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From: Cryptoengineer <petertrei@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: Dr Mirabolis: Blish's Baconian bookend
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 05:02:07 -0000 (UTC)
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Don <g@crcomp.net> wrote:
> 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)


Is there a reason you misspelled 'Dr. Mirabilis' throughout, or was it just
a
brainfart?

Pt