{"id":409,"date":"2019-08-15T07:17:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T07:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/?p=409"},"modified":"2023-11-07T07:18:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-07T07:18:06","slug":"a-close-reading-of-ted-chiangs-exhalation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/a-close-reading-of-ted-chiangs-exhalation\/","title":{"rendered":"A Close Reading of Ted Chiang\u2019s Exhalation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWhen on board H.M.S. \u2018Beagle,\u2019 as a naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent\u2026 After five years\u2019 work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n is with these words that Charles Darwin\u2019s On the Origin of Species \nbegins. It frames his magnum opus both as a description of personal \nexperience, but also as an attempt at an objective description of the \nwider world and an attempt to reveal insight into it. Ted Chiang\u2019s \nExhalation begins similarly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\n has long been said that air (which others call argon) is the source of \nlife. This is not in fact the case, and I engrave these words to \ndescribe how I came to understand the true source of life and, as a \ncorollary, the means by which life will one day end.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\n the opening paragraph, we learn three things. The first is that the \nworld of Exhalation is not our own. It is one dramatically different \nfrom ours, where argon, a noble gas of no use to our biological bodies, \nis perceived as the life-giving force in their world. This \u2018hook\u2019 gives \nour initial motivation for reading on: to learn more about this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n second thing we learn is the manner in which this story is told. It is \nframed as the journal of a person in this world, and the discoveries \nthey\u2019ve (the protagonist\u2019s gender is not given) made. Whilst we are not \ntold explicitly that our protagonist is a scientist of some sort (at \nthis juncture), the language they use implies it. The way in which the \nprotagonist structures their sentences (\u201cIt has long been said that \nair\u2026.\u201d) and phrases like \u201cas a corollary\u201d suggest someone who is \naccustomed to writing in an objective and analytical tone of voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combined\n with the framing of this story as a journal, Chiang alludes to the long\n history of scientific journals like Darwin\u2019s and the impact on science \nsuch personal writings have had. This is something we will continue to \nsee throughout the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n last thing we learn is that the world of Exhalation is coming to an \nend. With barely an introduction into the world, we are already told it \nis on the verge of dying, and that the protagonist intends to educate us\n on the unique nature of their world and the reason for its impending \ndoom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chiang\n employed a similar technique in Story of Your Life, in which we learn a\n crucial detail about the daughter of the protagonist very early on in \nthe story. By \u2018giving away\u2019 the ending like so, Chiang is, at a more \nfundamental level, attempting to hook us in with intrigue, but also \ntelling us that the details of the world\u2019s end are uninteresting. What \nis more interesting is how it got there to begin with, and what can be \nlearnt from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor\n most of history, the proposition that we drew life from air was so \nobvious that there was no need to assert it. Every day we consume two \nlungs heavy with air; every day we remove the empty ones from our chest \nand replace them with full ones. If a person is careless and lets his \nair level run too low, he feels the heaviness of his limbs and the \ngrowing need for replenishment. It is exceedingly rare that a person is \nunable to get at least one replacement lung before his installed pair \nruns empty; on those unfortunate occasions where this has happened \u2014 \nwhen a person is trapped and unable to move, with no one nearby to \nassist him \u2014 he dies within seconds of his air running out.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\n in the normal course of life, our need for air is far from our \nthoughts, and indeed many would say that satisfying that need is the \nleast important part of going to the filling stations. For the filling \nstations are the primary venue for social conversation, the places from \nwhich we draw emotional sustenance as well as physical. We all keep \nspare sets of full lungs in our homes, but when one is alone, the act of\n opening one\u2019s chest and replacing one\u2019s lungs can seem little better \nthan a chore. In the company of others, however, it becomes a communal \nactivity, a shared pleasure.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n next paragraph gives us a more detailed description of the biology of \nthe people in this world. In this paragraph, we learn the precise nature\n in which their air acts as their sustenance, drawing closer parallels \nwith our own biological necessities like food, water and oxygen. These \nparallels are crucial to one of the fundamental themes Chiang is \nattempting to express with Exhalation, that of our symbiotic \nrelationship with our world\u2019s ecosystems. This theme only grows clear \nnear the end of the story, but the setup here remains important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n scientific voice the protagonist writes with continues here. When \ndescribing their need for air and the consequences of not replenishing \nit, the protagonist writes impersonally, speaking of a hypothetical \n\u2018person\u2019 rather than using \u2018you\u2019 or \u2018I\u2019 as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\n scientific voice continues into the next paragraph, where the \nprotagonist writes of air replenishment as a communal activity using a \npassive voice (\u201cwhen one is alone\u2026\u201d). The mention of filling stations \nand the conversations that occur there are an obvious parallel to the \ntypical water cooler conversation in an office. This parallel is meant \nto impress upon the reader: despite the bizarre and unique nature of \ntheir biology, the structure of their society is very similar to ours, \ni.e. we should not think of them as robots or androids. They should not \nbe perceived as the ontological Other<\/em>, but as their world\u2019s equivalent of humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\n strange time anomalies happen throughout their world, the protagonist \nundertakes a risky experiment to explore and understand their anatomy. \nWith the experiment underway, they describe:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs\n I contemplated this vista, I wondered, where was my body? The conduits \nwhich displaced my vision and action around the room were in principle \nno different from those which connected my original eyes and hands to my\n brain. For the duration of this experiment, were these manipulators not\n essentially my hands? Were the magnifying lenses at the end of my \nperiscope not essentially my eyes? I was an everted person, with my \ntiny, fragmented body situated at the center of my own distended brain. \nIt was in this unlikely configuration that I began to explore myself.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n 1633, Rene Descartes wrote Treatise of Man, a work describing his \ntheories on the nature of the human body based on his experiences \nvisiting butcher shops and participating in underground human cadaver \ndissections. Fearing that Galileo\u2019s fate under the iron first of the \nCatholic Church might befall him too, the treatise remained unpublished \ntill after his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n Treatise of Man, Descartes describes the human body by drawing \nparallels with mechanical water fountains, with blood vessels being like\n the pipes in such fountains. His work was emblematic of an era in the \nScientific Revolution in which scientists and philosophers began to \ncomprehend and understand the human body not merely as a sacred temple \nto god, pure and untouchable, but something mechanical, something to be \nunderstood and researched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\n in Exhalation, with our protagonist risking their life by conducting a \nnever-before-done vivisection on themselves, Chiang draws connections \nwith the Scientific Revolution, and the numerous illegal vivisections \nand dissections done to further the cause of science. With the \nhistorical context of the Scientific Revolution, Chiang contextualizes \nour curiosity in the story, having it mirror the curiosity of scientists\n on the verge of a breakthrough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\n protagonist questions and philosophizes, \u201cwhere was my body?\u201d, \u201cWere \nthe magnifying lenses at the end of my periscope not essentially my \neyes?\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chiang\n calls attention to the fact that for our protagonist, the once-clear \nlines of where the world ends and our bodies begin are not so clear, and\n that there is nothing fundamentally spiritual or ethereal about our \nbodies, like what scientists and philosophers discovered during the \nScientific Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\n bodily deconstruction goes further though. by highlighting how the \nlines between the world around them and their own body are not so clear,\n Chiang emphasizes the inextricable link between an individual and their\n environment and the ecosystems within. This connection between body and\n ecosystem, like the one highlighted in the introduction, again serves \none of Chiang\u2019s main themes, to be revealed as the story moves on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\n turned my microscope to one of the memory subassemblies, and began \nexamining its design. I had no expectation that I would be able to \ndecipher my memories, only that I might divine the means by which they \nwere recorded. As I had predicted, there were no reams of foil pages \nvisible, but to my surprise neither did I see banks of gearwheels or \nswitches. Instead, the subassembly seemed to consist almost entirely of a\n bank of air tubules. Through the interstices between the tubules I was \nable to glimpse ripples passing through the bank\u2019s interior.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\n careful inspection and increasing magnification, I discerned that the \ntubules ramified into tiny air capillaries, which were interwoven with a\n dense latticework of wires on which gold leaves were hinged. Under the \ninfluence of air escaping from the capillaries, the leaves were held in a\n variety of positions. These were not switches in the conventional \nsense, for they did not retain their position without a current of air \nto support them, but I hypothesized that these were the switches I had \nsought, the medium in which my memories were recorded. The ripples I saw\n must have been acts of recall, as an arrangement of leaves was read and\n sent back to the cognition engine.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\n Chiang writes with a surgical eye for detail. Our protagonist is about \nto discover the true fundamental nature of cognition, and to build the \nappropriate anticipation for such a momentous scientific discovery, \nChiang meticulously describes each step. As Chiang describes the \u2018bank \nof air tubules\u2019 or the \u2018tiny air capillaries\u2019 that \u2018were interwoven with\n a dense latticework of wires\u2019, the reader\u2019s pace naturally slows down \nto capture this detail and to parse the complex technical language used.\n The moment of discovery is thus stretched to amplify its significance. \nFurthermore, the detailed description of their brain reveals to the \nreader its inherent wondrous complexity, in keeping with the atmosphere \nof scientific discovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n is here that our protagonist discovers how cognition is physically \nmanifested: not as physical etchings on gold foil, but as the patterns \nof air that interleave that gold foil (\u201cAir is in fact the very medium \nof our thoughts\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior\n to our modern understanding of thermal energy and the laws of \nthermodynamics, it was believed that heat was a form of liquid called \ncaloric, that tended to flow from warm objects to colder ones. As our \nunderstanding of heat as the motion of gas particles developed, Ludwig \nBoltzmann developed statistical mechanics, and with it our understanding\n of how heat dissipates towards a state of equilibrium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like\n Boltzmann and many other scientists, our protagonist has discovered \nthat some phenomena, like heat or in their case, cognition, are not \nencoded in a lasting physical medium, but one that is ephemeral, one \nthat is a layer removed from the physical position of particles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\n new understanding is symptomatic of the development of a new paradigm. \nAfter caloric or ether (the hypothesized medium through which light and \ngravity moved), there came the laws of thermodynamics and Einstein\u2019s \ntheories of relativity. After Newtonian physics, there came quantum \nmechanics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\n our protagonist, this too is a new paradigm. They learn not only of the\n nature of their own cognition, but how their consciousness and life is \ndependent on the ecosystem of argon within their world, and how the \nwider ecosystem, like thermal energy, tends towards equilibrium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n is with this revelation that Chiang subtly introduces one of his main \nthemes. In our real world, the relationship between our ecosystems and \nour survival are abstracted away, encapsulated by agricultural and \nindustrial systems that put food on our table and roofs over our heads, \namongst other things. The impact and nature of our way of life is not \ninherently obvious. It is encoded in raw data like temperature readings \nover decades or the redshift of light from distant galaxies. It is thus \nemotionally easy to ignore the impending danger to our existence from \nclimate change, or asteroid strikes, or the eventual heat death of the \nuniverse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\n making the dependence of Exhalation\u2019s beings on the argon ecosystem \npure, simple and inextricably clear, whether in the refilling of air \nfrom the underground explained in the introduction, or the encoding of \nthought in airflow demonstrated in this turning point, Chiang shows us \nhow the beings in their world are fundamentally reliant and beholden to \nthe world around them, just like we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\n the world of Exhalation begins to understand the ramifications of our \nprotagonist\u2019s discovery, they, along with our protagonist, come to terms\n with their impending end:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\n wish you well, explorer, but I wonder: Does the same fate that befell \nme await you? I can only imagine that it must, that the tendency toward \nequilibrium is not a trait peculiar to our universe but inherent in all \nuniverses. Perhaps that is just a limitation of my thinking, and your \npeople have discovered a source of pressure that is truly eternal. But \nmy speculations are fanciful enough already. I will assume that one day \nyour thoughts too will cease, although I cannot fathom how far in the \nfuture that might be. Your lives will end just as ours did, just as \neveryone\u2019s must. No matter how long it takes, eventually equilibrium \nwill be reached.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\n hope you are not saddened by that awareness. I hope that your \nexpedition was more than a search for other universes to use as \nreservoirs. I hope that you were motivated by a desire for knowledge, a \nyearning to see what can arise from a universe\u2019s exhalation. Because \neven if a universe\u2019s lifespan is calculable, the variety of life that is\n generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and \nmusic and verse we have composed, the very lives we\u2019ve led: None of them\n could have been predicted, because none of them were inevitable. Our \nuniverse might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a \nquiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one \nthat is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though\n I am long dead as you read this, explorer, I offer to you a \nvalediction. Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that \nyou are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because,\n as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n this conclusion, our protagonist\u2019s writing style shifts. Whilst their \nlanguage remains formal and elegant, it has grown personal, poetic even.\n Sentences start with \u2018I wish\u2019, \u2018I feel\u2019, \u2018I hope\u2019. Having moved beyond \nthe objective description of their discoveries, the protagonist moves \ntowards expressing their personal sentiment and feelings. They leave us \non a personal note, hoping that their writings would be of some use to \nus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n the first paragraph, we are prompted to consider our own universe\u2019s \nentropy. As the reader pores over this passage, they are prompted to \nconsider the fragile nature of humanity. Some might think of the \nimpending dangers of climate change and what means we might have of \novercoming it. Others might think of the universe\u2019s eventual death, and \nwith it, all existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\n existential anxiety now firmly implanted in us, the protagonist then \naddresses it. Despite our temporal nature, we should still feel joy in \nthe miracle of our existence and the things we have created. The \nscientific language remains present here, with flowery terms like \n\u2018equilibrium\u2019 and \u2018calculable\u2019 still used in places, but here they are \nused to describe not scientific phenomena, but human phenomena, in the \nform of the art we have created and the edifices we have constructed and\n the inherent miracle of it all. Science does not exist independently of\n human identity, but reinforces it, just as we have seen in this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protagonist then leaves us with a final philosophical message: Bask in the miracle of existence, despite its temporality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fundamentally, Ted Chiang\u2019s Exhalation is an exaltation to science. By framing this story as a scientific journal through the language used and the framing device, Chiang hooks us in with intrigue and curiosity, then steeps us in the historical context of the Scientific Revolution through the flow of the narrative and the protagonist\u2019s discovery. For Chiang however, science is not merely the discovery of cold hard truth. As such, he shifts our perspectives away from intrigue and curiosity and instead ends by leaving us to contemplate how science has informed our understanding of ourselves and our relationship with the world around us, and how this understanding might allow us to better ourselves, or at the very least, bask in the opportunity we\u2019ve been given to bear witness to the universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen on board H.M.S. \u2018Beagle,\u2019 as a naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent\u2026 After five years\u2019 work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parallelsuns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}