M&D - Chapter 10, (a few annotations)

[Mark Kohut]

p. 96 "He has shown an aptitude with Figures. God be merciful to him,
silently requests
the Rev.".....why?

The Rev is very ambivalent, basically sad--see his early
self-description--over his loss of faith
and what secularism might mean?

On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 7:29 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> "With the advent of the Scientific Revolution, use of the term
> "planet" changed from something that moved across the sky (in relation
> to the star field); to a body that orbited Earth (or that were
> believed to do so at the time); and by the 18th century to something
> that directly orbited the Sun when the heliocentric model of
> Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler gained sway.
>
> Thus, Earth became included in the list of planets,[33] whereas the
> Sun and Moon were excluded. At first, when the first satellites of
> Jupiter and Saturn were discovered in the 17th century, the terms
> "planet" and "satellite" were used interchangeably - although the
> latter would gradually become more prevalent in the following
> century.[34] Until the mid-19th century, the number of "planets" rose
> rapidly because any newly discovered object directly orbiting the Sun
> was listed as a planet by the scientific community."
>
>                  --wikipedia stuff.
>
> What new planet did the German Engineer add "free of charge" to the
> Philadelphia Orrery? I suggest, see previous post, it was the
> Earth......Pynchon bringing the scientific revolution down to earth,
> so to speak, a witty jab at the loss of 'the heavenly city of the
> philosophers"....
>
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 7:17 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The German Engineer, the one who travers'd the sea came to set up a
>> new Planet in Philadelphis...
>>
>> Also an allusion to the brave new land that will be HQered in Phildalphia?
>>
>> See what is said after "By the time he got to Philadelphia.....
>> a World with a history even longer than our own, etc.....'lands that had
>> to be fought over, other Species to be conquered".....
>>
>> 'Revealed to him one orrery at a time"...the harmonious cosmic ideas get
>> modified by.......reality".........
>>
>> Sounds a little like coming to America, yes?
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
>>> Continuing in the chapter -  (chapters are approximate because I'm reading on a Kindle app)
>>>
>>> Following the sermon the text gives us Cherrycoke reporting on the activities of the family as they retell and play out the story of the 1761 Transit of Venus.
>>>
>>> p. 94:
>>> "Orrery"
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery
>>>
>>> Jules Verne's:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgyXY3vPd4
>>>
>>> At Christies's for only $37,098 an 18th century orrery/tellurian:
>>> http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/a-boxed-american-orrery-and-tellurian-set-5480154-details.aspx
>>>
>>> "Tenebrae" - in Latin means shadow or darkness) - reminds Ethelmer of his darkness in the innocent light of her youth.  (Not sure what the illuminated nostril suggests.)
>>>
>>> ** Are these two kissing cousins?  Or was there some kind of abuse involved at some past point?
>>>
>>> ********
>>>  p. 95 -
>>> "...having travers'd the Sea"
>>> Traverse is the family name in ATD and Vineland. Metaphor, fer sure. For more, see ch. 3, p. 14
>>>
>>>  "Nessel" - is fictional but the discovery of a new planet is real - Uranus - 1781.
>>> "Georgian"  -   Herschel first reported the discovery of Uranus ("Georgian")  on April 26, 1781, initially believing it a comet.[12]
>>>
>>> **  and from Otto's page at http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/md/md10.htm
>>> "This reminds me of another "new planet" in another novel by Pynchon, "(...) The new planet Pluto (...)." (GR 415)
>>>
>>> Nessel (fictional?) provided Uranus for the Orreries to make sure they were updated.  And for extra realism he pasted map pieces on it - Mappemondes - (a two -hemisphere map),  but that won't really work because flat maps don't conform to their three-dimensional realities.
>>> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mappemonde#mediaviewer/File:Delisle_-_Mappe-Monde.png
>>>
>>>
>>> Solar Parallax:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
>>>
>>> Any parallax is a triangle - which by definition has 3 sides - a Jesuit, a Corsican and a Chinaman - fwiw and whatever that's about - etc.
>>>
>>> Bek-
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l