ATDDTA (3) Aether Dreams, 57-58

[Monte Davis]

The Chums leave the scene for fifty pages. Merle's and Dally's story takes
over with a quick stutter-step in time and space that reminds us just how
deft P can be with narrative mechanics: first to Ohio c. 1889 ("Not long
after Erlys had gone off with Zombini," which as we'll learn happened when
Dally was an infant with colic)... then back two or three years to Hartford,
Connecticut... then forward again to Cleveland in 1887.

Merle's dream of "a great museum, a composite of all possible museums"
should please our Borgesians. If you've seen Bergman's wonderful 'Fanny and
Alexander,' remember Alexander's dream-wandering through the comparably
eclectic house of Isak Jacobi.   

The dream turns up a wallet portrait:  "He woke up, understanding at once
that the whole purpose of the dream was to remind him, with diabolical
roundaboutness, of Erlys Mills." There's a lot of sly humor to be unpacked
in that "diabolical roundaboutness." I don't have a clue about the "Japanese
weapons" in this immediate contex, though there *will* be a weapon in
Japanese hands quite a bit later.

The Merle-Dally dialogues, from their first exchange at the bottom of 57,
are improbably mature on her part, smart-ass and elliptical on both sides --
but what can I say? I love the li'l redhead, and she will grow IMHO into one
of Pynchon's finest characters.

In Hartford, Merle reads of the upcoming Michelson-Morley experiment. For a
very good concise description, see
 
http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/michelson.html

It includes a nifty Flash animation that lets you adjust the speed of both
light and aether "wind" for a better grasp of what the experimenters *would
have seen* -- if they hadn't seen nothing, which was even more interesting.

History-of-science wonk digression #1: "luminiferous [light-bearing]
aether," with that fine old a-e ligature, has a fusty antiquity about it:
"One of those weird substances people used to believe in, like phlogiston or
caloric, right?" as I wrote in the meditation on Maxwell:

 http://montedavis.livejournal.com/2006/12/12/

But in fact, for several centuries it was just as rigorous a construct as
today's dark energy or Higgs field. It's only in hindsight that we think
"how unnecessary" --  and, patting ourselves on the back, "how silly."

Merle discusses the aether with "Professor Vanderjuice, who, having just
emerged from another of the laboratory mishaps for which he was widely
known, carried as always a smell of sal ammoniac and singed hair." (59)

Fine old mad-scientist ambience here, and another of those Weird Science
names reaching back to the days of alchemy:. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_chloride

or, for period flavour,

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Sal_Ammoniac

One might even note that "Alexander the Great is said to have found sal
ammoniac crystals in a cave in a region that is now Tadzhikistan" if it
weren't terrifying to think where this crowd might run with *that*....
.
http://www.galleries.com/minerals/halides/sal_ammo/sal_ammo.ht

Topler Influence Machine: just like Ben Franklin's toys in M&D, another of
the many, many ingenious devices invented over the years to investigate --
uh, to test -- uh, to demonstrate -- OK, to make wicked cool sparks.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Topler-inf
luence-machine.jpg

The comments quoted in Vanderjuice's mini-lecture capture the gathering
sense, even before Michelson-Morley, that the aether was becoming untenable
-- a concept that had painted itself into a corner. Lodge's list of the
properties aether must have made it all but incredible as a material
substance. Lord Salisbury, from the other side, notes that it had *only*
those properties needed to sustain waves (undulations) of light, and no
others that migth make it detectable -- in other words, it was suspiciously
fine-tuned.

Lodge: http://www.britainunlimited.com/Biogs/Lodge.htm
Lodge speaking from beyond the grave:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/lodgera.html
Lord Salisbury:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gascoyne-Cecil,_3rd_Marquess_of_Salisbur
y

The "continuous vs. discrete" dichotomy goes back to Newton, Descartes, and
beyond, where physics meets metaphysics. Descartes' followers explained
action at a distance as transmission of influence through a continuous
medium; Newtonians dispensed with that, at the cost of postulating forces
reaching across empty space. We've grown so accustomed to the latter that we
forget how very weird it once seemed. More thougths on this in the Maxwell
piece cited above.




 

Monte Davis
monte.davis at verizon.net
http://montedavis.livejournal.com/

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