M&D chaper 12 pp 120-121

Thu Feb 26 12:25:04 CST 2015

BL> Dixon:  “ ’Tis the British Way, to take the extra step that may one day
give us an Edge when we need one..."

One of the many things that M&D really Gets Right is the accelerating
feedback of the technology *of* science -- specifically, the making of
precision instruments -- which really was strongly concentrated in Great
Britain at that time. These clocks, like the astronomical and surveying
tools of Bird, Dolland, Sisson, et al, were central to that. One of the
best popular treatments is woven into Dava Sobel's justly praised
'Longitude': the Harrison watches and clocks (developed from the 1750s
through the 1770s) and their successors gave British naval and commercial
navigators an invaluable edge for decades.

That's what all M&D's talk of "lunars" and fussing about pendulums and
sectors is about: more and more of the mathematical sciences and crafts
were reaching the level at which more precise apparatus would be needed for
the next discovery or experiment. Just as important, the infrastructure of
skilled craftsmen and their techniques of precision fed back into all the
rest of technology: e.g., the steps from the Newcomen steam engine to those
of James Watt and his successors were paced less by understanding of
thermodynamics than by the availability of precisely round pistons and
cylinders, tight seals, etc.

The next step -- the one that would really transform everyday life -- is
captured in the American technolegend of Eli Whitney and interchangeable
parts, coming about 1800. When that Dolland- or Harrison-level precision
enables the mass production of guns and cotton gins and wagon parts and
farm machinery and laundry wringers and..., the industrial revolution comes
home.
Page 120
Mason says Dixon should NOT ask Maskelyne about the Sisson instrument, but
Dixon wants to - feels it’s his job,  but chickens out.   His leaving
creates tension between the two - Mason isn’t too hot on spending 3 months
on St. Helena with Maskelyne.

**  Historical footnote:   Mason and Dixon remained in Cape Town until 3
October then joined Nevil Maskelyne on Saint Helena. Dixon returned briefly
to South Africa to make gravity observations while Mason assisted Maskelyne
with astronomical and tidal measurements…”

“...gravity observations”?  and so this is what Dixon did! - we get Mason’s
interactions with Maskelyne in chapter 13.  From the book it would seem it
was about the clocks but some sources say both reasons were important.

**  Cock-Ale:
… popular in 17th and 18th-century England,  an ale whose recipe consisted
of normal ale brewed inside a container, to which was later added a bag
stuffed with a parboiled, skinned and gutted cock, and various fruits and
spices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_ale

Another recipe:
https://internationalroutier.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/take-a-cock-and-boil-him-well/

Funny:
http://recipes.hypotheses.org/3018

So which recipe is Blackner (another good name)  using? The old one?

Irrelevant:  Several authors have theorised that Cock ale may have mutated
into cocktail, an American word first used in 1806 whose origin is now
lost.[11][12][13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_ale

* And an anachronism:  Beer was not sold in cans until 1935 -
http://time.com/3677072/canned-beer-80th-anniversary/
Other foods were sold in cans starting in the mid 19th century:
"Glass jars were largely replaced in commercial canneries with cylindrical
tin or wrought-iron canisters (later shortened to "cans") following the
work of Peter Durand (1810)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning

***  Maskelyne detects,  “… some lack of complete Trust” between M&D and
Mason is a bit grumpy.  “Lapse of Attention” - (lots of lapses of attention
in this chapter).   Does Maskelyne have to watch his tongue while Dixon is
away? Na - just don’t say “Good morning.”  -  lol -

***************

Page 121
Colonialism and Science:  -  Discussion of nationalism (or cultural /racial
superiority?)  as related to science - French and English are different in
their treatment of instruments and measurement - English overly precise (?)
and French more casual?

Dixon:  “ ’Tis the British Way, to take the extra step that may one day
give us an Edge when we need one, probably against the French.  Small
Investment,  large Reward.  I  regard myself as a practitioner of British
Science now.”  -

He doesn’t mind going to South Africa again because he approves of the
English way of  double checking.

Is that “British Way” a rather colonialist attitude?  -  kinda-sorta-maybe?
-  or is it true that the English were more thorough? Newton?  -

** NEWTON is my Deity!” (said Dixon back on page 116) -

And from:
https://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/1951/45311/000000318.sbu.pdf?sequence=3

"In Mason & Dixon the ideas of Science and Reason are so closely
intertwined that each loses what might make it distinct from the other.
This can be seen in the language Maskelyne uses when speaking of their work
to Mason: “‘Reason, or any Vocation to it,— the Pursuit of the Sciences’”
(135). Similarly, Dixon energetically embraces his work, but it is not
altogether divorced from his interest in religion. In fact, he seems to
confound the two when, in a bar on St. Helena, he proclaims to Mason and
Maskelyne that “‘Newton is my Deity’”

 ** Newton, an English “natural philosopher,” (scientist, alchemist, etc.)
had died only 35 years prior (1727) to the setting of M&D. He was the hero
of the scientific community in those days (weeks, months, years, decades,
centuries)  and is mentioned in passing a bunch of times in these chapters,
astronomy, gravity,  His work affected almost all of science in those days
but it still included alchemy.

** Seems to me that Pynchon has perfectly captured the times - a pursuit of
measurable, reproduceable, testable information about the world on the one
hand but still tied to ideas of mysticism and superstition, alchemy and
what we call magic on the other.

>From Michiko Kakutani’s 1997 review in the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/27/daily/pynchon-book-review.html

“In "Mason & Dixon," his long-awaited new novel -- and the most emotional
and affecting work in his oeuvre to date -- Pynchon offers a variation on
this favorite theme. the overarching tension is between Enlightenment
rationalism and absurdist despair; between the orderly processes of science
and the inexplicable marvels of nature, between our modern faith in
progress and the violent, primeval realities of history.

**********

**** Clocks (related to time -  heh):   According to the narrative and
outside sources the (Sheldon?) clock used to track the Transit of Venus on
St. Helena is going to exchanged with the (Ellicott?) clock used at the
Cape.  They brought the one from the Cape back with them and Dixon has to
accompany Maskelyne’s clock to the Cape -

 "to check the force of gravity.”
https://uniqueatpenn.wordpress.com/2

Bracket (small pendulum) clocks:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket_clock

**  Narrator giving background:
"However well sprung the Bracket arrangements, these Walls were fix’d
ultimately to the Sea , whose Rhythm must have affected the Pendula of both
clocks in ways we do not fully appreciate,— the Pendulum, as is well known,
being a Clock’s most sensitive Organ of communication,— here allowing the
two to chat, in the Interval between the one’s being taken from its
Shipping-Case and the other’s being nail’d up in its own, to go with Dixon
to the Cape. Both are veterans of the Transit of Venus,…”

Shelton Clock:   John Shelton was a famous London clockmaker. He made five
astronomical regulators for the Royal Society for timing the transits of
Venus in 1761 and 1769. Regulators were accurate clocks used specifically
for timing transit observations to the exact second - See more at:
http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/artefacts/shelton_regulator#sthash.sv1V1Qgv.dpuf
a different Shelton clock:
http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/2012/catherinerow/

Elliott Clock - - of the times but not necessarily used for scientific
stuff - can’t find it - but these were very, very good clocks - official
from English King.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ellicott_(clockmaker)

Th clocks are placed side by side on a shelf where  “…these Walls were
fix’d ultimately to the Sea whose Rhythm must have affected the Pendula of
both clocks  -

 *in ways we do not fully appreciate, - “*

** another call to the mysterious -

and maternal?
“… the Timing of Jupiter’s Moons, which back and forth like restless
Ducklings keep vanishing behind their Maternal Planet, only quickly to
reappear.”  (I love that metaphor - it’s original and appropriate and makes
me smile.)

The Ellicott Clock advises the Sheldon Clock that he’ll be on duty 24 hours
and

“You’ll be on Duty twenty-four hours, is what it comes to,” the Elliocott
Clock advisees.  “Along with the usual fixation upon one’s rate of Going
…”  ???

 “… one’s rate of Going …”  what???? -  Mad?

Becky

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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