Marat the Folk Scientist and Danton the Colorblind

If Louis was beautiful to an extreme, as if Prince Paris had stepped out of myth after handing the golden apple to Aphrodite, or as if an archangel blowing the horn of the Last Judgment had descended to the mortal realm amidst fire and thunder, then the next friend Armand introduced to Joseph was, in appearance, the polar opposite.

He was a gaunt, short man. He had a sallow face, eyes of unequal size, and a nose that was large yet flat, as if someone had struck it hard enough to crush it. His forehead was also flat, while his jaw was exceptionally thick and protruding. This made his mouth appear disproportionately large; at a glance, he looked like a toad. Add to this his withered hands with knobby joints, and skin that was sallow and flaky from a dermatological condition, and he looked like a monster that had crawled out of a nightmare.

"Joseph, this is my friend, Monsieur Marat."

"A pleasure to meet you." Joseph nodded and extended his hand.

Marat also reached out to take Joseph's hand. However, his grip was shallow, barely pinching Joseph's fingertips. Joseph noticed that Marat's hand was remarkably cold.

"Monsieur Bonaparte, I have read your essay. You believe light is a wave?" Marat said slowly, his voice equally cold.

"It is not so much what I believe, but that the existing evidence leads me to favor that judgment. Personally, I have no prejudice as to whether light is a particle or a wave," Joseph replied.

"Why do you lack the courage to clearly support your own views, instead using such weak phrasing to mask your position? Is it because you have no confidence in your own judgment?" Marat asked, his tone laced with mockery.

Joseph could not help but frown, a thought instantly popping into his mind: Ugly people are always making trouble!

Indeed, "ugly people are always making trouble." Generally speaking, those with low physical appeal are prone to various forms of social discrimination, and these slights often fill their hearts with resentment and make them highly aggressive. In Joseph's view, Marat was a classic example of this.

However, Joseph did not want to offend Marat just yet, as offending this fellow was far too dangerous. Although Joseph's knowledge of the history of the French Revolution was not particularly deep (after all, before he transmigrated, this was foreign history, wasn't it? Truth be told, knowing Marat's name at all meant he hadn't slept through his history and art classes), he knew that Marat was likely responsible for many of the horrific atrocities of the Revolution. There was surely no shortage of personal vendettas involved, and Joseph had no desire to provoke such a mad dog.

In any case, this fellow won't live long, so I might as well indulge him, Joseph thought, suppressing the urge to retort.

"I truly have no prejudice regarding whether light is a wave or a particle. As for my views, my view is that what it is depends on experimental phenomena and mathematical interpretation. If one could explain interference phenomena from a particle perspective using mathematics, I would be quite happy. After all, the world is so complex, and mathematics is the only thing we can truly rely on," Joseph explained.

"Ah, Joseph, your view has a touch of the Pythagorean to it," Danton, standing to the side, smiled. "All is number, is it not?"

Pythagoras was a famous ancient Greek mathematician. He and his disciples formed an important school—the Pythagorean School. A fundamental tenet of this school was that "all is number." They believed that mathematics was the only thing capable of describing the entire world and that it was the true essence of reality.

"I am not as fanatical as they were," Joseph smiled slightly. "At the very least, I wouldn't throw someone into the sea just because they discovered irrational numbers. However, my friend, you might consider this as well. Is our vision reliable? Not necessarily. For instance, I have discovered that some people perceive colors differently than others. I think..."

"Wait... what did you just say? You said some people see colors differently than others? Are you certain such people exist?" Marat suddenly interrupted.

"Yes, why do you ask?" Joseph inquired.

"This might be a new disease that people have not noticed before," Marat said. "Can you tell me how you discovered this?"

"I had a friend when I was a child who suddenly ran up to me one day and told me he had discovered that the geraniums in my garden changed color between the day and the evening. During the day, the geraniums appeared sky blue, but in the evening, they were bright red. To me, however, those geraniums were pink at all times. When I told him this, he was very surprised and even suspected there was something wrong with my eyes. So, we asked a few others, and as it turned out, everyone except his brother agreed that the geraniums were pink. Later, we discovered that his uncle also believed those geraniums were blue during the day and bright red in the evening. At the time, I actually envied them, because they could see two colors of geraniums."

"Can you bring that friend of yours for me to see?" Marat asked again.

"He is a Corsican, and in Corsica, there is no way to bring him here now," Joseph spread his hands.

"Ah..." Marat curled his lip sarcastically. "Monsieur Bonaparte, do you know, I have a friend with such incredible jumping ability that he can jump straight to the moon."

Joseph hurriedly told himself several times, Do not lower yourself to this fellow's level, to suppress the urge to retort directly. But at this moment, Danton spoke up:

"Could it be... could it be that the color of the geraniums does not change between day and evening? Was I the one who was wrong? Is there something wrong with my vision?"

Everyone turned their gaze toward Danton.

"Why are you all staring at me like that?" Danton asked.

"Danton, in your eyes, do the geraniums change color between day and evening?" Marat asked, staring at Danton as if observing a rare animal.

"Yes... isn't that what you all see?" Danton countered.

"Tell me, what color is this?" Marat suddenly pointed to Louis's hair.

"Flaxen, I suppose?" Danton said, sounding a bit uncertain.

"Hmm, correct, no problem there... and what color is Armand's hat?" Marat asked again.

"It's green," Danton replied immediately.

"Look again," Marat said.

Danton widened his eyes, stared at Armand's hat for a moment, and then said, "It is just green."

"Good heavens! There really are people whose eyes see colors differently than others! Armand's hat is clearly light red!" Marat clapped his hands, then turned to Joseph. "Monsieur Bonaparte, do you see how obtuse you are? Do you not realize this is a major medical discovery?"

"I am not a doctor, after all," Joseph smiled. "In the field of medicine, I am almost entirely illiterate."

"Do you not intend to study this issue seriously?" Marat asked.

"No, this is not a field I am familiar with or interested in; there are still many mathematical problems awaiting research," Joseph replied. "Let us return to the original topic. I believe our vision is unreliable, and our hearing is the same. Some people claim they can hear sounds that others cannot..."

"That is nothing more than a trick used by charlatans," Marat interjected.

"Ordinary people have such moments too," Joseph said. "For instance, when we dream, we can hear many sounds that do not exist and see many things that do not exist. Our vision deceives us, our hearing deceives us, and even our imagination can deceive us—for example, that 0.9999... equals one. But mathematics does not. Hmm, I remember a priest once said: 'When the world turns upside down, the Cross stands firm.' Whether the 'Cross' can stand firm, I will not comment, but I am certain that even if the entire solar system were to perish, I am certain that two points would still determine a straight line. Therefore, when everything else is unreliable, mathematics is the only thing I can trust. Since mathematical calculations indicate that light is very likely a wave, I acknowledge that possibility."

"And what if your mathematical calculations indicated that light also behaves like a particle in many instances?" Marat asked again.

"Then it could also be a particle," Joseph replied.

"An incorrigible Pythagorean," Marat shook his head. "Monsieur Bonaparte, truth is not presented solely through mathematics; it has other, higher forms of presentation."

"What forms?" Joseph asked.

"Intuition from the soul," Marat replied. "Have you read On the Human Soul and Philosophical Essays on Man? I find some of the views within them quite reasonable. For example, the fact that different people see colors differently must surely be related to their souls..."

On the Human Soul and Philosophical Essays on Man—these two works had been mentioned by Lavoisier in casual conversation when he brought up Marat:

"That Marat, in his nonsensical essay, even cited those two equally nonsensical articles—the gibberish in On the Human Soul and Philosophical Essays on Man. Given that chaotic way of thinking, I am certain those two anonymously published pieces were written by him as well."

It seemed now that Lavoisier's guess was highly accurate.

I never expected to encounter a 'civilian scientist' in this era, Joseph couldn't help but sigh to himself.

However, the experience of later generations taught him not to try to convince a pseudo-scientist, nor to argue with one, because they would forcibly drag you down to their level of low intelligence and then defeat you with their extensive experience in being an idiot. When facing a pseudo-scientist, the only wise course of action is to agree with them, encourage them, and cultivate them into a world-class fool.