Post by Richard Harrison"Poe got it right."
I had no idea Poe had such a scientific interest. Poe no doubt got many
things right but his observations on the universe are so extensive and
written so long ago that it is unlikely that some errors can`t be found.
Apparently you have followed the link I've offered to Mike.
Post by Richard HarrisonPoe`s scientific study is impressive and he got right much of what he
wrote. Where did I get the idea he spent much of his life spaced out on
drugs?
Hi Richard,
This may be attributable to his contemporaries, certainly. After-all
Coleridge and buddies tasted the popular social drug, Hashish.
However, Poe's "drunkenness" was a legend based upon his death, which
recent theories dismiss through rather abstract research (and I am
rather vague as to them myself, having seen them in fleeting reference
some years ago). Either way, there is very little substantiation as
to the cause of his death except he was found collapsed in the street.
He died about a year after this work I have offered.
Post by Richard HarrisonIn the years since Poe, much has been added to scientific knowledge.
Perhaps, but Poe's contribution is not from demonstration, as he would
say, but rather through knowing the truth - an artistic intuition.
His style directly attacks the notion of exactitudes, especially when
they are eclipsed by later, more ponderous exactitudes. This is
especially shown in his wry commentary through the fictitious future
correspondent of the message in the bottle:
"'Do you know that it is scarcely more than eight or nine hundred
years ago since the metaphysicians first consented to relieve the
people of the singular fancy that there exist but two practicable
roads to Truth? Believe it if you can! It appears, however, that
long, long ago, in the night of Time, there lived a Turkish
philosopher called Aries and surnamed Tottle.' [Here, possibly,
the letter-writer means Aristotle; the best names are wretchedly
corrupted in two or three thousand years.]"
...
"Well, Aries Tottle flourished supreme, until the advent of one
Hog, surnamed 'the Ettrick shepherd,' who preached an entirely
different system, which he called the a posteriori or in ductive.
His plan referred altogether to sensation. He proceeded by
observing, analyzing, and classifying facts -- instantiae Naturae,
as they were somewhat affectedly called -- and arranging them into
general laws. In a word, while the mode of Aries rested on
noumena, that of Hog depended on phenomena; and so great was the
admiration excited by this latter system that, at its first
introduction, Aries fell into general disrepute. Finally, however,
he recovered ground, and was permitted to divide the empire of
Philosophy with his more modern rival: -- the savans contenting
themselves with proscribing all other competitors, past, present,
and to come; putting an end to all controversy on the topic by the
promulgation of a Median law, to the effect that the Aristotelian
and Baconian roads are, and of right ought to be, the sole
possible avenues to knowledge: -- 'Baconian,' you must know, my
dear friend," adds the letter-writer at this point, "was an
adjective invented as equivalent to Hog-ian, and at the same time
more dignified and euphonious."
The style is rather dry and extended for modern readers, so I will
offer a shorthand of this introductory matter that Poe offers. He is
simply mocking the philosophers, Aristotle (Aries, the Ram) and Bacon
(Hog, the pig), or rather mocking those who drag their corpses out to
embellish their own impoverished theories (AKA, the
"Transcendentalists" or our Hash eaters already mentioned):
"The error of our progenitors was quite analogous with that of the
wiseacre who fancies he must necessarily see an object the more
distinctly, the more closely he holds it to his eyes. They blinded
themselves, too, with the impalpable, titillating Scotch snuff of
detail; and thus the boasted facts of the Hog-ites were by no
means always facts -- a point of little importance but for the
assumption that they always were. The vital taint, however, in
Baconianism -- its most lamentable fount of error -- lay in its
tendency to throw power and consideration into the hands of merely
perceptive men -- of those inter-Tritonic minnows, the
microscopical savans -- the diggers and pedlers of minute facts,
for the most part in physical science -- facts all of which they
retailed at the same price upon the highway; their value
depending, it was supposed, simply upon the fact of their fact,
without reference to their applicability or inapplicability in the
development of those ultimate and only legitimate facts, called
Law.
"Than the persons" -- the letter goes on to say -- "than the
persons thus suddenly elevated by the Hog-ian philosophy into a
station for which they were unfitted -- thus transferred from the
sculleries into the parlors of Science -- from its pantries into
its pulpits -- than these individuals a more intolerant -- a more
intolerable set of bigots and tyrants never existed on the face of
the earth. Their creed, their text and their sermon were, alike,
the one word 'fact' -- but, for the most part, even of this one
word, they knew not even the meaning.
A sweet vintage of writing that makes the grape pale.
73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC