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

[David Ewers]

Thanks for this thread!  Lots to chew on here.  I don't want to go off half-cocked on this subject, but I naturally tend to side with Kai Lorentzen's "No Fucking Way", and alice malice's "... enormous risks...." as far as I understand them.  I do sympathize with Monte Davis' "cop-out" stance; however, I (like to) think that a dim awareness of larger implications of our human project adds to a sense of personal responsibility (and Quixotic determination, maybe?), more than an "oh, well; we're just Tools anyway..." sort of apathy.  Like, the Counterforce might not be able to defy the logic of the Raketen-Stadt, but that doesn't mean it does Nothing At All to it.



On Jan 26, 2015, at 6:58 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

On Jan 26, 2015, at 7:35 AM, alice malice wrote:

> So how did we go from seeing the power of wind revealed in a windmill
> to transforming the meaning of that power by putting it in a modern
> framework, where it is stored, and used when needed? A Luddite's
> question and surely a waste of time because the modern enframing is so
> pervasive, so comprehensive and complete, that we can't conceive of
> its limits from inside its frame. Technic now embodies its own purpose
> and can not see meaning outside its own purpose, its own needs.
> Technic has trapped us in its purpose and so we can't see the world
> apart from its potential to be manipulated.
> 
> Fitzgerald captured the loss of this in his famous description of the
> Long Island the Dutch Sailors spied from their ships, a beauty
> commensurate with their sense of wonder.
> 
> What happened to a sense of wonder?
> 
> Ah, the Tools, Nick was the son of Hardware wealth and the West, but
> he came East to Wall Street and Abstractions, Bonds and Derivatives.
> 
> And so, in M&D we trace Gatby's trail back to the West, and see how
> the lines were framed.
> 
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 10:19 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> But in getting to know Nature with Technic,  we take on enormous
>> risks. We are no longer simple tool makers, homo faber, but modern
>> exploiters of the energy of Earth, energy we extract, store, and
>> harness. Earth is our resource. And America, that most pragmatic
>> people, children of Bacon, frame the Earth with our democratic dreams
>> of opportunity for all.
>> 
>> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 10:07 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> One of the oldest conflicts in the Technology and Nature debate
>>> revolves around the idea of a natural order, an existing one, one that
>>> some say humans transform or manipulate, while others contend that
>>> humans reveal it.
>>> 
>>> One way to view all those folks in M&D who came to America and
>>> expanded West is as manipulators of Nature.
>>> 
>>> Do they manipulate an existing and natural order?
>>> 
>>> Are they part of this natural order or is it better to contrast them with it?
>>> 
>>> Of course, we'd need a definition of Nature and that's no easy job.
>>> 
>>> Nature, one might say, is everything in the universe. But humanity is
>>> such an insignificant spec in this definition that the actions of
>>> humans seem mundane and unworthy of investigation.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Nature, another might say,  is the order, the existing order and the
>>> processes without human alternation. But if we take this second one we
>>> can't say much about humanity and the technologies of humans.
>>> Moreover, if Technology is at odds with Nature, a contradiction of
>>> Nature and the order of Nature, we are given a place in Nature but
>>> prevented from improving our place in it.
>>> 
>>> If one argues that the West is just there, present, with a Natural
>>> order, one must admit that this is not its state when Mason and Dixon
>>> set out to put a line through it. The West, the mystery of America out
>>> there has been proclaimed useful, or potentially so, and the
>>> technology the men carry is an expression of this state of nature. As
>>> Heidegger explains with clocks and lamps in Being and Time, the tools,
>>> the tecnics reveal purpose in Nature.
>>> 
>>> Of course later on Heidegger expounded, and tools and technic were
>>> given greater weight than the mere announcements of their purposes
>>> upon Nature. Technology circumscribes our efforts to live and know. To
>>> be and to know.
>>> 
>>> Being, Knowing, and Meaning.
>>> 
>>> Back to the meaning of Nature. Full circle, so to speak.
>>> 
>>> The Tools, or equipment, Zeug is expanded to Ge-stell, to Enframe our
>>> modern existence.
>>> 
>>> We can't now know Nature outside of technic.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 8:36 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> KFL> "The Rocket as such would have come anyway... People...are welcome as
>>>> customers, but the Ge-stell would work without them too"
>>>> 
>>>> Will the Dichter explain which elf or wraith or World-Spirit or deep
>>>> carbon-rich stratum would have built Kummersdorf and then Peenemunde, and
>>>> then the Soviet and US  factories? would have allocated resources to
>>>> airframes and turbines and bodenplattes, managed their assembly and
>>>> integration, trucked the rockets to launch sites? would have talked the
>>>> legislatures, voters, Party committees into spending money on those
>>>> activities rather than others?
>>>> 
>>>> It's hard to understand why Pynchon clutters M&D with Penns and Calverts,
>>>> Royal Societies and land-jobbers, Londoners and Geordies and Philadelphians.
>>>> After all, the Visto would surely have cut itself even if no European had
>>>> ever set foot in North America, right? Axes swing themselves, chains stretch
>>>> themselves, Obs write and reduce themselves, marker stones embed themselves,
>>>> yes?
>>>> 
>>>> As a reader, I do feel and respond to -- really, I do -- the poetic and
>>>> rhetorical power of such abstraction, personification, and reification. But
>>>> when I close the book, there I am as a person on the cold hill side of
>>>> history, and I look around and see only people, doing what people do... and
>>>> that includes hallucinating Great Capitalized Motrices. On occasion, those
>>>> hallucinations are great literature. Much more often, they're cop-outs.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 7:11 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>>> <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 26.01.2015 00:52, David Ewers wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes, that's the stuff!
>>>>> 
>>>>> I sort of get the impression that the presence of these Forces or Things
>>>>> in the Saddle (good stuff!) does some purposeful magic to Pynchon's
>>>>> perspective; it broadens the lens beyond the human in a way that makes us
>>>>> humans look sort of ridiculous, clownish in even our darkest aspirations,
>>>>> but more lovable and easy to root for for it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It reminds me a bit of the relationship between the Greeks and their gods,
>>>>> except these these Forces aren't humanized (so treated more reverently in a
>>>>> way, fewer presumptions regarding behavior beyond the human?) and there's
>>>>> any rarely clear, direct communication between Us and Them (by the way, ever
>>>>> notice that there's no remembered conversation between Cherrycoke and either
>>>>> Mason or Dixon in Cherrycoke's account, even though they often found
>>>>> themselves in similar straits?).  So unlike the Greek gods these Things are
>>>>> just beyond us (to varying degrees, maybe? they do seem to have their
>>>>> allies...) but like a couple of those gods they do appear to involve
>>>>> themselves directly - if only dimly viewed through our lenses - in some big
>>>>> arc of human technological novelty.  Or something...
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Pynchon is the poet ("Dichter") of the Ge-stell.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Heidegger applied the concept of Gestell to his exposition of the
>>>>>> essence of technology. He concluded that technology is fundamentally
>>>>>> enframing. As such, the essence of technology is Gestell. Indeed, "Gestell,
>>>>>> literally 'framing', is an all-encompassing view of technology, not as a
>>>>>> means to an end, but rather a mode of human existence".
>>>>> 
>>>>> The point that Heidegger was attempting to convey with Gestell was that
>>>>> all that has come to presence in the world has been enframed. Thus what is
>>>>> revealed in the world, what has shown itself as itself (the truth of itself)
>>>>> required first an enframing, literally a way to exist in the world, to be
>>>>> able to be seen and understood. Concerning the essence of technology and how
>>>>> we see things in our technological age, the world has been framed as the
>>>>> "standing-reserve." Heidegger writes,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets
>>>>> upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of
>>>>> ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which
>>>>> holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing
>>>>> technological.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Furthermore, Heidegger uses the word in a way that is uncommon by giving
>>>>> Gestell an active role. In ordinary usage the word would signify simply a
>>>>> display apparatus of some sort, like a book rack, or picture frame; but for
>>>>> Heidegger, Gestell is literally a challenging forth, or performative
>>>>> "gathering together", for the purpose of revealing or presentation. <
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestell
>>>>> 
>>>>> In the current age science is a part of technology, not vice versa as the
>>>>> myth of modernity has it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Now, at this point - Winke, Winke! - usually someone comes along quoting a
>>>>> famous sentence from Gravity's Rainbow:  "Go ahead, capitalize the T on
>>>>> technology, deify it if it'll make you feel less responsible--but it puts
>>>>> you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of
>>>>> our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human
>>>>> elite with no right at all to be where they are—" (p. 521).  Impressive
>>>>> quote, nicht wahr? But when you look at it in context you will realize that
>>>>> it is not the author's perspective which is given words here. The sentence
>>>>> before goes like this: "Yes but Technology only responds (how often this
>>>>> argument has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction,
>>>>> among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), "All very well to talk about
>>>>> having a monster by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if
>>>>> someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't wanted to
>>>>> chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians?"
>>>>> First, do note the the argument is ascribed to younger members of the
>>>>> Schwarzkommando "especially". Then the argument is being "iterated, dogged
>>>>> and humorless as a Gaussian reduction." Neither youth nor humorless
>>>>> repetition are indicators of truth in Pynchon. And of course we would have
>>>>> the Rocket without "some specific somebody with a name and a penis" who
>>>>> wants to "blow up a block full of civilians." How could anyone deny this?
>>>>> Modern societal machination ("Machenschaft" in Heidegger's sense) goes back
>>>>> to the  mathematization of science and the corresponding closing of the
>>>>> modern mind. "Monads don't have windows," as Leibniz says. Method is ruling
>>>>> more and more, and by the 1950s Heidegger saw even (academic) philosophy
>>>>> replaced by cybernetics. The sentence quoted ad nauseam here to argue
>>>>> against a 'structural' reading of technology in Pynchon is not directed
>>>>> towards the reader, it is - do note the address "brother"! - part of the
>>>>> inner debate of the Herero Schwarzkommando and formulated from a specific
>>>>> character perspective, not from the author's general one. And although there
>>>>> are reasons for the members of the Schwarkommando, the younger ones
>>>>> especially, not to subscribe to a 'structural' view of technology but to
>>>>> develop instead a rhetoric of self-empowerment which makes themselves feel
>>>>> more male and "responsible," it is not at all something which would make us
>>>>> understand technology better. Neither von Braun nor Hitler were responsible
>>>>> for the Rocket as such. The Rocket as such would have come anyway. The logic
>>>>> of enframing, manifesting itself also in the unfolding economization of all
>>>>> things on earth, leaves out nobody and nothing. And that's a leitmotif in
>>>>> Pynchon. The author's own perspective in context of the passage in question
>>>>> is most definitely closer to the one formulated in the paragraph before: "It
>>>>> means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theater, all
>>>>> just to keep the people distracted ... secretly, it was being dictated
>>>>> instead by the needs of technology ... by a conspiracy between human beings
>>>>> and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying,
>>>>> 'Money be dammed, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake,' but
>>>>> meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my
>>>>> funding, funding, ahh more, more ... The real crises were crises of
>>>>> allocation and priority, not among firms----it was only staged to look that
>>>>> way---but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft,
>>>>> and their needs which are only understood only by the ruling elite ..."
>>>>> People with names and penises who wanna blow up a block full with civilians
>>>>> are of course welcome as customers, but the Ge-stell would work without them
>>>>> too.
>>>>> 
>>>>> With Bleeding Edge, Pynchon takes his Songs of the Ge-stell to the digital
>>>>> dimension.
>>>>> 
>>>>> (On the War Machinery do also see chapter 12 of A Thousand Plateaus by
>>>>> Deleuze & Guattari, who are, mockingly or not, mentioned by Pynchon in
>>>>> Vineland, p. 97. Since the English edition was available since 1986
>>>>> (chapter) bzw. 1988 (whole book), Pynchon perhaps had a look at it while
>>>>> writing parts of Mason & Dixon. That his interest in French philosophy
>>>>> hasn't stopped becomes obvious by the appearance of Lacan in Bleeding Edge.
>>>>> Whether you like this or not.)
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 25, 2015, at 2:31 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> To your point:
>>>>> 
>>>>> p. 39 "the emprise of Forces invisible yet possessing great Weight and
>>>>> Speed, which contend in some Phantom realm......"
>>>>> 
>>>>> As in that build-up of 'forces' in AtD before WW1, TRP sees war as a
>>>>> Force of its own. As Emerson was to write with broader meaning a
>>>>> century later, "Things are in the Saddle and ride Mankind".
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 4:36 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Guernica didn't occur to me directly when I was reading, but now that you
>>>>> mention it I did get a 'Guernica Feeling'.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Rambling of lessons more abstract...(or just difficult for me to
>>>>> effectively
>>>>> put into words):
>>>>> Again, to me this scene was filled with suggestions that the Affaire des
>>>>> Frégates was exactly that: an affair between two ships, with their
>>>>> respective personalities, proclivities, reputations etc. as prime
>>>>> movers...
>>>>> and the humans almost as components of rigging and guns.  It's as if we
>>>>> humans create the conditions (the machinery, and all its philosophical
>>>>> underpinnings...), but things have ways of taking on lives of their own
>>>>> (as
>>>>> in taking on board, while we build the ways?).
>>>>> And the Invisible Gamesters, are they (all, or all still) human?  Or am I
>>>>> just being paranoid?
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 25, 2015, at 9:25 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> just a couple more "associations' when one reads a genius.
>>>>> 
>>>>> p.38. "the Ship's hoarse Shrieking, a great sea-animal in pain, the
>>>>> textures
>>>>> of its Cries nearly those of the human Voice when under great Stress"
>>>>> 
>>>>> 'hoarse Shrieking of The SEAHORSE...i cannot be the only one who sees
>>>>> the screaming Guernica horse here, amiright? ....
>>>>> 
>>>>> A--and if this is War--it is--and it brings the nearness of black
>>>>> Panic and bowel
>>>>> evacuation, we get a hint of shattered nerves, which had lots of names
>>>>> down
>>>>> to
>>>>> post-traumatic stress disorder. sometimes, way back, it was called, linked
>>>>> to
>>>>> Homesickness (in the West) as soldiers got hit far from home and
>>>>> wanted to go back.
>>>>> That Equator ceremony started as a marker for being for the first time
>>>>> so far from home.
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 7:44 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 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
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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