MDDM Ch. 32 "a reliable Ticker" (317.12)

[Scott Badger]

Rob:
> I actually just meant the short snippet you quoted. R.C. speaks and then a
> narrator says that the watch was bewitched by women or
> manufactured by men,
<snip>

Makes sense to me. I just thought, that you thought, that I meant that it
was Dixon's narration. :-)

> I think that Emerson's plan might have been to demonstrate the fallacy of
> determinism (i.e. Newtonian physics, predestination) to his
> student, rather
> than merely to hide the watch. As he says back at 318.5 - "Oah, another's
> easily built .... "

But, *is* another built? I agree with what you're saying about Dixon's
lesson, but is the watch nothing more than a convenient teacher's aid? Seems
to me that technology like that would have some impact, maybe even as much
as Windows....

> And, what eventually happens to the watch
> seems to defy
> all probability or expectation, which might be why he thinks the plan
> "work'd to Perfection". Emerson's a perverse old sod.

I like the 'perverse' angle, but does this mean that Emerson didn't *plan*
on Dixon screwing up? Or, that he did but not that the watch would be
eaten/lost, instead that it would be released into the World in some sort of
contingent fashion?

Scott Badger