THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND
MATTHEW BOULTON ERASMUS DARWIN WILLIAM MURDOCK JOSEPH PRIESTLEY JAMES WATT JOSIAH WEDGEWOOD
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
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1770
1 Dr. Erasmus Darwin had his portrait done, by Joseph Wright, and began the writing of ZOONOMIA.
His deep small pox pits were of course omitted from the painting.
THE SCIENCE OF 1770
His wife Mary (Polly) Howard Darwin died “after a long and suffering illness.” The grandson Charles Robert 1. Although Dr. Darwin’s grandson Charles Robert would read ZOONOMIA at the age of 16 or 17, he would report later in life that the poem had been without effect on his mind. He hadn’t even retained a memory of what his family’s motto E conchis omnia was, or what it signified. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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would report that “judging from all that I have heard of her, [she] must have been a superior and charming woman.” “They seem to have lived together most happily during the thirteen years of their married life, and she was tenderly nursed by her husband during her last illness.”
In this year he had the new motto E conchis omnia, “Everything from shells,” added to the painting on his coach door of the Darwin family’s coat of arms (which had pictured three scallop shells). The image below is not what was painted on his coach door, but what he would have engraved for a bookplate in the following year:
Unfortunately, the Canon of Lichfield Cathedral, the Reverend Thomas Seward (father of the poet Anna Seward who would fall in love with Dr. Darwin, would be rejected for another, and, after her love’s death, would author a scathing and demonstrably false biography), would spot the reference, and –in satirical verse– would accuse his neighbor of renouncing his creator, and would exhort him to change that “foolish motto.” Great wizard he! by magic spells Can all things raise from cockle shells Dr. Darwin would need to have his coach repainted to remove this offensive material.2 PALEONTOLOGY
The biographer Desmond King-Hele acknowledges that it is Charles Darwin, not his grandfather Erasmus, who created the theory of evolution, but seems not to comprehend why this is so:
Charles Darwin read ZOONOMIA when he was sixteen or seventeen, and also listened to a panegyric in praise of evolution from his 2.Imagine parking in the parking lot of your local fundie church, nowadays, with one of those “Darwin” fish-with-legs logos on the trunk lid of your car! Why was such a motto so offensive? –Because the official story then, which would be the official story during Charles Darwin’s life as well, and would be the official story during Henry Thoreau’s life, and would be the official story at the Scopes monkey trial in Tennessee, and is still the official story, as for instance the official belief system of the Wubya administration of born-again Christians — is that our lives, to be of significance to us, to be meaningful to us, must have a divine purpose and legitimation. (That’s why we attacked Iraq — Wubya’s God told him he needed to “take Saddam out.” Wubya’s administration wasn’t mainly about stealing from the poor and giving to the rich. Wubya’s life, in fact, post-salvation, has divine purpose and legitimation. It is now a life as full of meaning, as once it was full of drunken revels.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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friend Dr Robert Grant at Edinburgh University. “At this time I greatly admired the ZOONOMIA,” he says. But neither Grant nor ZOONOMIA had “any effect on my mind.” This is true: otherwise he would have become an evolutionist before going on the voyage of the Beagle, rather than after. Therefore, perhaps, I should here explicate why it was that creating the theory of evolution was left for Charles, and why it was that the early reading of ZOONOMIA, with its recognition of evolution, did nothing in this regard: it is one thing to regard evolution as a fact, and another thing entirely to create a theory which accounts for it by hypothesizing a plausible mechanism and demonstrating the inevitability of this mechanism. Lots of people regarded evolution as a fact, before Charles created his theory. Almost as many people were perfectly well aware of evolution as a fact in 1770, as had been perfectly well aware in 1491 that the earth was a globe — before Columbus obtained funding to sail west from Spain!
During the 1770s, Erasmus would be helping to found The Birmingham Lunar Society, a social club for the great scientists and industrialists of the day. The society would hold its monthly meetings at the Soho House on the Monday night nearest the full moon, and this supposedly was so that the attenders would afterwards be
able to find their way home. This society has been characterized as the think tank of the industrial revolution. Members of the society included the Reverend Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, Friend Samuel Galton, a wealthy Quaker industrialist who eventually would be disowned due to his manufacture of firearms, William Small, the eccentrics Thomas Day and Richard Edgeworth, the Matthew Boulton who was known as “the creator of Birmingham,” James Watt, William Withering, James Keir, and Josiah Wedgewood.
Other personages linked to this society include Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Rudolph Erich Raspe, and William Murdock, developer of a self-propelled vehicle and the inventor of gas lighting. (Murdock would end his days living at the court of the Shah of Persia, where he would be credited with being an incarnation of Marduk, ancient god of light.) THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM HDT WHAT? INDEX
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LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
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1772
The Reverend Joseph Priestley’s THE HISTORY AND PRESENT STATE OF DISCOVERIES RELATING TO VISION LIGHT, AND COLOURS speculated on the luminous quality of various animals and plants, such as glow-worms, and the cause of rainbows, halos, and other such luminous phenomena in the atmosphere. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
In this year the Reverend discovered the nitrous oxide (laughing gas) with which college students would famously experiment, which eventually would prove to be useful as a dental anesthetic (for instance, in beautiful downtown Boston during the 1840s when Henry Thoreau had all his teeth pulled at once). ANESTHESIA
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Dr. Erasmus Darwin constructed a speaking machine.
THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM His grandson would describe this machine as follows: His machine, or “head, pronounced the p, b, m, and the vowel a, with so great nicety as to deceive all who heard it unseen, when it pronounced the words mama, papa, map, and pam; and it had a most plaintive tone, when the lips were gradually closed.” Edgeworth also bears witness to the capacity of this speaking head. Lunar Society “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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(Interestingly, while I was working for the General Electric Armament Systems Department in Burlington, Vermont in 1969, a management trainee brought in an apparatus of tubes and pistons operated by air pressure which he of course blandly claimed to have invented on his own, which could approximate human speech. His idea was that we were to put this apparatus on a bullhorn out in the warehouse, and use it to read out the part numbers and nomenclatures of parts which the warehouse workers were to collect and send to the factory. It was curious to suppose that this just-graduated-from-college trainee would have invented such a Rube Goldberg device as it was far more complex than, and far inferior in performance to, simply placing an existing telephone on an existing squawk-box. His idea of course came to nothing — but I did not think to investigate his assertion that he had invented this device all on his own.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1774
August 1, Monday: The Reverend Joseph Priestley’s EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS ON DIFFERENT KINDS OF AIR disclosed that burning a candle in a closed container changes the quality of the atmosphere so the flame is extinguished. Animals placed in that environment quickly die. A living sprig of mint renews the air so a candle will once again burn. Today we know that the non-flammable air is carbon dioxide; growing a plant in such an environment replenishes the oxygen which is necessary to sustain life. On learning of his results, Benjamin Franklin, a correspondent of Priestley’s, would comment in a letter: “I hope this [rehabilitation of air by plants] will give some check to the rage of destroying trees that grow near houses, which has accompanied our late improvements in gardening from an opinion of their being unwholesome.”3 The Reverend’s other experiments during this decade would have to do with the properties of vegetables growing in light, and the properties of water and air. Through such experiments he would conclude that water is the basis for all air. Priestley would exchange data and specimens with Claude Louis Berthollet, Joseph Banks, Richard Kirwan, Peter Woulfe, and Karl Scheele. He would discuss his work with, among others, Matthew Boulton, James Keir, James Watt, William Withering, and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, contemporaries with whom he was meeting monthly at the Soho
House in a group known as the Lunar Society. These people thought big: through their discussions of pure and applied sciences, the Society intended to transform the face of England materially, socially, and culturally. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
In Boston, the mode of government was altering in response to pressure from Great Britain, and it was anticipated that the Americans were not going to take something like this lying down: In July the “Act for the better regulation of the government of Massachusetts Bay” was received in Boston; in conformity to which the Mandamus Council and many other officers were appointed. This produced great excitement in the community and evil consequences were anticipated. The people seemed determined not to submit to an act so unconstitutional and oppressive. During this commotion an individual went secretly to Cambridge on the 1st of August, contrary to the unanimous wish of his fellow citizens, to inform some of the members of the Council, of the state of public feeling, and to put them on their guard against an attack from the people, which he thought likely to take place.4
3. This was a strange remark to be coming from Franklin, since as a person responsible for city fire control he had expressed himself in opposition to the idea of people having any trees at all on their house lots and along the sidewalks in the city of Philadelphia — trees that might carry a house fire from one structure to another, trees that belonged out in the countryside. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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4. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1779
Dr. Erasmus Darwin constructed a machine that caused what was being written with one pen to be replicated by a second, linked pen (despite what you may have hears about Thomas Jefferson’s copy machine at Monticello, the two such devices created by Dr. Darwin remain the only ones ever constructed that were capable of producing a copy entirely indistinguishable from the original!), and an effective horizontal windmill for the grinding of flints — and sketched a multi-mirror telescope.
THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM He completed his botanical garden at Abnalls, Lichfield.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1781
March 6, Tuesday: According to the journal of Friend Thomas B. Hazard or Hafsard or Hasard of Kingstown, Rhode Island,5 “General Washington went to Newport this day. The town was illuminated.” Presumably Washington and his escort of 20 soldiers had arrived over the old Pequot trail out of Connecticut and had crossed over to Newport on the ferry.
People were trying to kill each other at Wetzell’s or Whitsall’s Mills and at Wiboo Swamp in South Carolina. (I wish they’d learn to stop doing that.)
In England, Erasmus Darwin and the widowed Elizabeth Pole were wed. She was wealthy, so during this month they would move from Lichfield to her grand home, Radburn Hall near Derby.
This of course meant that Dr. Darwin would no longer be able to attend the monthly meetings of the Lunar Society at the Soho House in Birmingham — that his future contacts with these friends would be through correspondence. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
5. He was a blacksmith and sometimes rode to Quaker meeting with his wife on the same horse — and sometimes she would fall off but “not hurt herself much.” He was called “Nailer Tom” because of the nails he trimmed from scrap iron, and in order to distinguish him from a relative known as “College Tom,” from another relative known as “Shepherd Tom,” and from his own son who –because he had fits– was known as “Pistol-Head Tom.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1783
March: Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who was missing his monthly meetings at the Soho House with the Lunaticks of Birmingham,
participated in the founding of a new philosophical (that is, scientific) society in Derby, to replace an earlier one there that had there collapsed. Since the first meeting of this society was at his house, it appear probable that he played a principal role.
THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
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December 26, Friday: At a Philosophical Society event in Derby (Soho House of the Lunar Society in Birmingham no longer being available to him due to distance),
Dr. Erasmus Darwin released a 5-foot balloon of hydrogen gas and it traveled 30 miles.
This was a first in England. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1786
The Reverend Joseph Priestley’s HISTORY OF EARLY OPINIONS CONCERNING JESUS CHRIST developed his ideas on Unitarianism. King George III and many other Englishmen were convinced that Priestley had gone atheist. Priestley moved to Birmingham where he became friends with businessmen and scientists such as John Wilkinson, Josiah Wedgewood, Matthew Boulton, and James Watt. Whereas Priestley’s scientific work, for example, his discovery of oxygen, was welcomed, his religious and political views were constantly getting him into trouble. The Reverend and his friend Richard Price became leaders of a group of men known as the Rational Dissenters. I consider my settlement at Birmingham as the happiest event of my life. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM As the congregation at the Stone Chapel in Boston wished to remain connected with the Episcopal Church, in this year they sent a request to Bishop Samuel Seabury to have the Reverend James Freeman ordained as their rector. Because of the controversy surrounding the changes that had been made to the chapel’s liturgy, Bishop Seabury replied that he would require the recommendation of his presbyters. After interviewing the Reverend Freeman and confirming that he did not subscribe to the Trinity, the presbyters denied his application for ordination. A more liberal-minded clergyman, Dr. Samuel Provoost, bishop-elect of New-York, also declined his support — but all this meant was that the determined wardens of the chapel would need to take it upon themselves to arrange a lay ordination.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1789
April: Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s THE LOVES OF THE PLANTS was published. (This is Part II of THE BOTANIC GARDEN.)
In the course of this poem Dr. Darwin had occasion to express his distress at the thought of slavery. Anyone who tolerates human enslavement is approximately as guilty as is the slavemaster himself: Throned in the vaulted heart, his dread resort, Inexorable CONSCIENCE holds his court; With still small voice the plots of Guilt alarms. Bares his mask’d brow, his lifted hand disarms; But wrapp’d in might with terrors all his own, He speaks in thunder, when the deed is done. Hear him, ye Senates! hear this truth sublime, He, who allows oppression, shares the crime.
Horace Walpole (1717-1797) who was being referred to in England as their “Prime Minister of Taste,” would think highly of this literary effort.
During this month Dr. Darwin was advised that in Birmingham, England, muzzles or gags were being presently manufactured “for the slaves in our islands.” He began to scheme as to how this might be turned against the advocates of human slavery: If this be true, and such an instrument could be exhibited by a speaker in the House of Commons, it might have a great effect ... an instrument of torture of our own manufacture.... THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM When his grandson Charles Robert Darwin would write his biography, he would observe that: Notwithstanding the former high estimation of his poetry by men of all kinds in England, no one of the present generation reads, as it appears, a single line of it. So complete a reversal of judgment within a few years is a remarkable phenomenon ... the downfall of his fame as a poet was chiefly caused by the publication of the well-known parody the “Loves of the Triangles.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1790
The Birmingham Lunar Society, an informal group of 14 meeting monthly at the Soho House, had been
instrumental in discovering practical applications for the more abstract science carried on in the 18th Century. The group –including Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgewood, the Reverend Joseph Priestley, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and James Watt– had been meeting monthly on the Monday night nearest the full moon, for some two decades. By this point, however, Dr. Darwin for instance having moved away from the vicinity of Birmingham due to his new marriage –and the group being forced to endure a considerable degree of political suspicion– it had disbanded. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
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1791
When Dr. Luigi Galvani presented his paper “De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius” (“Commentary on the Effect of Electricity on Muscular Motion”), Dr. Erasmus Darwin pointed to this experimentation on the contraction of muscle tissue, and its subsequent confirmation by Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), to argue that the impulses traveling along a nerve –and hence, even thinking– had a non-spiritual, physical component — in that they were a function of a non-spiritual, physical entity, to wit, electricity. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
(This would prove to be, if anything, for the society of his time, at least as unsettling as, later, his grandson’s theory in biology.) THE SCIENCE OF 1791 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1793
December: Dr. Erasmus Darwin faced trial for seditious libel in regard to an “ADDRESS” of the Derby Society for Political Information to their fellow citizens of which, actually, he had not been the author.
THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM http://www.wmcarey.edu/carey/wmward/Digi%20html/dspi1.html
This had been written by William Ward after a meeting of the Society held at the Talbot Inn, Irongate, Derby, on July 16, 1792. Almost certainly it had been printed at the Derby Mercury. It had been picked up by a London newspaper the printer of which was being sued for sedition at Kings Bench Court. The case was defended by Thomas Erskine, a M.P. for Portsmouth, whose “Plan B” in the courtroom was to suggest, albeit incorrectly, that perhaps it had been written instead by Dr. Darwin. This defense of William Ward would prove successful, and then there would be no further proceedings. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1794
May: Volume I of Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s ZOONOMIA, a medical textbook punctuated with the author’s reflections on philosophy, natural history, and human life, was published (in this, Chapter 39 was an open espousal of the fact of biological evolution, in that he had all life as arising from “one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality”).6
THE SCIENCE OF 1794
6. Although Dr. Darwin’s grandson Charles Robert would read ZOONOMIA at the age of 16 or 17, he would report later in life that the poem had been without effect on his mind. He hadn’t even retained a memory of what his family’s motto E conchis omnia was, or what it signified. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Organic life beneath the shoreless waves Was born and nurs’d in ocean’s pearly caves; First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
This poem would be honored (and advertised) by the Pope by being placed on the INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. This must not be read by any faithful Catholic! It would appear in many editions, including three Irish editions and four American editions, and in addition would be widely translated into other languages. Its author would brag that it made him one hell of a lot of money! Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as the parrot. Others have acquired beaks adapted to break the harder seeds, as sparrows. Others for the softer seeds of flowers, or the buds of trees as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the moister soils in search of roots, as woodcocks; and others broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes, and to retain aquatic insects. All of which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food. When his grandson Charles Robert Darwin would write his biography, he would observe that: The “Zoonomia” is largely devoted to medicine, and my father thought that it had much influenced medical practice in England; he was of course a partial, yt naturally a more observant judge than others on this point. The book when published was extensively read by the medical men of the day, and the author was highly esteemed by them as a practitioner. Well, you may inquire, if Dr. Darwin had the idea that life forms had evolved, then why isn’t he the one whom we recognize as the creator of the theory of evolution, rather than his grandson Charles? The simple answer is that all Erasmus had going for him was the power of poetry. He didn’t got no proof. Even when his grandson Charles Darwin read this poem in his youth, he wasn’t much impressed. Erasmus hadn’t been able to suggest a mechanism which would make this idea that life forms had evolved and were continuing to evolve into an idea that possessed scientific necessity. It would be left for his grandson Charles actually to dope out the nature of this mechanism, and provide this proof.
Not that being supplied with scientific proof is always enough! Professor Louis Agassiz, for instance, at Harvard College, twenty miles as the crow flies from Henry Thoreau, would be forced to choose between Darwin’s proof and his own ingrained belief in the natural rightness of human slavery — and so of course this Harvard man would close his eyes to the scientific proof and insist upon his embrace of the natural rightness of human slavery. You can just look at these blacks and know that they are separate from us, and inferior to us. (And his buddy Waldo Emerson, having his minor children being educated by Agassiz, would exhibit the same “Negrophobia.”)
Note that Dr. Darwin was first with the theory that the moon originated in being split apart from the earth. He has clear priority over his grandson George Darwin who usually gets all the credit for origination of this hypothesis. Gnomes! how you shriek’d! when through the troubled air Roar’d the fierce din of elemental war; HDT WHAT? INDEX
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When rose the continents, and sunk the main, And Earth’s huge sphere exploding burst in twain.— Gnomes! how you gazed! when from her wounded side Where now the South-Sea heaves its waste of tide, Rose on swift wheels the Moon’s refulgent car, Circling the solar orb, a sister star, Dimpled with vales, with shining hills emboss’d, And roll’d round Earth her airless realms of frost. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
(How interestingly different this is, from the idea that Erasmus Darwin, because he knew about the fact of evolution, should take priority over his grandson Charles Darwin in regard to the theory of evolution! The difference is caused by the fact that in the case of the origination of the earth’s moon, there is no distinction to be made between the hypothesis that it split off from the earth, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a theory as to how it could have and how it inevitably needed to split off from the earth.)
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
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1798
A new magazine was created in England, that tight little island, the Anti-Jacobin, to raise the spirits of the islanders as they were locked in their deadly total struggle with the French — a struggle which was not going well. George Canning, who would later become Prime Minister, was placed in charge of this important new magazine. Soon he would be locked in mortal scriptorial combat with one of England’s primary internal enemies, the preposterous Dr. Erasmus Darwin formerly of the Birmingham Lunaticks.
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April/May: Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s THE LOVES OF THE PLANTS, which had been published in 1789, was savaged by the English establishment in LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES, a 294-line poem. The anonymous dissing piece had been authored, actually, by George Canning (1770-1827), Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the Pitt government and a future Prime Minister.
This was, in that era in England, a dangerous thing. England was fighting Napoleon Bonaparte, and in horror of the French disease and of French Jacobism — and thus any Englishman who embraced heretical ideas could be accused of being a free-thinker, and embracing his nation’s enemies. In the rough-and-tumble game of tag that was merry old England, Erasmus had become “it,” he had the cooties, he had the donkey’s tail pinned to his ass. This would be the blow from which this man’s public reputation might never recover. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM
The future prime minister had found four of Erasmus’s hot ideas particularly ridiculous: the preposterous HDT WHAT? INDEX
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notion that human beings could have evolved out of lower forms of existence, the heresy that mountains actually are quite a bit more antique than the 6,000 years that current interpretations of GENESIS allowed to them, the idea that electricity might prove to have important practical applications — and an incautious prediction that there would come to be powered aircraft, and that such devices were to become a tool of warfare:
Soon shall thy arm, Unconquer’d Steam! afar Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car; Or on wide-waving wings expanded bear The flying-chariot through the fields of air.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: April 12, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with