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From: Don <g@crcomp.net>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Dr Mirabolis: Blish's Baconian bookend
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2024 22:46:00 -0000 (UTC)
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This tract treats Roger Bacon and Francis Bacon as bookends in a
breakout of London history from 1200 AD to 1700 AD - from Medieval to
Renaissance to Enlightenment. _Dr Mirabolis_ by Blish pertains to the
earlier, less famous Bacon, Roger. Both Bacons have hidden histories.
    Francis hid his history by choice. To keep his politics private,
poet Francis fondly, figuratively donned the cap of invisibility of
his muse - Pallas Athena the Spear-shaker [1].
    The status quo suppressed scientist Roger for wrong think. Science
vacillates between peak Platonism and Aristotelian apexes and Roger had
the misfortune to profess Platonism at an Aristotelian apogee.

    "A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing
    its opponents and making them see the light, but rather
    because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation
    grows up that is familiar with it."

This is a tale of three cities: London, Paris, and Rome. Blish excels at
exposition of medieval life - where an unskilled worker made about one
pound per annum and a stonemason four [2]. Roger spent two thousand
pounds of inherited wealth on books. Because the written word was
obscenely expensive before Gutenberg's printing press.
    Blish penned _Dr Mirabolis_ as historical fiction to enliven Roger's
dry history. Although the novel's popular among Baconian scholars, it's
unpopular with many Blish fans. Contemporary literati also appears
ignorant of _Dr Mirabolis_ given its belief in Roger Bacon's Brazen
Head. In his invaluable end note Blish reveals:

    the famous story of the brass head, for instance, is an
    ancient Arabic legend ... It became attached to Bacon
    only late in the sixteenth century, via a play called
    Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay by Shakespeare's forgotten
    rival Robert Greene. ... Since 1589, the brazen head
    has lived an underground life as the golem, Frankenstein's
    monster, Karel Capek’s robots and their innumerable spawn,
    and today, perhaps, as Dr. Claude Shannon's mechanical
    player (after Poe) of indifferent chess.

Greene's "Groats-worth of Wit" obliquely accuses William of Stratford
Upon Avon of plagiarism.

    "Oh what a tangled web we weave
     When first we practice to deceive,"

Blish credits the creation of the Scientific Method to Roger.
Unfortunately London favors poets over scientists.
    The Royal Society was founded in 1660 by a group of natural
philosophers who had met originally in the mid-1640s to
discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon.

    <https://www.rct.uk/collection/1057783/the-history-of-the-royal-society-of-london-for-the-improving-of-natural-knowledge>

An excerpt from Blish's end note says this in regards to Francis Bacon:

    It is a pity that no major theoretical physicist or
    mathematician of our time has read either [Bacon]. My
    own firm opinion is that Sir Francis Bacon's scheme
    for the elaboration of the sciences is purely the
    work of a literary genius, marvellously gratifying
    to read, but without the slightest demonstrable
    influence upon the history of science; in fact,
    had the scheme ever been realized, it would almost
    surely have set the sciences back a century or more,
    for Sir Francis, though surrounded by scientists of
    the first order, never had the slightest insight
    into how a scientist must necessarily think if his
    work is to come to any fruit whatsoever. The test
    of this judgment is that it is impossible to show
    any line of scientific thought after Sir Francis
    that is indebted to the Novum Organum.

Blish begins with a Dramatis Peronae to enumerate all of the characters
within _Doctor Mirabilis_. It's also a technique also utilized by the
Perry Rhodan epic Science Fiction.
    As an aside, by virtue of its sheer polyglot mass, the name Perry
Rhodan is destined to join Beowulf throughout the millenia ahead.

# # #

Here's a Platonic pi prize for readers who made it all the way to the
end:

<https://redd.it/1dh7jvt>

Note:

[1] At first her name was Pallas Athene, as she is called by Homer in
    The Iliad; though sometimes he calls her just Athene or just
    Pallas, but after about 500 BC she is referred to as Athena,
    after her whom her namesake city was called and of which she was
    patron goddess. Pallas is really an epithet for her and means
    the "spear shaker," and spear shaking was the dominant
    intimidating attitude of a warrior back then.

    <https://web.archive.org/web/20030219110443/http://www.thevalkyrie.com/stories/html/athene/>

[2] _Roger Bacon - The First Scientist_ (Clegg)

Danke,

--
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telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.    Walk humbly with thy God.
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