M&D chaper 12 pp 120-121

[David Ewers]

Wow.  You've surveyed lots of territory here, Becky.  It's great stuff, I think.  Thank you.  
Here's what I've managed so far:

On Feb 26, 2015, at 7:11 AM have a nice day, violet wrote this message:), Becky Lindroos wrote:

> 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. 
> 

Here's an interesting looking Sector, I think (kinda V. -like...):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_(instrument)#mediaviewer/File:Compas_de_proportion_1.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sector_(instrument)#mediaviewer/File:Compas_de_proportion_2.jpg


Here's an interesting article about Maskelyne and bad Sisson instruments:

http://www.royalobservatorygreenwich.org/articles.php?article=906


> **  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. 
> 
So a Sisson instrument would calculate the positions of moving bodies in relation to a fixed point in space (like Sirius)...
and would require a plumb line, which is a gravity line essentially (and a very important Line to consider, I think, connectig any point within the Earth's sphere of influence, to its center...)... so Maskelye's plumb line being "off-center" means all observations are based on (symptoms of?) a bad premise, and are not to be trusted (a case of insane instruments?)?

Here's a Sisson Sector:
http://www.royalobservatorygreenwich.org/devblog/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sissons-Equatorial-Sector.jpg


> 
> 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
> 
Cool theory for our purposes, I'd say.

> 
> ***  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 - 

I got the sense that, while M-&D- were annoyed by their situation, and a bit grumpy with each other, they were sort of putting Maskelyne on.  I really started getting a buddy movie vibe here,
(speaking of vibes... the humanized clocks, and how they 'got in synch' and all... lines that flow in both directions, suggesting that Mason and Dixon are also instruments; different components of the same thing?

> ***************
> 
> Page 121
> 
> 
> ** NEWTON is my Deity!” (said Dixon back on page 116) -
> 
> "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’”  
> 
That was my sense as well, an intertwining (the &-ing?) of Science and Religion (and maybe some Englightenment lingo?) in Dixon's mind (a combined thing, like Venus-within-the-sun, with Science doing the eclipsing?)...

> ** 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.  
> 
Right alchemical in its own right; right right?


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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l