Category: Absurdist, Unintentional

When 2-D LOVE is 3-D LUST: Picturing another Spatial Dimension is Easier if you are Homer Simpson

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1502

A note dragging together–against their will–the movie Hypercube, Homer Simpson, Marcel Duchamp, Jimmy Neutron, Emile Jouffret, Filippo Marinetti, Paolo Uccello and Edwin Abbott. Warning: this might not work.

We saw a movie the other night, Cube 2, Hypercube, which I think is meant to be Cube², but I honestly think that the title didn’t appear that way because not that many people (?!) would know how to “pronounce” the little superscript floaty “2”. The movie was pretty interesting, telling the story of a group of people “imprisoned” in a large, sterile cube with a door on each face that opened into an identical cube, and on and on into a Borgesian infinity-hell. At one point the people are theorizing on the nature of the Cube, winding up with someone saying that they might all be in a fourth spatial dimension.

It brings up a pretty well-worn thought about visualizing a different dimension, and then it occurred to me that the only general-population folks who seemed to be most at ease with this idea were cartoon characters: and since I am a father of children, a Father of Children, I am very well familiar with recent cartoon history. Homer Simpson, for example, slips from his two-dimensional world into what was supposed to a three dimensional world, and he seems perfectly comfortable. (The equation in the background, 1782^12 + 1841^12 = 1922 ^12 is correct for the first nine digits, but not for the last thirty. Plus, since the product of odds is odd, and the product of evens are even, the sum of even and odds is odd, so the answer must be wrong. But close. And really, really good for little Homer.) Timmy Turner (Fairly Oddparents) and Jimmy Neutron (of the show bearing his name) switch worlds,one going 2-to-3 D and the other the other way ’round, with both being perfectly comfortable in their new space.

Of course the issue of imagining a three-dimensional shape in a two-dimensional world is pretty knotty if you are not having a cartoonist draw out your brain’s interpretations of the world. The great classic of this is Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, an 1884 book about a two dimensional world of shapes that encounters a dot that grew concentrically and outwardly, a dot expanding and then contracting itself in a series of circles, morphing until it appeared as a new and revolutionary form rising from the plane of Flatland, evolving into a new thing, a Sphere. The folks in Flatland had a hard time with it.

Depicting a third dimension in a two-dimensional space is tough, the whole deal being rediscovered in perspective only relatively recently in the history of human thought, being only about 600+ years old. (In quasi order perspective is brought to the West by Cimabue, the Isaac Master, Giotto, Duccio, Maso, Avanzo, Lorenzetti, Donatello, Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, and so on, not the least of whom would include our beautiful Paolo Uccello.) Giving real “flavor” to the extra dimension was still quite difficult, even in the 19th century. In the “Spirit of Discovery” section of the British weekly magazine The Mirrour of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction for 22 October 1836 there is a short notice on the “physiognotype”, “a machine for taking casts, lately invented by a gentleman in Paris”. We’re accustomed to these devices now as they’ve been for sale in toy shops for decades—but in 1836 it was a real breakthrough for making instantaneous three-dimensional models of small things. In 1836 there really wasn’t any simple way of producing a direct, proportional model like this in 3-D except for encasing it in plaster and then casting from that mold. Two-dimensional modeling was easier, and there were numerous devices constructed for this purpose as people pursued the still-hot rage of physiognomic forecasting, with simpler means (like shadow portraits) being hundreds of years earlier. (Photography remember is still three years away from being announced and another few years from being sort of accessible to middle-class folks.)

Imaging the fourth dimension was more a product of mathematics than of art, with people like Emile Jouffret¹ getting to it a little before Marinetti and Duchamp and the squirrely Picasso did. (Thinking on the fourth dimension goes back as far as Kant, at least, and the real work begins in the first half of the 19th century².)

But it seems as though the cartoon (like Homer, above) and comic book characters have a much easier time with this added-dimension issue, using it to full advantage without muss or fuss, and certainly without any philosophical commentary. Their reach across the aisles of the 1952 Rexalls and other general merchandise emporia with enough floor space for a revolving magazine stand was straight into the heart of the common reader, filling them with the hope/fear of their two-dimensional explorations into what they called their 3-D 3D 3.D Three Dee world, selling “closer-to-life stories in closer-to-life 3rd Dimension”.

It seems that the same might be true for 3-D movies as well, the characters busting out into a new dimension (sometime fully aware of it) without a care or riddle, the main effect of finding the new spatial dimension sitting squarely in the minds of the observers, who are already in that dimension and reacting to somethingf with a surprising surprise of seeing a familiar thing in its proper context.

I’d love to know what that fourth spatial dimension looks like, as promised by The Starlets…or maybe not.

Notes:

1. Jouffret, E. Traite Elementaire de Geometrie a Quartre Dimensions et Introduction a la Geometrie a n-Dimensions. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1903. 1st edition. ! 215pp. and Jouffret. Melanges de Geometrie a Quatre Dimensions. 220pp. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1906. 1st edition. (Perhaps one of the most classic works of the late 19th and early 20th c on imaging the fourth dimension–certainly well known to the Cubists and Futurists, I’m certain that it sparked any number of ideas in the art world.)

2. The first major work arrives with Hermann Grassmann’s “Die Lineale Ausdehnungdlehre” (Theory of Linear Extensions) in 1844 (and the subsequent translations of the work as well as original work by Arthur Cayley); followed by Ludwig Shclafli (1814-1895) “Theorie der vier flachen….” (Theory of Continuous Manifolds, 1852 but not published until 1906), Riemann’s 1854 speech (which was not published until 1867 and which appeared translated by William Kingdom Clifford in Nature in 1873, G.F. Rodwells “On Space of Four Dimensions” (Nature, May 1873), Dodgson/Carroll‘s Through the Looking Glass (1872) deep references, Zollner “On Space of Four Dimensions”

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Information, Quantitative Display of — Naming Things — Perception — Perspective
Strange Things in the Sky Department: Floating Ships, Cities, Airports
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

This is a continuation of a series of posts in the Strange Things in the Sky Department.

This image of St. Augustine’s City of God shows the Primum Mobile holding the walled city (Rome, or Romish) aloft, the artist distinguishing it from the earthly city:

Perspective drawing apparatus, from John Bates’ encyclopedic The Mysteryes of Nature and Art : Conteined in foure severall Tretises, the first of Water Workes, the Second of Fyer Workes, the third of Drawing, Colouring, Painting, and Engraving, The fourth of divers Experiments, as wel serviceable as delightful: partly collected, and partly of the Authors Peculiar Practice, and Invention, printed in London ” for Ralph Mab and are to be sold by Iohn Jackson and Francis Church at the Kings armes in Cheapside 1634″. [Source: the fabulous Bibliodyssey blogsite.] This was a book that Isaac Newton owned and worked from when he was a teenager, using its useful recipes and instructions to build a number of bits, prankish and practical. (This city isn’t actually floating, of course–it just looks that way.)

Here’s a semi-famous illustration that appeared earlier in this blog–perfect here to offset the older “floating cities”. This one depicts a floating or hovering or anti-gravity-something installation of a future Manhattan, existing peacefully above its former Earth-bound base, now overgrown with nature. The New Manhattan Air Island is many square miles of buildings, and reminds me of the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I just don’t know the story behind this image, though perhaps it is…well, I don’t know. There’s a whole lot of things that it could be, but then there’s the Tall Ships on the top of mountains of ice and the air-breathing skaters in the foreground…I don’t know:

[Source: http://pulpcovers.com/tag/sciencewonderstories/]

And this in a sort-of opposite way to the above, a disembodied sitter in a very articulated space:

I’m not sure what to make of these buggers, though it is very creepy looking…,perhaps its the bad-blue sky that just sets everything off badly:
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This image from yet another ubiquitous Gernsback publication and shows (another!)  floating airpad/port for whatever sort of hovering vehicle that approaches.  Interestingly there are a number of skydivers using unisuitwhich probably seems pretty attractive to skydivers today.  Also the roof decorations are unexpected!
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[Source: http://thatsmyskull.blogspot.com/2007/11/ocean-liners-in-sky.html]
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Absurdist, Unintentional — Future, History of the — History of the Future — Strange Things in the Sky — Technology, History of
Disturbing and Disturbed Obstetrical Devices: Straps, Belts and Iron Bits

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1501

Where does a device like the one, below, belong, exactly? Where in the long rolls of intellectual history should it be found?

E.A. Agerton is actually Ella C. Agerton–it was easy for me to assume that the person Agerton was a man, because to my experience when I find such devices in the patent office archives they are usually made by men. What Ms. Agerton was attempting with this device is something I don’t understand, though she does make the following statement in her Patent Office record:

Here’s another, earlier version of this beast, displayed in practical use. I have to say that the drawing of the woman’s face is deeply disturbed:

I’ve also found quite by chance that the drawings of the faces of the women drawn as “patients” of these devices can be very unsettling, hardly faces at all, even though the representation of the rest of the body is functional. For example, the face of the woman below looks as though it is part of the furniture/device:

The drawings of faces can be so bad that I wonder if anyone can actually be that bad of an artist without trying to be.

None if this even reads comfortably; I don’t know what it would have been like to been trussed up in such a thing.

This leads to another uncomfortable image. At first glance I thought it was part of a delivery procedure, but it turns out that this was the rigging for a woman undergoing a gynecological examination. The woodcut appears in the first volume of Sammelband von 7 Kleinschriften zu gynakologischen Spezialthemen, 1858-1901, and more exactly in the contribution by Ludwig Neugebauer on an examination with a “speculum bivale l’ecarteur vaginal a trios branches…” published in 1884. I know that the prissy prejudices brought about with the coming of Queen Victoria in 1837 still had another 17 years to go at this point, which could explain why, perhaps, a doctor would want an aid in helping a woman maintain an examination position without him having to touch his patient, but, well, just look at the massiveness of the restraints! Also, the woman’s arms are *inside* the ropes—not down, not holding the ropes, but inside the binding, restrained. Either way, it isn’t good, treating the woman—in either case of pregnancy or obstetric examination—as the inferior vessel.

This is also part of a long history of the subjugation of women—the medical aspects of that indoctrination were perhaps somewhat more heinous than the social/legal/ethical/pedagogical/moral constituents. This illustration, even coming at the end of the Victorian era and approaching the dawn of encroaching bits of equality for (white) women, is a fair example of their subordinate status.

I just happened upon this picture during the course of my business day—a random image compiling these thoughts. If I were to try and choose another example of the medical aspect of the subjugation of woman I think that I would choose the story of the Chamberlen family. For several generations, beginning around 1680, this family of medical doctors practiced a secret—their secret—in delivering breeched babies. Breeched babies are those who were born feet first, which was usually a death sentence for both the child and the mother. Patriarch William Chamberlen invented a device that would greatly aid in delivering babies in this position—the forceps. And even though everyone today knows what these things are, the Chamberlens kept them a secret from the inquisitive medical world for more than a century. Their instrument was shrouded—literally!—in secret(s), used under cover, with ceremony, conveyed to the delivery area in a box and brought out with no witnesses. The Chamberlens felt their invention to be their own, for their own particular use and monetary gain, and the rest of the world be damned, and at least three generations (grandfather, father, son) kept the family secret. If their family could not be in charge of such a delivery then there would be no use of their extraordinary invention. This of course would save their income from being chipped away by other physicians or midwives or whatever competent person could be found to utilize the forceps—their economic gain coming at the cost of (savable but imperiled) pregnant women who would either pay the Chamberlens for aid in their breeched births or, well, probably die. To what degree this revolting behavior damaged other people can not be calculated. I’m not even sure about how to translate this into something more recognizable—would it be like Robert Koch keeping his isolation of Bacillus anthracis (1877), or tuberculosis bacillus (1882) a secret? Or Wilhelm Roentgen shrouding his discovery in secrecy somehow? (I know, I know, this is impossible.) Or isolating a secret, proprietary cure for cancer?

There is a large part of me that believes that if the Chamerlens had figured out something like this that affected only men, a silver bullet for something or other, that their secret wouldn’t stayed a secret for 100 hours, let alone 100 years.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Bad Ideas — Medicine, History of — Technology, History of — Women, History of
The Geology of Hair

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

“The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners’ tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools“. (Ambrose Bierce, from the entry “Geology” in The Devil’s Dictionary.)

AS it turns out, the geology of replaced hair, of hair lost, hair forgotten, is rather sedimental. Its a surface category only, with so little underneath, so little actual “geology”, that the underneath part is almost on top. The only thing that seems to have any geological depth to it in the history of toupees is the part, which in most cases doesn’t even exist.

And of course the Trumpian Flip:

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Bad Ideas
On the Use of Blood, Bone and Guts -and- the Man Who Painted Dead Chicken Feet

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post–possible revulsion factor

I was looking for something else–mortality rates in Canada for a post on the value of a dead human body in 1860–when I found this book on the use of discarded goods and raw byproduct, a sort of early recycling effort. The work was by Edwin Lankester, and it is called The Uses of Animals in Relation to the Industry of Man; Being a course of lectures delivered at the South Kensington Museum (published in London by Robert Hardwicke in 1860), and the initial data that caught my attention was this:

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Absurdist, Unintentional — History of Goodbye
The Steampunk God and the non-Computer Internet, 1865

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1521

In the weeks following Lincoln’s assassination (14 April 1865) the editors of Punch, or the London Charivari printed this arresting image of an imagined near-future:

And what the future holds is this: the automatic hydraulic teapot (already “sugared and milked”), automatic boot and clothes brushing, auto bread-cutting, carving, cork drawing, sweeping, letter writing, reading…”all done by machinery”. “We shall cook by machinery; we shall have our mashed potatoes by machinery.”

There is no specification about how all of this was going to happen–I’d be very interested about the automatic “letter writing and reading” would be, particularly when we read in the next paragraph, that “Mr. Babbage’s Calculator is a mere mechanical infant to our gradually matured inventions”. The article continues: “From thinking of machinery we shall at last arrive at thinking by machinery, and Man himself shall be, as presented in this initial etching, a mere machine.”

We see in the image that there are all manner of automatons pleasing the seated (mechanical) man, though they are all powered by steam, or friction, or by magnets, all existing power sources and almost everything being doable at that point in time.

And the detail:

And this:

There is a suggestion of a “Finding Fault Machine” but this goes barely beyond its mention–except to say that it would destroy something and become our next “Infernal Engine”. I initially liked the sound of the title of this machine, though it quickly started to seem like a god machine to me–something that could and would have the ability to find faults in things, and then, I guess “correct” them in some sort of Steampunk God way. I’m not very educated in the world of speculative/science fiction to determine how early people began to imagine constructing their own supreme deity, though it seems to me that this must be considered an early effort. I do have large doubt that the Steampunk God is what these folks were talking about since it would most probably be a blasphemy, but there is certainly room to reach that conclusion.

The idea of a popular machine that was somehow associated with either Babbage’s (1791-1871) difference engine or analytical engine (which was a programmable machine that would function with punch cards) and automated or mechanical reading and writing is very intriguing. It is unsure whether the editor was crediting the future with a machine that would provide the imagination behind writing, or provide an instrument that would record thoughts and creativity directly to some medium as they occurred, or what have you. It is an interesting idea left very open-ended to the reader, which remains so even to the modern eye, because what happens with statements like this is that they get back-filled with whatever current technology exists. In 1865, the other innovations depicted for the future were mainly driven by steam, and perhaps this automated writer/reader would be too, something very primitive by our standards today, perhaps some sort of small steam engine that would help dip a quill into an ink pot….or perhaps it was simply something as exotic as a pen with endless ink. But I think if you look hard enough at the statement it is possible to see something like an internet.

And there were 19th-century something-like-an-internet things being imagined, if you can imagine the internet as an entity not created by a computer network, since the “computer” as we know it would not exist for these inventive folks (below) for another 50 or 75 years.

Edison’s was there, of course, imaging a communication device that would show live-action events in which two remote parties could see and talk to one another. A version of his Telephonoscope: appeared in Punch’s Almanack for 1879 and was aimed at the imagination and experience of only the classes of leisure and privilege:

There is also a device like this that appears in Albert Robida’s Le Vingtieme Siecle: la Vie Electrique (1890) , which is an odd but very nicely illustrated look into the future of 1955–most of which has come to pass.

Another sort of live-action and direct communication device was depicted in Camille Flammarion’s La Fin du Monde (1893):

I think though that the most interesting part of Punch’s view of the future must lie in the possible creation of the creator of the universe.

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Facial Fat and Breast Support

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Posts

I didn’t quite know what to do with this bugger, but it seems so special in and of itself that I thought it deserved to stand alone. I have seen other things like this, as in the post made two days ago on the history of enormous bras, that used stone-age implements in the patent (see below).

This toupee adherer, the thing to which a toupee would be attached, also served as a facial splint–a splint for face fat, the device described as being capable of pulling back the looseness of age.

It seems as though waking up in the morning au natural might be a bit of a shock.

Here’s another prehistoric bit, this on breast support:

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Patents — Technology, History of
Shooting Dodos, Square Holes/Round Bits, the non-Future of Movies, and the Race Where Everyone Wins

JF Science Books Post 1519

In a world where everyone wins and no one loses, why can’t we cut a square hole with a round bit. Or vice versa? Well, we can of course, its all just a matter of perspective. The image (below) that started this thought thread down the rabbit hole is of a member of Great Britain’s ruling class, Sir William Houghton, appeared in Punch magazine in 1890 as an illustration in a debate over hunting rights for hares and other small critters, in what seems to have been an attempt to further control the access of the wide working class to certain freedoms. To be honest I haven’t looked at this debate, and I’m not sure why the liberal Sir William is shooting Dodos as rabbits, but the image–independent of what it was intended to represent–seems to be the inside-out, or the reverse-inside-out of what had been the situation with the bird. It would look “wrong” even if you didn’t know the history of the flightless and basically defenseless creature being hunted to extinction, standing in the place of the rabbit. It has an oddness to it, like a very high-pitched tone that floats above a piece of music, a slightly pungent odor coming from a nicely-executed painting. Perhaps it is the the sense of expectation being thrown off just a bit with something like the unexpected-expected.

And then of course there’s the rabbit hole connection. And Alice. And the Dodo.

From Report of Debate on Hares Preservation Bill, June 26.—”They (the other Members of Parliament) could not go out and kill 300 Dodos,”—but evidently he (Sir W.V. HARCOURT) could, and here he is—caught in the act… [He reminds me of a peeing stallion–one of the most majestic poses a horse can strike]

Lewis Carroll’s Alice gets right down to business in her adventures in Wonderland, right from chapter one (“Down the Rabbit Hole”), only a few hundred words into the story¹–down she goes. In one very memorable scene (in a book composed of memorable scenes) Alice meets a Dodo bird (which scholars say is a play on the stuttering Carroll’s real name, Dodgson, or Do-do-ogson), and <things happen> after which the Dodo suggests a “Caucus Race”, being a play on the legislative process in which the Dodo-shooting Sir William participated above.

The deal with the Caucus Race was that there was no set course, necessarily, for any one racer–everyone would run their own course as they chose; so in a self-defined course with no competitors and no rules, racing a race that the race liked, it would be hard to lose. Carroll writes:

“First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn’t matter,’ it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,’ but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?’

“This question the Dodo could not answer without a great deal of thought, and it sat for a long time with one finger pressed upon its forehead (the position in which you usually see Shakespeare, in the pictures of him), while the rest waited in silence. At last the Dodo said, `EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.”

The rabbit hole was made by the cylindrically-gifted rabbit, though in Carroll’s world the rabbit could’ve been a square, a cube or cube²-something. Or of course the rabbit could’ve made a square hole, or square-squared hole, which probably would’ve been more to Carroll’s taste, approaching a very early thought on square². But people in the three-dimensional world had been working on making square holes with round bits, though coming a bit after Carroll’s time, as in this example:

The device at the bottom of the drill was made to follow and then restrict its cutting motion to that of a square, the device (considerably less wide than the diameter of the bit) cutting and scraping the round hole into a square. Which in its own way reminds me of a motion picture depicted on a polygon, in a movie theatre for example, which began in a somewhat different way, filmed on a circular surface, or at least in one aspect of it. Auguste and Louis Lumiere began the new mass-medium, illustrated here from their Nouvel Appareil Photographique Panoramique Reversible le Photorama (which was printed in Lyon in 1895/6)

The Lumieres claim for “first” as cinematographers is better understood in terms of the motion pictures being a new mass medium. Whereas other inventors and experimenters were earlier–like chronophotography devices constructed by Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz, which all produced forms of moving pictures in the decade prior to the Lumieres, but were decidedly not for public consumption. The work of these men, as with that of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope (1891), was intended for scientific and academic consumption; or with the case for Edison, at least, for the amusement of the wealthy classes, as well as for educating the children of the rich. There were certainly others who worked in this area in the 1890’s, but none really fashioned an interest to their invention for the use of one-and-all as did the Lumieres.

Which gets us back to our square rabbit hole. Soon after the Lumiere’s introduced their fabulous new invention, they decided that there was no future whatsoever in the motion picture as a new medium, and abandoned it. They undoubtedly felt a little bit like the square peg in the round hole of the needs of art, and moved on.

___________

Notes:

1. “There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!’ (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat- pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.”–Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll.

It is highly probable that no artist who ever depicted a Dodo actually saw one.

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Anticipation, History of — Outsider Logic — Perception — Perspective
Half-a-Hell Alphabet: U.S. Gazetteer and American “Hell” Lust, “B” to “U”

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1517 (With thanks to Dick Carlson for prompting this skip-along)

[Hell of Botticelli]

In spite of the nature of the name,”Hell” appears in frothy, popular abundance in the U.S. Gazetteer. I suspect that most of the naming was crustily done, and perhaps some were made in spite or jest–but a fair number of them must have been named for the sake of accuracy. Mostly the names are for geographical bits like a canyon, or swamp, bend, landing, gap, lake, creek, neck, pond, bar, gate, hill, basin or pool–the vast majority of them having to do with water more so than flat-out heat or desert. Hell doesn’t always stand alone: there are Upper and Lower Hells, Screaming Hells, Merry Hells, and of course Whole- and Half-Hells.

There’s a peculiar minority that give Hell as the name to uncommon places, like a cemetery; but what I don’t really understand are the few that reach down low, like Hell Street School (Mahoning County, Ohio) and (though less so) the Hell Creek School (Garfield County, Montana). At least “creek” gives a watery lessening to the firey name–Hell Street, like Hell’s Kitchen, just doesn’t sound so great.

There are Hells aplenty in the Gazetteer, Old Hell and New Hell, Hell for Certain and Hell for Sure–I wonder now how many other places in the United States are named for the things that one must do to gain admittance to the Lake of Fire?

And so:

Bar, Old Hell.

Bay, Hell Hole Bay Wilderness (Berkeley County, SC)

Canyon, Hell. (Millard County, CT)

Cat, Hell Cat Bay (Putnam County, FL)

Creek, Hell (Roswell County, KS)

For Certain Creek, Hell (Leslie County, KY)

For Sure Lake, Hell. (Fresno, CA)

Gap, Hell. (Goshen, NY)

Gate, Hell. (NYC)

Hole, Hell (El Dorado County, CA)

Hollow, Hell. (New London County, CT)

Landing, Little Hell (Martin County, SC)

Lower Hell Hole (Placer County, CA)

Neck, Hell. (Glouchester county, VA)

Old Hell Bight (Wayne County, GA)

Pocosin, Hell. (Onslow County, NC)

Point, Hell (Burke County, GA)

Pond, Little Hell. (Burke County, GA)

Screaming Hell Pond (Fayette County, WVa)

Swamp, Half-Hell (Brunswick County, NC–I believe this one)

Tank, Little Hell (Jeff Davis County, TX)

and of course

Upper Hell for Certain School, (Leslie County, KY)

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Darwin, the Movie “Tremors” and the Attack of Giant, Human-Heritage-Eating Worms, 1881

JF Ptak Science Books Post 1517

In the last year or so of his life, Mr. Darwin (who died 19 April 1882, aged 73) published a work that was somewhat outside his main thrust in publishing for the preceding 25 years or so–a work that proved to be quite popular, evidently selling at a better clip than the Origin of Species of 1859.

This was a book on mould, and earthworms.

The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, published in London (in October) by John Murray in 1881, actually went through a number of printings, with more than 7,000 copies sold by the end of 1882. It is a delightful book, and I can well picture the Old Man at Downs, studying the Worm Stone, thinking deeply about these little dirt-eating bits of nature, thinking about their actions on the landscape and what it meant over Very Long Periods of Time. The book of course is a tour de force, a lovely piece of thinking. It was also the target of this popular, anti-intellectual stab at the man’s work, a cartoon appearing in the satirical Punch magazine for 1881, decrying The Descent of Man for bringing the lofty human down to less lofty heights, and then stating that Darwin’s newest reached even lower and into the very muck. Well that certainly wasn’t the reach of this work, which was a pretty straightforward affair hailing back to Darwin’s early interests in geology, returning to a subject of moulds which he had published on in 1839 and 1840. Punch did take a stab at Darwin, trying to open up a hole into which the man might follow his worms, but of course that dog just wouldn’t hunt.

Formation... is just a very smart book, with fantastic observations and ideas. And it hasn’t much to do with getting Man muddy. Or dirty, for that matter.

On the other hand….

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Bad Ideas — Biology — History of Holes