terror,paranoia,hilarity and calculated madness on the way to the transit of Venus- tone in chapters 456

[David Ewers]

The other side of the coin (...this one works with the idea of the Line as another of Pynchon's War/Science-wrought projections "[o]f forces less visible...", I think...):

That the question isn't why the l'Grand eventually split so much as why a scientific expedition would get so bloody in the literal first place.  Maybe, just as Science was understood to travel by war machine, so it was considered to be part of the war machinery itself (even Mason and Dixon, running messages...).  After all, does it make sense for a wartime military to replace its guns with scientific equipment, if science isn't seen as a weapon?  Advantageous peace might be a military objective, but I can't imagine even Enlightenment generals working to replace the art of warfare with the art of surveying.  

The laissez-passer reminds me:  I was reading a bit about the HMS Seahorse that sailed during the 1760s.  It was damaged during a 1778 battle with a French squadron led by the le Brillant (maybe why the Seahorse bucked at the HMS Brilliant in M-&D-?).  The French squadron included the frigate Sartine.  Two weeks after the battle the Seahorse captured Sartine, which subsequently became the HMS Sartine. 
Anyway, it got me thinking maybe the laissez-passer for scientists was for the same reasons we gave Nazi scientists jobs instead of death sentences: not because of how peaceful they are as people, but rather how useful they are as weapons, should they be captured.

BTW, a young Horatio Nelson was assigned as midshipman to this very HMS Seahorse, through the influence of his uncle, Maurice Suckling.  Suppose Maurice is related to Darby?



On Jan 23, 2015, at 3:11 PM, Monte Davis wrote:

> Maybe a bit too science-specific -- before "total war" came into fashion, many kinds of cross-border social and cultural links continued while the kings and princes marched around. (Passports didn't become routine until WWI, remember.) But the Enlightenment definitely boosted, as the Ranaissance had, the idea of scholarship -- and then science -- as above the fray.  
> 
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 5:06 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Clearly, it seems to me, Pynchon is "saying' that if combat, war,
> killing was turned aside because science.....then he is, at least,
> showing science as a hopeful thing out of the Enlightenment here in
> the late 1700s. England and France were the Western World
> at war so...................
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 4:58 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Here's an account of a French Transit of Venus expedition that set sail shortly before the Seahorse expedition. Lots of similarities, in terms of being undergunned and over-cargoed:
> >
> > By and large, things did not go as well for the French expeditions.
> > Alexandre-Gui Pingre left Paris on November 17, 1760, for his
> > destination of the island of Rodrigues, viewing his forthcoming voyage
> > with foreboding. This despite another remarkable novelty of the times.
> > Although Britain and France were locked in bitter battle, the Academie
> > Royale des Sciences had appealed directly to British authorities to grant
> > Pingre a laissez-passer, a letter instructing all British naval and military
> > personnel "not to molest his person or Effects upon any account, but to
> > suffer him to proceed without delay or Interruption." This was indeed
> > granted, although since sea battles tended to exchange gunfire first and
> > civilities later, if at all, Pingre's misgivings were not misplaced.
> > The transit party sailed on the Comte d'Argenson, a warship that found
> > itself with less than half its normal complement of guns in order to
> > extend its cargo capacity to that needed for the expedition. (There had
> > been a heated dockside argument over the baggage, Pingre arguing
> > furiously that seven or eight hundred pounds was not too much for an
> > astronomer!) To the horror of all on board, a group of five British
> > warships was sighted only one day out from port. To allow full play of
> > its remaining guns, the ship's crew tore down the temporary cabins that
> > had been erected for Pingre's companions, the latter and their
> > belongings being flung unceremoniously into Pingre's cabin for the
> > time being. Fortunately, though, a combination of suitable winds, the
> > long winter night, and the captain's skills allowed the Comte to slip
> > away unmolested, and everyone settled down to the remaining four
> > months of their voyage.
> >
> > ttp://www.mdlpp.org/pdf/library/SeahorseMdTransitofVenus.pdf (posted previously)
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> >
> > From: Monte Davis
> >
> > Subject: Re: terror,paranoia,hilarity and calculated madness on the way to the transit of Venus- tone in chapters 456
> >
> >
> > A bell rang when I read this Pynchon passage in 1997: I was sure I'd read somewhere, long before, about Napoleon himself using the French captain's words, or very similar phrasing, w/r/t letting some expedition pass, returning some naturalist's specimen collection that had been captured, or the like. But I've never tracked it down, nor did it turn up in the 1997 or 2001 group readings here. (Nor do I know of any answer to your question about how the French captain would have known of M&D's presence, other than Pynchonian conspiracism about the the higher levels of Them, e.g. IG Farben,  Shell, GE et al. carrying on despite the distraction of WWII.)
> > FWIW: In 1813, when Great Britain was at war with Napoleon's France, English scientist Humphry Davy traveled freely on the Continent and in Paris collected a prize and medal funded by Napoleon for the best work on galvanism. (While not common, such interactions were not unknown in other fields of scholarship as well as science.) Davy remarked to an associate: "But if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed be a civil war of the worst description: we should rather, through the instrumentality of the men of science soften the asperities of national hostility." Quoted in Gavin de Beer, The Sciences Were Never at War (1960).
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 11:10 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Which brings up the question of why the l'Grand turned away. Was it really, as Smith (filtered through Cherrycoke) reported, "France is not at war with the sciences?" If so, how did they eventually figure out, mid-attack, that this was a scientific expedition? Was Smith able to get the letters of passage over to the other captain? Kind of seems there should have been some identifying marker - a sail with a sun and two crossed telescopes instead of the skull and bones? - to prevent attacks before they started.
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> 

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