Monarchy of the Solipsists

[just john]

Everything you see IS connected ... perhaps only by your seeing of it,
or perhaps not.

Case in point: Reading the NYTimes, I ran into a review of _A Man of
Misconceptions_ (
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/books/review/a-man-of-misconceptions-by-john-glassie.html?pagewanted=all
), a biography of one Athanasius Kircher. He sounded like a midpoint
between Da Vinci and Terry Pratchett's "Bloody Stupid" Johnson. He
wrote a lot in the 1600's and a lot of was wrong. Some of it was right,
though.

Anyway, the review got me searching online for more about the guy, since
he sounded like great SubGenius fodder. One short bio here (
http://www.strangescience.net/kircher.htm ) starts with:

"In May 2002, a group of distinguished scholars, writers and historians
gathered at the New York Institute of the Humanities to address a
burning question: 'Was Athanasius Kircher the coolest guy ever, or
what?' If the 17th-century German Jesuit polymath himself had been in
attendance, he likely would have answered in the affirmative."

And another link I followed (
http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122590/ ) was about one of
Kircher's masterworks, _Egyptian Oedipus_ , and showed some of the
problems with his scholarship:

"But Kircher's hieroglyphic breakthroughs were, unfortunately, largely
illusory. His sources for the hieroglyphs themselves were hopelessly
inaccurate: most importantly, they included a treatise on the script
attributed to one Horapollo, a text composed in Egypt at the very end of
the Roman Empire (fourth century CE). This tract, whose rediscovery had
caused a considerable stir in the fifteenth century, was written in
Greek, the bureaucratic language first imposed on Egypt by the Ptolemies
and continued by the Romans. The long ascendancy of Greek in Egypt meant
that scholars like Horapollo knew only the barest remnants of
hieroglyphics. ... Kircher also made extensive use of an archaeological
artifact called the Mensa Isiaca--the Table of Isis, a bronze tabletop
inlaid with silver Egyptian designs that had been excavated in Rome on
the site of the ancient temple of Isis in the 1520s and purchased by the
Venetian writer (and future cardinal) Pietro Bembo. Unfortunately, it is
now clear that the tabletop must have been made by a Roman craftsman for
a Roman devotee of Isis, for the hieroglyphs that Kircher and his
contemporaries studied with such close attention are sheer decorative
fabrication: an ancient Roman's idea of what Egyptian writing might look
like. ...

"However, Kircher's readings of the hieroglyphs did make the Egyptians
say all the right things ..."

This web page mentioned a satire Melchior Inchofer, one of Kircher's
estranged associates, wrote about his work and Jesuits in general, _The
Monarchy of the Solipsists_.

"Philosophical works among [the Solipsists] are more or less of this
sort: 'Does the scarab roll dung into a ball paradigmatically?' 'If a
mouse urinates in the sea, is there a risk of shipwreck?' 'Are
mathematical points receptacles for spirits?' 'Is a belch an exhalation
of the soul?' 'Does the barking of a dog make the moon spotted?' and
many other arguments of this kind, which are stated and discussed with
equal contentiousness."

Now, this sounded dandy to me, and I went off in search of that and ...
oh, my.

You see, I'd been imagining basing sort of anti-DaVinci Code story
around this mess, with all sorts of conspiracy theorists piling on and
getting inter-confused and confuddled. (Not that this would be
astonishingly original; Stang has often said that Rosicrucianism started
out as a practical joke.)

But evidently, real life is way ahead of me in this instance. Turns out
"The Truth Ministries" seems to think that _The Monarchy of the
Solipsists_ is a major text in revealing the Jesuits' plots for world
domination. Or at least I think that's what they're on about. Page
after page of Google results show sites with titles like "Targeted for
Character Assassination by Zionist Promoter Eric Jon Phelps."

So, great. Web kooks are already on the job. It's like seeing a bunch
of them obsessing over _Gulliver's Travels_. (Actually, that's probably
already happening. I'm currently reluctant to look.)

I grab one link to a blog, and it's by Hellbound Alleee (
http://hellboundalleee.blogspot.com/ ). Whoa, waitaminnit, that name's
familiar. And sure enough, the first podcast she links to is for Bob's
Golden Stream. Hey! I named it that! (And too bad it's no longer
running.) And that list finishes with "The Inner Side (RECOMMENDED!)" by
our own Scooter.

That's why I report it here, since I feel like a monarch of my own
solipsism.

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* Radio Free Entropy: http://just-john.com/jjMusic

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* Radio Free Entropy: http://just-john.com/jjMusic