Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Diagram #5 (Cyrano de Bergerac's 2 Architectures of the Moon)


Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655)
Voyage to the Moon was published posthumously

7 comments:

Brent Cunningham said...

Not cosmetic, no, since on Cyrano's moon there's plenty of fireplaces, air, trees, etc. The garden of Eden is there, for instance. Besides this is all pre-Newton and alongside Galileo, before air commonly is considered an substance that could be absent. If you doubted the moon had air, they were likely to slap a little of Aristotle's "nature abhors a vacuum" on you.

Alli Warren said...

2 Architectures of the Moon, I beckon you, be mine, all mine

signed,
White Male Poet

Chris Vitiello said...

Nature abhors a vacuum but loves an underdog.

That bellows/sails locomotion setup is crazy. It's like mounting a magnet so it's in front of the car and attracts the front of the car towards the magnet but the magnet of course moves at the same rate as the car so you get perpetual motion.

Brent Cunningham said...

Re the perpetual motion: the text is somewhat laconic just there, but I think I've read it correctly. True, it's completely impossible from the perspective of something like, oh, "physics." But then again Cyrano gets to the moon in the first place because he's slathered in animal marrow, for as everyone knows the moon draws animal marrow towards it.

Brent Cunningham said...

By the way, does that magnet-car trick work?

Chris Vitiello said...

magnet car, like everything, works if slathered in animal marrow.

Brent Cunningham said...
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