"Then, my dear brother, since you have made such a judgment, you must have a further plan? The revolution in France is a big deal, I can't believe you're just going to stand by and watch, surely you have further plans?" Napoleon asked.
"It's a French thing." Joseph said, "I don't want to interfere too deeply, I'm just going to take advantage of the situation. Do you know what a revolution means?"
"A massive civil war, just like England." Napoleon said.
"No, it's more than that. France has much bigger problems than England, and its people are much angrier than the people of England." Joseph said, "Besides, France is a continental country. In a sense, it was the centerpiece of the entire European continent. Any change in it would cause a chain reaction in Europe, and if the crown of the King of France fell, it would take many other crowns on the continent with it. The war would stretch on for a long time, and the flames of war might burn all over Europe. Countless people, no matter how noble or humble he had been, would be crushed to pieces. Like the little bug in front of the wagon wheel, whether it's a little beetle or a praying mantis that can eat a little beetle, it's all equally crushed into powder - death is the great equalizer, wouldn't you say, Napoleon? As for me, I'm going to stay away from that wheel, wait for it to run over, and then come back and eat the carcasses of the bugs that were run over, like a vulture or a hyena."
"Ah, my brother, this is really you!" Napoleon said with a look of contempt, "You have the eyelashes to lift the dust of the times and the pupils to see through the mists of society, but you don't have a brave heart to ride the currents of the times. Not me, I'm going to jump on that chariot, take control and make it go the way I want it to."
"O foolish son of Helios, my foolish brother!" Joseph said, "You presume to take to the skies in your father's burning sun chariot, but have you considered that you possess such power? O wretch of life and death, son of impermanence and sorrow, have you forgotten the words of Delphi, 'Know Yourself' (Delphi is the name of the Greek place where the famous temple of Apollo is located. The quotation means 'Know Thyself')? Ah, how unlucky I am to have a stupid brother like you, and how I must always be ready so that I can catch you when you tip over the sun-carriage and fall headlong from high in the air."
Napoleon smiled happily at this instead. Because in the language he has just used, Joseph compares him to the son of Helios, the sun god of ancient Greece, the hero Phaethon. This hero drove his father's Sun-chariot without a permit, causing a serious accident and losing his own life as a result. But he was also an unusual, courageous hero anyway.
"O my cocky brother, you need to 'Know Yourself' just as much. When the sun-chariot fell, you actually thought you could catch it. Who do you think you are? Is it Zeus?" Napoleon laughed, "But my dear O Hyena, let's get specific about your plan."
"Whatever we're going to do in the future, we're always going to need some material preparation. So I'm going to get rich before the revolution comes." Joseph said.
"Well, if you can judge the timing of revolutions and wars more accurately, it's true that you can make a lot of money. A lot of things become very scarce after a war breaks out." Napoleon said, "But just as Archimedes needed a long lever and a fulcrum to pry the earth. The more money you have in your hands before that opportunity arrives, the more you will gain. How are you going to get your leverage and fulcrum?"
"This is indeed a big problem." Joseph frowned. In pre-revolutionary France, a poor man was trying to save money, but it was too hard, even if he was a traverser. Having said that, if a poor person can make money on his own with just a little bit of skill, then nobody would go for a revolution. Isn't the reason why there is a revolution because the French system today is standing in the way of a better life for everyone?
"Also, if getting rich was easy, no one would want a revolution." Napoleon nodded back, "So you won't have a very long lever and a very strong fulcrum anymore. You'll just have to keep on honestly eating black bread with no butter and only one lamb chop a month."
"That alone is still not enough." Joseph shook his head.
"Recently the Academy of Sciences has been offering a reward for papers." Napoleon snapped, "The bonuses are great. I'm going to write one to try. Joseph, you can try it too."
The Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris was founded under the auspices of Richelieu, chief minister of Louis XIII, in those days. Now located in the Louvre, it is the highest academic institution in France. It solicited papers and gave a very generous bounty of up to six hundred francs. Also, it would be a great honor to win this prize. For a man like Napoleon, the latter was probably what moved him more. In his eyes, it was probably as much a sign of heroism as the laurels in the ancient Greek Olympic competitions. However, Joseph also thought that it was a good idea. As a traverser, he knew a lot of scientific knowledge far beyond this era, and finding something out of it to scam money and brush up his reputation in the meantime would be good for the future.
'It's just that, given the scientific basis of this era, what's the best way to get something out that's both explosive and doesn't require too much pre-work?' Joseph couldn't help but think, 'Why don't I throw out the most horrific double-slit diffraction experiment in the history of physics ahead of time and scare them to death?'
On the question of the nature of light, there have been two opposing views, that is, the fluctuation theory represented by the British scientist Hooke and the particle theory represented by the British scientist Newton. Because of the influence of Sir Isaac Newton's great achievements, people were more inclined to believe in his views, and therefore for quite a long time - until the "bimodal diffraction", the beast that shook up the whole of physics more than once, was unleashed - the particle theory was overwhelmingly dominant. And it was British scientist Thomas Young who first unleashed the beast and completed the double-slit diffraction experiment. In 1801, he used this experiment as a weapon to challenge the particle theory that had been so dominant. Yet he was an Englishman, and in England, although Sir Isaac Newton has been dead for more than seventy years, in those seventy years or so, his prestige has grown with each passing day. Any challenge to Newton's theories would have been seen as "absurd" and "illogical", and since Thomas Young had not been able to give a mathematically sound explanation, and because of his incorrect treatment of light as a longitudinal wave, which led to a series of inexplicable problems, the beast was ignored by the British physics community at the time. It was not until more than a decade later, after the French scientist Fresnel, based on Huygens' principle and the principle of interference, treated light as a transverse wave and established the Huygens-Fresnel principle in a new quantitative form, perfecting the theory of diffraction of light and thus perfectly explaining the double-slit diffraction experiments, that the fluctuation theory turned against the enemy and gained the upper hand in the battle with the particle theory. (Of course, this also has to do with the fact that Fresnel is French. Basically, the French are always happy to support whatever the British oppose. Although the supporters of particle theory in the French Academy of Sciences were still in the majority at the time, it was not so much that Fresnel could not raise his voice.)
'It's not that difficult, conditionally speaking, to realize this experiment.' Joseph thought, 'In fact, in later times, this experiment could have been done in a high school lab. As for Fresnel's proof, the amount of prior work required is also relatively limited. Of course, there's still some of that too, but it's mostly all math prep, and it's not unfinishable. Even more so, I can bring out the Poisson Light Spot experiment along with it and make them all giggle.'
At the thought, Joseph laughed: "O my foolish brother, it is rare that you actually have a good idea. It seems that even a fool can produce a sparkling thought after thinking about it a thousand times, ah."
"O my haughty brother, you know, I have been preparing for this for some time now, and I feel that I have a much better chance of winning the meritocracy than you do." Napoleon replied.
"Well then, we'll each prepare a paper and see whose paper is at a higher level." Joseph said.
"Yes." Napoleon said, but he quickly responded again: "No, Joseph, there is a trap in your language. You're talking about looking at who has a higher caliber paper, not who wins the meritocracy. My brother, the level of the paper, is perfectly debatable. In this way, even if it is me that you get the superiority, you can totally excuse yourself by saying that this is because those old things in the Academy of Sciences have no eyes and that the standard of your paper is far superior to mine, and then you can renege on the debt and you can not concede the loss. Honestly, Joseph, are you playing with ideas like this?"
Hearing this, Joseph took a step backward, looked at Napoleon, shook his head, and said in a very sad tone: "Ah, Napoleon, how can you second-guess me like that? You're breaking my heart too much. And ..." The tone is as sad as Medea, abandoned by Jason. But then he suddenly changed his tone and said: "You know, the Academy, or anywhere else, is full of douchebags. The odds are not low that they have eyes to see. Of course, to be honest, there are quite a few people in the Paris Academy of Sciences who aren't douchebags. My brother, therefore, the likelihood of them reading your idiotic posts and simply not being able to read mine is very high. So their judgment cannot be used as a criterion for judging. But ... my brother, why don't we just leave it at that, and let you be the judge of whether or not my paper is at a higher level than yours. Though you are a foolish fellow, you are a proud one, and you would not care to speak against your will in such a matter."