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

[Mark Kohut]

Dissolution, Noise, and Fear. Are these part of "the Lessons more abstract"
the Rev 'went on to draw' from his Encounter with 'absolute black panic'.

 A Sum-up of the horrors of war
as presented in fiction from, O, the Iliad (where it is also a Glory)
and War & Peace
and All Quiet on the Western Front and al the others I don't know and
probably in a battle scene or
three in O'Brian's Aubrey--Maturin series.


I think science traveling by war machine, in your phrase, science an
Enlightenment good, is a key Pynchon resonance/theme.

On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 8:01 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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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