A few days ago, I wrote about the poor quality of so-called authentic,
replica instruments on the market:
>What bugs me about this kind of rubbish is that for all the effort that
> went into making the castings, the company could just as easily have made
> them right as wrong....Is this just do to ignorance, laziness, or
corruptness?
One reader took me to task for my use of the word "corrupt" and perhaps
others were equally puzzled. I admit that I was cranky when I wrote that
as I had just spent a few days working on a forthcoming catalogue of 400
marvelous sundials in Chicago. But I have given my choice of words some
more thought, and I believe the word "corrupt" was appropriate for our
discussion, even if a bit old fashioned. (no apologies for my being a
historian)
In using corrupt, I was not implying anything devious or underhanded like
the taking of bribes to sell stupid instruments to a public that is unaware
(as my admonisher thought). Rather, I was using the word corrupt in an
older sense to mean the breaking apart or degradation of a complex thing
that has died or is no longer used. It was in this sense that Aristotle
and his followers up to the 17th century spoke of the changes they saw
happening on the Earth. The earthly realm was the site of generation and
corruption, of growth and decay.
The word corrupt has a long history of this use. We speak of a "corrupt
text" to refer to a text that has been altered greatly from its original
form after many printings or manuscript copies have been circulated. The
signal-to-noise ratio has gone down (to use a radio metaphor). The words
to popular songs are corrupted, sometimes to comical effect. Scientific
theories are also often corrupted as they become popularized and
simplified. The horoscopes in the daily papers or weather forecasts in the
farmers' almanacs have only the dimmest resemblance to the astrological
systems of the 16th century (not that these were more reliable). So, my
thought was perhaps that sundials as mathematical instruments have become
degraded over time with less use by the public and declining expectations
for them to work (perhaps because modern people think that sundials like
astrology never really worked well).
Cheers,
Sara
Sara Schechner, Ph.D.
David P. Wheatland Curator
Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments
Harvard University, Science Center B-6
1 Oxford Street, Cambridge MA 02138
617-496-9542 (Tel)
617-496-5932 (Fax)
-
