Which scientist did several things at once? Parallel tasks: how to do two things at once and not go crazy. Were Caesar's last words "And you, Brutus?"

Bust of Julius Caesar from the collection British Museum. Photograph of Roger Fenton, commissioned by the British Museum. Approximately 1856 Royal Photographic Society

Julius Caesar is probably the most famous character of ancient history, and indeed of all ancient history. Only Alexander the Great can compete with him. Countless volumes have been written about Caesar scientific works, popular biographies and fiction. He was played in films by such outstanding actors as John Gielgud, Rex Harrison, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Ciaran Hinds. Around any outstanding historical figure sooner or later the husk of myths and legends grows. Caesar did not escape this either.

Myth 1. His name was Caius Julius Caesar

Let's start with the name. Caesar, like almost every Roman boy from a good family, had three names: firstly, praenomen, or personal name (Gaius), - their Ancient Rome there were very few, Guy being among the most common; secondly, a nomen, or family name (Iulius), and thirdly, a cognomen, originally a nickname with some dictionary meaning, attached to a branch of the clan and becoming hereditary (Cicero - Pea, Naso - Nosy). What the word Caesar meant is unknown. There were many explanations: Caesar himself claimed that it was “elephant” in the “Moorish language,” and Pliny the Elder raised the word to the verb caedo, “to cut, cut,” arguing that the very first Caesar (not ours, but one of his ancestors) was born from a cut uterus, that is, as a result of a procedure later known as a caesarean section. Already thanks to the glory of our Julius Caesar, his cognomen in various forms entered many languages ​​of the world as a synonym for ruler - Caesar, Kaiser, Tsar.

The variant Kai (not Gaius) Julius Caesar has been around in everyday speech for a very long time. It is also found in literature: for example, in the fantastic story “Ghosts” by Turgenev, in “The Golden Calf” by Ilf and Petrov, or in “The White Guard” by Bulgakov. A search through the corpus of Russian literature texts produces 18 results for the query “Caius Julius” versus 21 for “Gai Julius,” almost equally divided. Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy recalls an example from the “Logic” of the German Kantian philosopher Johann Gottfried Kiesewetter: “Caius is a man, people are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal” (in Kiesewetter: “Alle Menschen sind sterblich, Caius ist ein Mensch, also ist Caius sterblich” ). This is also, of course, “Caius” Julius Caesar. In languages ​​with Latin-based graphics, the variant Caius instead of Gaius also continues to be found - not only in novels, but also, for example, in the books of the modern British popularizer of antiquity Adrian Goldsworthy. This writing is the result not so much of a misunderstanding, but of a peculiar ancient Roman idea of ​​fidelity to tradition.

Although in Latin the sounds [k] and [g] were always different; at first this difference was not reflected in writing. The reason was that the Etruscan (or some other Northern Italic) alphabet, from which Latin developed, did not have a stop [g]. When the volume of written information began to increase and literacy began to spread (in antiquity, in principle, there were not many free people who could not read and write at least at a primitive level), it became necessary to somehow distinguish between letters denoting dissimilar sounds, and C was attached tail. As linguist Alexander Piperski notes, the letter G is an innovation with a diacritic like the letter E, only more successful in historical perspective. The letter E, as is known, was popularized by Karamzin, and Roman lovers of antiquities recorded that G was introduced into the alphabet by a certain Spurius Carvilius, a freedman and the first owner of a private property in Rome. primary school- in the 3rd century BC. e.

The capital C, representing the sound [g], was often used as the initial of the names Guy and Gnaeus (C and CN, respectively). Such initials were found in dedicatory inscriptions, on tombstones, and in other contexts of increased importance. The Romans were very neurotic about this kind of thing and preferred not to change anything about them. Therefore, in the inscriptions starting from the 2nd century BC. e. we often see the letter G where it should be (for example, in the word AVG, an abbreviation for Augustus), but at the same time the name Guy is abbreviated in the old fashioned way as S. The same with the name Gnei, which is abbreviated as CN (however, the form “Knei” ", as far as I know, is not found anywhere in Russian).

Most likely, it was this ambiguity that caused the split of the popular Roman name into the correct Guy and the erroneous Kai. Kai from " Snow Queen Andersen's name most likely has nothing to do with Caesar - this is a common Scandinavian name, and there are many other etymological hypotheses about its origin, mainly going back to the Frisian languages.

Myth 2. We know what he looked like

Let's look at some sculptural portraits.

The first is the so-called Tusculan portrait, excavated in 1825 by Lucien Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon I). It is kept in the Museum of Antiquities of Turin. Several more sculptural images, stored in the National Roman Museum, the Hermitage, the New Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, etc., belong to the same type.

Tusculan portrait from the Museum of Antiquities of Turin. Dated to 50–40 BC.© Gautier Poupeau / Wikimedia Commons

Copy from a Tusculan portrait. 1st century BC e. - I century AD e.© J. Paul Getty Trust

Copy from a Roman original of the 1st century AD. e. Italy, 16th century© State Hermitage Museum

The second common type of portrait of Caesar is the so-called bust of Chiaramonti (now kept in the Vatican Museums). Adjacent to it is another bust from Turin, sculptures from Parma, Vienna and a number of others.

Bust of Chiaramonti. 30-20 BC ancientrome.ru

The famous “Green Caesar” is kept in the Berlin Antique Collection.

"Green Caesar" from the exhibition of the Old Museum. 1st century BC e. Louis le Grand / Wikipedia Commons

Finally, in the fall of 2007, another alleged bust of Julius Caesar was raised from the bottom of the Rhone River near the French city of Arles.

Bust of Julius Caesar from Arles. Approximately 46 BC. e. IRPA / Musée Arles Antique / Wikipedia Commons

You can also see a good selection of sculptural portraits of Caesar here.

It is noticeable that even within the same type, the portraits are not very similar to each other, and if you compare one type with another, it is not at all clear how they can be the same person. At the same time, ancient Roman portrait sculpture was distinguished by a very high level of realism and consistently achieved portrait resemblance. To be convinced of this, just look at the numerous portraits of later emperors - Augustus, for example, or Marcus Aurelius. They cannot be confused with each other or with anyone else.

What's the matter? The fact is that almost all ancient sculptural portraits that have come down to us are not signed and their attribution is a matter of highest degree fortune-telling. Signed portrait images were found only on coins, and Caesar was the first Roman whose image appeared on coins during his lifetime (this happened in 44 BC, and already on March 15 of this year, on the ever-memorable Ides of March, he was killed ). Caesar's denarius, minted by the mint official Marcus Mettius, became the model for all later coins of imperial times.


Obverse of the denomination of Mar-ka Met-tius with the image of Julius Caesar. 44 BC e. Museum of Fine Arts / Bridgeman Images / Fotodom

The 55-year-old Caesar was depicted on the denarius with the realism characteristic of the late Republican era: a very long neck with folds, a protruding Adam's apple, a wrinkled forehead, a thin face, in some versions - wrinkles in the corners of the eyes, a wreath, which, according to rumors, Caesar camouflaged his baldness. But still, a coin is a special genre, and the attribution of a sculptural bust on the basis of a stylized numismatic picture is an unreliable matter. Of course, archaeologists from Arles wanted as many people as possible to know about the Roman bust of outstanding quality - which is undoubtedly a rare find - and this should also help finance the work. And for such a purpose, the “bust of Julius Caesar” is more suitable than the “bust of an unknown Roman.” The same caution must be applied to all other sculptural images of Julius Caesar.

In how the public imagines a character, reputation is often more important than credibility. If we search on Google images for Emperor Vitellius, we will first of all be shown a bust from the Louvre depicting an obese, arrogant person with a triple chin. This correlates well with the image of the emperor, who, according to Suetonius, “was most distinguished by gluttony and cruelty.” But the surviving coins show a completely different face - a man also not thin, but certainly not with a snub nose.

Bust of a man (pseudo-Vitellius). Copy from an earlier sculpture. 16th century© Wikimedia Commons

Denarius of Emperor Vitellius. '69© Wikimedia Commons

Myth 3. He could do several things at once.

Have you ever heard your mother or grandmother say, “Don’t read while you eat, you’re not Gaius (or Caius) Julius Caesar”? This warning is based on the idea that Caesar could multitask and that this kind of multitasking was his unique property, inaccessible to most people.

Firstly, this meme is most common in Russia. This is not the case in Western European cultures. stable expression, although the fact itself is known and sometimes mentioned. However, finding it in sources is not so easy. Suetonius says nothing about this in his biography of Caesar. Plutarch, with reference to a certain Oppius, notes that Caesar “during the campaign, he also practiced sitting on a horse and dictating letters, simultaneously occupying two or even... larger number scribes." This remark is inserted between a mention of his dashing physical dexterity (“He knew how to put his hands back and put them behind his back, to launch his horse at full speed” - if you think that this is not so difficult, I remind you that ancient horsemen did not use stirrups) and a story about the invention of SMS (“They say that Caesar was the first to come up with the idea of ​​​​conversing with friends about urgent matters through letters, when the size of the city and exceptional busyness did not allow meeting in person”).


Julius Caesar dictates his sayings. Painting by Pelagio Palagi. 19th century Palazzo del Quirinale/Bridgeman Images

Pliny the Elder speaks in somewhat more detail about this feature in his monumental work Natural History. He finds the liveliness of mind that distinguished Caesar unprecedented: “They report that he could write or read and at the same time dictate and listen. He could dictate four letters to his secretaries at a time, and on the most important issues; and if he was not busy with anything else, then seven letters.” Finally, Suetonius, in his biography of Augustus, notes that Julius Caesar, during the circus games, “read letters and papers or wrote answers to them,” for which he was subject to criticism, and Augustus made efforts not to repeat this PR mistake of his adoptive father.

We see that we are not talking about real parallel processing, but (as happens with computers) about quickly switching from one task to another, about competent distribution of attention and prioritization. The life of a public person in antiquity posed tasks to his memory and attention that were incomparable with those that he had to solve modern people: for example, any speech, even one that lasted many hours, had to be learned by heart (opportunities for improvisation, of course, existed, but in any case the general outline had to be kept in mind). Nevertheless, even against this background, Caesar’s abilities made an indelible impression on his contemporaries.

Napoleon Bonaparte, whose desire to imitate and surpass Caesar is well documented, was also famous for his ability to dictate up to seven letters at once and, according to the memoirs of one of his secretaries, Baron Claude François de Meneval, attributed this superpower to his virtuoso mastery of the technique, which in modern managerial jargon is called compartmentalization . “When I want to take my mind off something,” Napoleon said, according to Meneval, “I close the box in which it is stored and open another. The two things never mix and never bother or tire me. When I want to sleep, I close all the drawers." This system of spatial visualization of topics or tasks also dates back to classical antiquity.

Bonus track. Where was Julius Caesar killed?


Death of Julius Caesar. Painting by Jean Leon Gerome. 1859-1867 Walters Art Museum

Caesar was killed on his way to a Senate meeting. This fact, combined with the authority of Shakespeare (who places the assassination scene somewhere near the Capitol - that is, perhaps in the Forum, above western part which dominates Capitol Hill), gives many the erroneous impression that he was killed directly in the Senate building. The Senate building still stands on the Forum and is even called the Julian Curia. But during the time of Caesar he was not there: the old curia burned down during the unrest that preceded his reign, he ordered a new one to be built, but did not have time to see it (it was completed under Augustus; the building that has survived to this day is even later, from the time of Emperor Diocletian) .

While there was no permanent meeting place, senators gathered wherever they could (this practice has always existed and did not stop after the construction of the curia). IN in this case the seat of the meeting was the portico of the newly erected Theater of Pompey; there the conspirators attacked Caesar. Today this point is located in a square called Largo di Torre Argentina. In the 1920s, the ruins of four very old temples from the Republican era were discovered there. Under Augustus, the site of Caesar's murder was walled up as if it were cursed, and a public latrine was built nearby, the remains of which can still be seen today.

Sources

  • Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. The Life of the Twelve Caesars. Divine Julius.
  • Caius Pliny Sec. Natural history.
  • Plutarch. Comparative biographies. Alexander and Caesar.
  • Balsdon J.P.V.D. Julius Caesar and Rome.
  • Goldsworthy A. Caesar: Life of a Colossus.

    New Haven; London, 2008.

  • A Companion to Julius Caesar.

Napoleon Buonaparte was born in 1755 on the island. Corsica (Genoese Republic). Thirteen years after the boy's birth, the rights to the island were sold to Louis XV.

The large Buonaparte family consisted of 13 brothers, 5 of whom died in childhood. Napoleon's father, Carlo, was a prominent Corsican politician and lawyer, which allowed him to “knock out” a scholarship from the French for his sons: Napoleon and Joseph, who was preparing to become a priest. Napoleon was destined military career. Napoleon did several things at once. In 1778, the brothers moved to France, to the Autunin College, where they diligently studied French. Despite his efforts, the Corsican accent would be heard in Napoleon's speech all his life.

Having an analytical mind, Napoleon achieves success in mathematics, but humanitarian knowledge, on the contrary, were given to Buonaparte with great difficulty, although he is interested in the great commanders of antiquity (J. Caesar and A. the Great).

After college, Napoleon accidentally enters the Cadet School (he wins the Queen's Necklace competition, which entitles him to free admission). At the cadet school, Buonaparte learns the intricacies of geometry, mathematics and civil law. By 1785, Napoleon brilliantly completed his studies, after which he had to take care of his orphaned relatives (the father of the future commander died that same year), trying to allocate funds for them from the lieutenant’s meager salary.

In the period from 1785 to 1794, Napoleon confidently moved up the military career ladder, going from the very bottom to brigadier general.

The crisis of French politics in 1799 leads to the adoption of a new constitution (1800), distributing power among four colossi: the Gossenate, the Tribune, the Senate and the Legislative Corps. After 2 years, Buonaparte, now known as Bonaparte, assigns himself lifelong powers, and after another 2 years, Napoleon proclaims himself French Emperor.

Beginning in 1805, Bonaparte launched several military campaigns (Prussian, Polish, Spanish-Portuguese, Saxon and, of course, Russian in 1812). The euphoria from the revolution in France has passed, as has the admiration for the conqueror emperor, which is why the French people are beginning to “get tired” of military actions that bring recent years(1812-1815) only defeats. Uprisings began, in one of which (in the commune of Fontainebleau), having been defeated, Napoleon decided to commit suicide. But the poison that Bonaparte always carried with him did not work, the emperor was captured and exiled to Elba, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. Napoleon did several things at once. In exile, Bonaparte's illnesses accumulated during his active military campaigns begin to manifest themselves, leading to his death in 1821.

Catchphrases about Caesar and his ability to do several things at once are not relevant and have little credibility. Researchers of this issue gave priority to women in possessing this unique ability, because a man, as it turned out, is simply not capable of this.

Dear ladies, you have probably noticed more than once that you can easily perform several activities at the same time. For example, cooking borscht, at the same time cleaning the refrigerator, watching TV where your favorite talk show is on, and not just watching, but being aware of what is happening there and commenting, and even chatting with your girlfriend on the phone. Such virtuosity and dexterity are inaccessible to men. A man is able to concentrate on a maximum of one activity.

Most women simply cannot comprehend how a computer or a book or watching TV can interfere with listening and hearing what a woman is saying. Then we are sincerely offended and make claims to the man about this: “You never listen to me!”, “How did you not tell me? Yesterday, when you were fixing your phone, I told you that your mother would come!” - Do you remember at least once saying something similar to your man.

But believe me, in reality everything is different. It's not that your man doesn't listen to you or doesn't want to listen. He simply does not hear, because during some activity his brain simply turns off from everything extraneous, which can prevent him from concentrating on what he is doing. this moment is engaged. This is due to some features of the structure of the male brain, which is noticeably different from the female one.

The left and right sides of the brain are connected by a bundle of nerves. This “cable” of nerves is called the corpus callosum. It allows one side of the brain to be in constant contact with the other side and allows the two hemispheres to exchange information. Research has proven that estrogen (a female hormone) promotes the formation of more connections between the left and right hemispheres. And the result of more connections between the two sides of the brain is women's ability to multitask, as well as a tendency to speak quickly and fluently.

According to research, the male brain is divided into sections. The configuration of the male brain makes it possible for a man to concentrate without being distracted by just one particular activity. For example, when a man stops at a gas station, the first thing he does is turn off the radio! According to statistics, men who talk on the phone while driving in a car are more likely to get into accidents than women, since the telephone conversation diverts all the attention and concentration of the man.

There are still not many examples from life. For example, when a man is preparing a new dish according to a recipe, and a woman starts talking to him, he gets angry because he is not allowed to do his job in peace. If a man is shaving and you talk to him, he will most likely cut himself. Or a man misses a turn on the road because a woman talks to him all the time and does not allow him to concentrate on driving.

An interesting fact is that women often confuse the left and right sides because they use both hemispheres of the brain. Interestingly, about 50% of women cannot instantly answer where the right and left hand are, but can only determine this by a ring or another sign. That’s why our men so often scold us for saying turn left when we mean right.

And that's not a bad thing! It's great that we don't have a moment's rest. We live brightly, participating in everything at once, we have time everywhere, and clean the house, cook, wash, and work, and look after the children and, of course, our men - that’s why we are women!

Modern life imposes more and more responsibility on a person, while at the same time taking up more and more of his resources. In this regard, many people have to do several things at the same time, otherwise they will not have time.

Is it possible to productively do several things at the same time? As practice shows, many people live in such a rhythm: they simultaneously check email, talk, and solve problems. Plus, they have a snack.

This mode of life is called multitasking - solving many problems in one period of time.

Working on one problem at a time is called single-tasking.

It seems that multitasking is far superior to single-tasking in its effectiveness. Is it true?

Unfortunately, everything is exactly the opposite.

Whatever multitasking involves, in addition to purely physical participation, this mode of work always seriously increases the demands on both the human brain and the emotional sphere in general.

At the same time, both with multitasking and with single-tasking, a person cannot go beyond the limits of his own resources.

But if, with single-tasking, all the forces of the body, roughly speaking, are aimed at solving one specific problem with maximum efficiency, then with multitasking, these same forces are scattered over many areas.

In this regard, if a person does many things at the same time (even if it is a set of extremely simple actions), then this negatively affects the productivity of his work:

  • The brain has difficulty sorting and filtering out information;
  • Human memory in such conditions works with low efficiency;
  • Thought processes, due to scattered attention, are disrupted;
  • The concentration of attention itself falls;
  • It is difficult for a person to complete a job he has started;
  • The percentage of creative, imaginative solutions is low.

It turns out that even introducing a simple action simultaneously with the main work can seriously reduce the likelihood of a quick positive result.

What happens if you do only one thing at a time?

Sequential task completion, as opposed to multitasking, is an efficient way to work.

With single-tasking everything thought processes are subordinated to only one thing: to complete the work as accurately, efficiently and quickly as possible.

At the same time, the brain of such a person retains concentration much longer and is able to work without losing speed and efficiency. A Creative skills people are subordinated to one task - finding the most the right decision Problems.

Remember how often we do something while simultaneously listening to our favorite songs, talking with someone on distant topics, or periodically glancing at the TV screen.

By learning to avoid this (to avoid even this kind of multitasking), we can take our productivity and efficiency to a whole new level.

Canadian psychologists studied the process of solving two problems at the same time by the human brain. And they found out that in fact the brain switches very quickly from one task to another, rather than solving them in parallel. At the same time, the speed of such switching can be increased by training.

The researchers used a tomograph to monitor brain activity and determined that the prefrontal cortex plays a key role in juggling two tasks at once. It cannot provide truly parallel actions, but it can solve two different problems sequentially.

What they were doing?

A group of seven subjects were asked to solve two problems. In the first, by pressing one of two buttons, it was necessary to sort the images that appeared on the screen. In the second, it was necessary to sort the sounds - and not by pressing a button, but by saying the answer out loud.

Even at the beginning of the experiment, psychologists saw a logical picture. Separately, the subjects coped with any of the tasks quite quickly, but an attempt to solve both of them at the same time led to a sharp deterioration in the results. Training for two weeks in solving both problems simultaneously significantly increased not only the speed of solving each task separately, but also their simultaneous completion. Although, as further analysis of the experiment results showed, the brain was never able to become truly multitasking.

How exactly?

The fact that with the help of training you can speed up the solution of two parallel problems is not a new fact in itself, and therefore of little interest from a scientific point of view. Scientists were interested not only in the ability to learn to solve several different problems at the same time, but also in how the brain changes during such training.

Scientists have suggested that multitasking can be achieved in several ways. For example, in the process of learning a certain task, the brain can switch from the prefrontal cortex to other structures: in this case, subjects would sort pictures or sounds automatically, without conscious participation. A similar effect can be achieved by allocating separate groups of cells for a task that are not occupied with anything else: a section of the cerebral cortex would be responsible for its task.

However, most of the possible explanations were recognized by scientists as untenable when processing the results of the experiment. Multitasking actually turned out to be associated not with the emergence of separate specialized areas, but with the acceleration of the prefrontal cortex.

Is it possible to become a multitasker?

The researchers, who described their experiment in the journal Neuron, were able to show that when the brain solves two problems at the same time, it constantly switches from one to the other. These switches require a certain amount of time, which can be reduced through training - however, not to an arbitrarily small amount. In addition, the success of training largely depends on the complexity of the task. Rene Marois, one of the researchers, noted that requiring complex logical operations tasks are solved by areas of the brain not involved in solving simple tasks.

Finding out exactly how the human brain adapts to perform multiple tasks at once is important not only for understanding the principles of the brain as a whole. A driver talking on a cell phone or a machine operator who is distracted by a question finds himself in similar conditions. And air traffic controllers have to constantly solve several problems at once, and a mistake can lead to disaster. If psychologists find out exactly how the brain copes with such situations, it will be possible to develop recommendations for risk groups.