interminable notes

Yesterday afternoon, the Christmas-morning-like treat of having a new book arrive. This one in a special mailer from a bookseller in Oregon: A History of Technology, volume 1 of 5, edited by Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, and A. R. Hall, a big, 828-page hardback printed in 1957. The "astronomical instruments" article in my Oxford Classical Dictionary had referenced this as a source for more reading. Not knowing how the volumes were divided up chronologically when I scanned the long list on abebooks.com, I took a guess that my period would be in volume 1.

No: volume 1 covers only up until 700 BC. (Imagine!) I need volume 2. (I ordered a copy of that later last night.)

A bit disappointed, since I had been impressed with the speed of its arrival, and had thought how fortunate that I got it just before I was about to draft chapter 17, when I'd need the material, I nonetheless followed my custom of opening it up to read at teatime: breaking in the new addition to my library.

I'm impressed with the book. Great care has gone into its making (evidently it was sponsored and financed by Imperial Chemical Industries as a philanthropic project). It's richly illustrated with original line-drawings, like a good-quality Victorian text. And, despite its humble claim to being only a "tentative first effort", it appears to be thorough (the whole 5-volume series must come in at around 4,000 pages).

I enjoyed reading it. It felt like the kind of book I would have liked to discover as a kid, in a library, or in someone's den somewhere, that I could just spend an hour or two perusing. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading chapter 1, "Skill as a Human Possession" by Kenneth P. Oakley, which he starts off by discussing animals' use of tools (even insects use them).

Then: Rubicon and Hillel the Elder.

Morning notes: Rubicon, Hillel the Elder, and Alexander the Great.

Then, took up cudgels again for chapter 17. Yesterday I dipped back into chapter 15-16 to add some material near the beginning, which I hope will clarify and deepen Alexander's motivation. Even though I was lengthening an already long chapter, it felt good to be writing actual prose again, instead of these interminable notes. My notes document for chapter 17 is now 32 pages long--including a large section of extracts from research books--and still growing, since I haven't solved all my problems yet. I don't have my full starting lineup.

But I'm getting close. First I attacked the question of why Sosigenes has been avoiding his royal patrons. Without having to dig too deep, I felt I arrived at reasons I could live with.

Next: what's he working on? This question had me returning fretfully, again, to a few astronomy notes. By the end of my session I felt I was close. I can't afford to burrow too much deeper into this topic. Some interesting questions back then were whether the Earth rotates on its axis, and whether the Earth revolves around the sun...

Even before noon I felt tired and a bit fed up with it. I opened up my draft of chapter 15-16 and scanned through it, expecting the worst, but actually quite enjoyed it. Say, I thought, this isn't bad. It's not dry, academic yak--it's drama. It works.