hand as she drew the wavy line that represented what she'd seen, and rubbed out the pencil marks afterwards.



And this was the result...



Rosa was very pleased with it. But she was tired now and wanted to go outside to see what was happening in the garden and have a good night's sleep before showing it to the other dragons. Because she had a feeling they were going to start arguing about her about whether she'd seen it right or not.

But she didn't see how she could have seen it wrong.

After all, she saw what she saw.

And surely no-one could tell her it was wrong.

Could they?

The dragons were busy trying to analyse Rosa's painting.



"Well that bit in the middle looks like a sine wave," said Iggy "but the rest of it looks like Índigo was looping the loop."

"It looks like the loops are in different directions after the wavy bit too..." thought Roxa.

"What is a sine wave?" asked Rosa

"It's the shape that is generated by tracing the vertical position of a point moving around a circle, resulting in a wave that repeats at regular intervals." explained Iggy.

"So was something moving in a circle?" asked Rosa. "Índigo, are you sure you were flying in a straight line?"

"Straight as an arrow. Like a speeding bullet!" Índigo insisted.

"Oh yes I remember. Like you'd been thrown by the best quarterback in the universe. I remember..."

"But why are we analysing just my painting?" asked Rosa.  "I thought we were supposed to be looking at both pictures to build up a better one. Which I think is the opposite of analysing."

"Synthesising. That's what the opposite of analysing is." Iggy explained again.

"Ooooh, like the pretty star on my alchemy shelf?"

Iggy fetched his drawing and put it next to Rosa's painting so they could compare.



"But why do the pictures look so different?"

"Iggy was standing too far back and focusing on just a teeny bit of it..."

"Well you were squooshed up too close so it was all out of proportion."

"It gave me a better perspective!"

"But the orthogonal viewpoint is much better!"

"But the way you see things is so boring. Mine is much more interesting!"

As Rosa and Iggy squabbled about who saw things best, Roxa began to form a better picture in her mind. One that combined both viewpoints. Or at least began to.

"It looks a bit like a spring - one view from a long way back where you could only see the up-and-down-ness. And one from close up where you can see the loopiness." thought Roxa aloud.

And then Roxa thought more about the way quarterbacks throw balls. And the way arrows fly. And the way gun barrels have spiral grooves cut in them to make the bullets fly straight.

"Índigo," asked Roxa, "when you were flying at the speed of light, faster than a speeding bullet, straighter than an arrow, were you spinning?"

Índigo had been a bit shocked by Roxa's question.

"Well of course I was spinning!" she'd said. "Do you really think you can be thrown through space at the speed of light without ending up a spin? Even Shiva doesn't throw that accurately!"

"And I don't think he even wants to - the more spin there is, the straighter you fly!" added Vermelha.

And then they'd gone off to play somewhere, leaving Roxa to puzzle it out.

Roxa had a good idea of what might be happening though. And she wanted to make a model of it so she could show it to the other dragons so they could understand it too. So she went to the cupboard where Austin stored the electrical supplies and borrowed some bits of wire and his best pliers. Then she put them on my bed, decided I wasn't likely to use the broom for a while as I was safely out of the way checking the progress of the Jerusalem artichoke patch in the garden and borrowed my broom too as she wanted to use the handle for something.

Then she put all of the supplies on my bed and started wrapping a bit of blue wire around and around the handle, making it look as neat and even as she could manage, then snipped the end off and showed her model to Iggy, who was also on my bed reading a paper about the topography of photons in case it could throw some light on things.

Iggy wasn't convinced it looked the same.

"I know there are loops, but you can't see them. And it looks just like a series of slanting lines, not like the wavy pattern I saw..." he observed.

"Yes but that's because it's still stuck over the broom handle. It will look different if I pull it off - see?" and she pulled it off the end of the broomstick.



Iggy had a jolly good look at the blue springy thing and admitted that from close up and from certain angles it did indeed look like Rosa's painting.



And then he put it down and looked at it from further away, and he was forced to admit that if he lined himself up exactly at right angles to it, it did look pretty much like his picture



"I think you might be onto something, Roxa." he admitted. "But if the blue wire represents what we can see when Índigo flies past spinning at the speed of light with a dab of blue paint on the tip of her wing, why is that the only thing we can see? Why can't we see the rest of her?"

"I don't know," Roxa admitted. "At least, not yet..."

"And if dragons being thrown at the speed of light can look like light waves, what does Shiva throw when he makes real light?"

A few days later I'd gone outside again to see what was happening in the garden and check to see if the Jerusalem artichokes were ready to harvest, so the dragons took advantage of my absence to borrow my broom and Austin's electrical supplies to make up a few more models so they could get their heads around experiments to do and questions to ask Shiva next time they went off exploring the universe.

Roxa took some green-and-yellow wire and wrapped it round and round the broom handle.



She wanted to use this model to demonstrate a longer wavelength than the blue one, because green has a longer wavelength than blue, so she spread the coils out further apart, cut the wire, and slid the springy thing off the broom handle so they could compare the two models side by side.

Then Roxa and Iggy had a good look at the two models to see if there was anything interesting to be discovered.

"I think we must have put one of them the wrong way around" said Iggy. "The blue one has the loopy bits at the top on this side and on the bottom at the other, but the green-and-yellow one has the loopy bits on the bottom on this side and at the top on the other."

"I think you're right, Iggy. Let's turn one of them around so they go the same way."

And so they did. But it made no difference! And no matter which way they turned them around, they could never get the blue and the green-and-yellow springy things to turn the same way.

"Well that's funny." Roxa sighed "I wonder what could be happening?"



At this point I should probably point out that my dragons, being aspects of myself, are almost completely incapable of telling left from right. So some things are harder for them to 'see' than other things that most people might be able to understand straight away. And, also like me, they are ambidextrous. Which means they are just as likely to wind the wire one way around the broom handle as the other, pretty much at random. But I was out in the garden at the time. Getting very annoyed because I'd just caught somebody raiding my jerusalem artichoke patch and was busy chasing after them so I could teach them a lesson. So the dragons had to try to figure it out for themselves.

Roxa thought it might be related to the colour of the wire, so she tried with the brown wire. Which she wanted to have an even longer wavelength as brown is the closest colour she could find to red in Austin's stash of electrical supplies and red has the longest visible wavelength.



And then Iggy thought it might be down to who made the model, so he had a go with the brown wire too. That way they could compare the different coloured models with each other, and also the two brown models with each other.



And when they'd finished, they laid all the models out next to each other to compare. And this was the result.



"It looks to me," said Iggy "that it's not the colour but down to who winds them. Because the brown ones are different."

"But that can't be right!" insisted Roxa "Because I wound both the blue one and the green-and-yellow one and they go different ways."

But before they could solve the mystery Rosa turned up, looking very nervous.

"I think something terrible has happened!" she exclaimed. "Mum's been shouting at someone in the garden and now someone is squealing in terror and I think she's caught a thief. And she seems to be bringing him into the house. And now I can hear water running and I dread to think what's happening down there!"

The dragons all stopped what they were doing and listened anxiously as I carried a squealing, wriggling artichoke thief indoors, quietly cussing about him being a mochyn frwnt and dragged him forcibly into the shower room for a good clean up.

The clean-up operation hadn't quite gone according to plan. I'd successfully hosed Mochyn down, then soaped him up and scrubbed the worst of the mud off him. I'd even rinsed him off. He'd been squealing in indignation all the while though, and I'd counteracted his objection by singing Calon Lân very badly at him, with slightly modified lyrics...

"Mochyn lân, yn llawn daioni..." I sang at him, rather hopefully, not to mention loudly and out of tune, in case cleaning him up and making him less smelly (he really did smell rather awful...) might make him become a good pig and not steal my artichokes. "Gofyn wyf am fochyn hapus, mochyn onest, mochyn lân." It was one of my favourite songs, and I'd adopted it as a sort of love song as it's all about how a pure heart is more valuable than the riches of the world. Or, in my modified version, how a clean pig might become a good pig and not an artichoke thief.

There had always been wild boar around the place, though they hadn't been too much of a problem since the fire and I'd become a bit lax about putting urine down along the boundaries to deter them. I hadn't expected to find one raiding my garden in broad daylight though! Cheeky thing.

Washing him had NOT made him happy though! As I'd lathered him up for round two he'd made a final, successful bid for freedom and shot out of the shower-room like a greased pig leaving me with soap in my eyes and unable to see which way he'd gone. I presumed out of the front door, which I'd left open as my hands had been rather full dealing with a smelly bundle of fury as I'd removed him from his new mud pit. Which was supposed to be my vegetable garden! I shut the door, wiped the soap from my eyes, and decided I should take a shower myself as I hadn't exactly got the through the ordeal smelling of roses...

As all the commotion died down, Rosa began to calm down a little and noticed all the springy things on the bed.

"What are they?" she asked, innocently.

"They are models of different wavelengths of light." Iggy explained. "Only they seem to be going in different directions, or something. We're trying to figure it out."

Rosa looked at them, and picked them up and looked again from different directions.

"Oh well some of them are S-twist and some are Z-twist."

"Pardon?" asked Iggy, who was quite bewildered that someone as young as Rosa and who wasn't exactly educated and in fact could barely even read would know something that sounded as intellectual as that.

"Look at those two brown ones - one twists one way and one twists the other!" she explained.

"I guess so..." Iggy agreed, going a bit cross-eyed as he studied them...

"It's a bit tricky to see with the springy things." Rosa admitted. "You can see right through them and it gets confusing because you end up not being able  to concentrate on the front slopey bits because you can still see the back ones..."

"Hang on a minute, I've got an idea!" she announced, and hopped off the bed and scurried over to her stash of fleece.



She grabbed a handful of white fleece, because she thought it would be easier to see the twist on white rather than black, and sprang back onto the bed. Though just before she jumped back up she thought she saw something hiding in the shadows under the bed. She put the idea out of her mind though as she wanted to demonstrate her spinning skills to the other dragons. It wasn't something they were usually interested in and it was nice to be able to share your interests and what you've been learning with your family.

"Look!" she said, as she took a pinch of the fleece and spun it in her fingers.

"You see - this is S-twist!"



Iggy stared at Rosa's freshly spun yarn but wasn't quite sure he understood. Yet. So he went off to research S-twist and Z-twist on my laptop.

Meanwhile Nigredo, my plushy raven, who tends to be drawn to shadows and those who lurk in them, also hopped down onto the floor and was peering under my bed.

Iggy found this diagram, which explained in one glance what Rosa had been talking about.



And then he took a closer look at Rosa's spun yarn and he began to be able to see the twist for himself. She was right - it was an S-twist!



Iggy picked up the brown springy thing he'd made and had a look at it, but was a still a bit confusing. Then he had an idea. It might be easier to see the twist if he slid it back over the broom handle. Rosa hopped off the bed again to go and fetch it. She sniffed. There seemed to be a rather unpleasant smell emanating from under the bed. It probably needed sweeping or something. The broom mostly gets used for making springy things these days after all...

She took the broom and helped Iggy slide his brown springy thing over the handle so it was easier to see the twist.



Iggy stared and stared.

Rosa sniffed. That smell seemed to be wafting up, and getting stronger by the minute. Nigredo braved the dust bunnies under my bed and went to investigate.

"I've got it!" declared Iggy. "It's a Z-twist! Look - if you imagine two lines drawn straight across the handle, one at the top of a twist and one at the bottom, it makes a Z shape!"



Rosa, however, had lost interest as somebody under the bed was making rude noises.

And she suspected it was Nigredo, the raven. Which led to a much more important question.

"Iggy," she asked, wrinkling her nose slightly. "Can birds fart?"

By the next morning I'd had enough.

Nigredo the raven had spent all night under the bed making farty noises, even though his sister Branwen had declared categorically that birds don't fart, and the AI search assistant on the laptop seemed to agree with her. The smells had gotten worse and worse all night long. My son had appeared with a bright blue plastic slinky for Rosa who had run off with it and was apparently preparing to paint at least some of it red for some unknown reason.



Iggy had been asking Austin if he knew what colour light would be if it had the same wavelength as the one on his drawing, but Austin had said that he thought it wouldn't have a colour as that wavelength was likely a microwave, not in the visible spectrum. But when Iggy asked the AI thing how long a microwave was it said that they were usually around 21 to 25 inches in width, 12 to 15 inches in height, and 16 to 20 inches in depth. So Iggy has now lost all faith in the thing.  And judging by the noises and smells coming from under the bed I suspected he was right to.



So when day broke, I opened the window and took myself off for a walk up the mountain to clear my head. It had been raining, and maybe there were puffballs to collect, or stranded fire salamanders to rescue, or Iberian ribbed newts that had lost their way and needed a safe haven, or toads that needing kissing or something...

But when I returned home, this was the sight that greeted me - Nigredo sitting on the foot of the bed deep in conversation with that smelly pig, Mochyn!



To be fair, the smell seemed to be diminishing somewhat, as did the number of farty noises. Though I now suspected that the raven was not, in fact, to blame for either of them. The two of them seemed to be deeply engrossed in a game of crunchy or slimy with a plushy ladybird that Mochyn had attached to him with a bit of string.  Mochyn's eyes are set very high on his head and he can't see the bug when it's dangling out of his mouth but Mochyn is very adept at tossing his head in such a way that it flips into his mouth and then he takes bets with the raven about whether it will be crunchy or slimy when he bites it. Nigredo always says crunchy, and he is always right, so Mochyn spits the bug out and tries again. Because he only likes slimy ones.

At this point I gave up in despair and made myself breakfast and nice big mug of cocoa instead of dealing with their nonsense...