A flip-flop

Harold Urey was awarded the nobel prize in chemistry for isolating Deuterium (an isotope of Hydrogen) and he was a mentor of Carl Sagan (the great astronomer). Although Sagan always thought Urey had a wonderful opinion of him, Urey had actually written a scathing review about his tenure at Harvard (and Sagan was promptly denied tenure). Years later, Urey writes to Sagan confessing that he has not always been nice and that his opinion of Sagan had been wrong.

"This flip-flop seems akin to the perceptual shifts of the face/vase illusion, an abrupt reversal that is occasionally to be found in human relationships as well. Urey seems to have conceived a new way of looking at Sagan, a way to appreciate him for who he was rather than faulting him for what he wasn't." writes his biographer William Poundstone.

All this is just another possible evidence for the prevalence of the changing nature of human relationships - from friend to foe, from enemies to allies, from pleasantness to stoic indifference... It gives me solace that it is not a unique event restricted to my own life but sadness that it should happen at all.

littlecow