Eureka Travel
My father-in-law had just wrapped up his postdoc work and he and my mother-in-law had gone to Europe to celebrate. He was a doctor now. But he had no idea what kind of doctor he wanted to be. Should he specialize? If so, in what?
The couple were in Italy, not far from Pisa. Bob got the notion to go to the spot where Galileo supposedly* conducted his famous experiment.
You remember the story. High in the tower, Galileo takes a cannonball in one hand, and a much lighter musket ball in the other. He predicts that when he drops them, they’ll hit the ground at the same time, thus proving that gravity acts on all bodies at the same rate. This defied common sense – Aristotle was certain it was baloney – but it turned out to be true. And Galileo cemented his reputation as someone for the state to keep its eye on.
At the base of the tower there’s a plaque telling of the legend. Bob climbed the tower. At the top he found a little alcove and sat down there, alone, heart open, receptive to any guidance the universe might offer in this highly charged place. It’s probably as close as he ever came to praying.
Alas, there was no obvious reply. But the trip up the tower created a mission, and gave a shape to their holiday, and may have set some tumblers in motion that changed the course of his life.
Tour operators, take note. There is an idea here. People love to walk in the footsteps of humans who have dented the universe (or at least gouged the grass under famous Italian monuments).
Call it Eureka Travel: you make a pilgrimage to the site of a great breakthrough or paradigm shift. Who’s to say you won’t pick up a little of the mojo still lingering in the air?
So what kinds of places might qualify?
Here are ten candidates:
All Saints Church, Wittenberg, Germany. Where Martin Luther, in high dudgeon, nailed his 95 theses to the door. Christianity was severed here, and Catholicism’s less middle-management driven offshoot, Protestantism, created.
Mahabodhi Temple, Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India. Where stands the Bodhi Tree that Siddhartha Gautama – the Buddha – sat under to meditate his way to enlightenment. (Actually, the tree standing there today isn’t the same tree, but a direct descendent.)
Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire, England. Another tree! This is the one Sir Isaac Newton was gazing dreamily at (while sitting out the plague in 1665) as it dropped an apple, and sparked his theory of gravity.
The corner of Speichergasse and Genfergasse, near the main train station in Bern, Switzerland. Site of the patent office where Einstein, in a spell of productive mindwandering, developed his theories of relatively.
Bletchley Park, U.K. Where Allied codebreakers cracked Enigma.
Los Alamos, N.M., where the A-Bomb was un-genied from its bottle and the atomic age began.
Kill Devil Hill. Just south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright Brothers got that “human flight” idea off the ground.
Buccaneer Cove, Santiago Island, Chile. The spot in the Galápagos Islands where Charles Darwin made his main camp. His observations of the flora and fauna here spawned his theory of natural selection.
367 Addison Avenue, Palo Alto, CA. Site of the garage where Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett conducted the first experiments of their fledgling company Hewlett Packard, birthing Silicon Valley and the digital paradigm shift.
94 Tutela Heights Road, Brantford, Ontario. Home of Alexander Graham Bell. Actually “Melville House” was his dad’s place, but it’s where Alexander conducted the experiments that led to the telephone.
Main Street and Lakeside, West Orange, New Jersey. Location of Thomas Edison’s laboratory. From this block-lock brick building (there’s a museum there now) sprang the motion picture camera, the battery and, of course, the original lightbulb idea: the light bulb.
* it’s almost certainly not true that Galileo didn’t drop those balls from up there, but an indelible origin story has to live somewhere.
photo credit: Richard Gabriel Moritz, or Unsplash
