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Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon

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William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
> Don wrote:
>
>>
>> Another pertinent excerpt from EUREKA by Poe:
>>
>>      Kepler admitted that these laws he guessed ---- these
>>      laws whose investigation disclosed to the greatest of
>>      British astronomers that principle, the basis of all
>>      (existing) physical principle, in going behind which
>>      we enter at once the nebulous kingdom of Metaphysics.
>>      Yes! ---- these vital laws Kepler guessed ---- that it is
>>      to say, he imagined them. Had he been asked to point
>>      out either the deductive or inductive route by which
>>      he attained them, his reply might have been ---- 'I
>>      know nothing about routes ---- but I do know the
>>      machinery of the Universe. Here it is. I grasped it
>>      with my soul ---- I reached it through mere dint of
>>      intuition. 'Alas, poor ignorant old man! Could not any
>>      metaphysician have told him that what he called
>>      'intuition' was but the conviction resulting from
>>      deductions or inductions of which the processes were
>>      so shadowy as to have escaped his consciousness,
>>      eluded his reason, or bidden defiance to his capacity
>>      of expression? How great a pity it is that some 'moral
>>      philosopher' had not enlightened him about all this!
>>      How it would have comforted him on his death--bed to
>>      know that, instead of having gone intuitively and
>>      thus unbecomingly, he had, in fact, proceeded
>>      decorously and legitimately ---- that is to say
>>      Hog--ishly (Bacon), or at least Ram--ishly (Aristotle)
>>      ---- into the vast halls where lay gleaming, untended,
>>      and hitherto untouched by mortal hand ---- unseen by
>>      mortal eye ---- the imperishable and priceless secrets
>>      of the Universe!
>
> That might pass muster in a bar where people are drunkenly arguing.
> Nowhere else.
>
>
> Luckily for us, he turned his brilliance mostly towards fiction and poetry.

Even more luckily, London literary slop lost narrative control. Come on
William, live a little, and laugh along with Poe as he pokes pompous
posers.  

    EDGAR ALLAN POE: THE LOST SOUL OF AMERICA by Allen Salisbury:

    (excerpt)
    
    Poe often had a great deal of fun composing tales that
    mocked the methods employed by the leading British literary
    journals. One of Poe's favorite targets in this regard was
    Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Blackwood's was notorious 
    for its sense-certainty literary style, and this style was
    the source for two of the most hilarious satires written by
    Poe, "How to Write a Blackwood Article," and "A Predicament."
    
    ...

    In his tale of ratiocination "The Purloined Letter," Poe
    presents us with a problem that is unresolvable by methods 
    of "creeping"-sense certainty. Here we have a problem
    concerning the letter and its whereabouts. Yet the prefect
    of police, carrying sense-certainty methods to their
    extremes, cannot locate it. Dupin, using superior methods,
    does. Poe's story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a case
    where reason succeeds, while mere deduction from certain 
    clues fails.

    On this point, Edgar Allan Poe drove Arthur Conan Doyle
    into hysterical fits of defending the deductive method. For
    example, in his introduction to A Study in Scarlet, Doyle
    has Sherlock Holmes react the following way when Watson
    informs him that it is the Earth that revolves around the
    sun:
 
        "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to
        forget it."
    
    ...
    
    Later Holmes defends Euclid, the Aristotelean whom Poe
    attacked. Still later, he attacks Poe’s method directly:
    
        "No doubt you think that you are complimenting
        me in comparing me to Dupin," he observed. "Now,
        in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow.
        That trick of his of breaking in on his friends’
        thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter
        of an hour’s silence is really very showy and
        superficial. He had some analytical genius, no
        doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon
        as Poe appeared to imagine."

    On this same point--that of having the ability to look
    into the very soul of another--Arthur Conan Doyle's
    countryman Charles Dickens believed Poe possessed
    some sort of mystical powers. It was Poe's habit to guess
    the ending of the Dickens novels which appeared in serial
    form in American magazines. Having successfully "guessed"
    the ending of several novels, Poe proceeded to explain why
    it was so easy to determine the ending of a novel written
    by formula. The reader should not be amazed at this ability.
    It is somewhat akin to the way you are able to predict the
    outcome of so many of the "made for television" movies that
    you watch every night, bored but glued to the chair as you
    await the next jiggle of sensation to flash across the boob
    tube.
    
    ...

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's  )\._.,--....,'``.                     veritas    _|_
telltale tall tail /,   _.. \   _\  (`._ ,.               liberabit   |
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'              vos         |

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(tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2026-09-06 12:27 +0000
  Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org> - 2026-09-08 07:21 +0000
    Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com> - 2026-09-08 06:38 -0400
      Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2026-09-08 11:42 +0000
        Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2026-09-08 11:46 +0000
          Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-09-09 02:31 +0000
  Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon BobbieSellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.invalid> - 2026-09-08 08:27 -0700
    Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org> - 2026-09-15 07:46 +0000
      Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Don <g@crcomp.net> - 2026-09-15 12:02 +0000
        Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon BobbieSellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.invalid> - 2026-09-15 08:01 -0700
          Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Don <g@crcomp.net> - 2026-09-16 11:16 +0000
        Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2026-09-15 15:16 -0400
          Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Don <g@crcomp.net> - 2026-09-17 18:23 +0000
            Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2026-09-17 15:56 -0400
              Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Don <g@crcomp.net> - 2026-09-18 02:00 +0000
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2026-09-18 16:20 -0400
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Don <g@crcomp.net> - 2026-09-19 00:59 +0000
      Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon BobbieSellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.invalid> - 2026-09-15 07:40 -0700
        Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> - 2026-09-15 08:58 -0700
          Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org> - 2026-09-16 07:42 +0000
            Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> - 2026-09-16 09:11 -0700
              Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon BobbieSellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.invalid> - 2026-09-16 10:33 -0700
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> - 2026-09-17 08:46 -0700
              Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org> - 2026-09-17 07:53 +0000
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> - 2026-09-17 08:52 -0700
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Charles Packer <mailbox@cpacker.org> - 2026-09-18 08:00 +0000
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2026-09-17 13:45 -0400
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-09-17 19:06 +0000
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> - 2026-09-18 08:52 -0700
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon The True Melissa <thetruemelissa@gmail.comNOSPAM> - 2026-09-18 13:02 -0400
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> - 2026-09-18 08:46 -0700
                Re: (tears) Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) - 2026-09-17 20:07 +0000

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