the wikipedia article about dreams in the witch house says lovecraft was inspired by a lecture given by de sitter called "the size of the universe," and a book by eddington called "the nature of the physical world". i can't make heads or tails of the septimius felton thing
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in "the size of the universe" de sitter describes how to produce a state-of-the-art-for-1932 estimate of the radius of the universe, he says between 2 and 20 billion light years (current estimate is 46ish, they didn't have inflation yet)
adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1932PASP.
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(interesting science history thing here: in 1932 the word "galaxy" was apparently not yet used to refer to galaxies other than the milky way! its etymology just refers to the milky way. de sitter describes here how to infer that the milky way is a "spiral nebula")
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tbh i don't have a clear sense of what exactly lovecraft was getting out of de sitter's work here. maybe a general sense that mathematics is capable of telling you surprising and nontrivial facts about the structure of the universe 🧐
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apparently i would know more if i read "dispatches from the providence observatory: astronomical motifs and sources in the writings of h.p. lovecraft" but i can't find even a pirate copy of it anywhere, just a preview on jstor. anyone wanna help me out?
jstor.org/stable/26868370
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the second source cited by wikipedia is eddington's "the nature of the physical world" (1929) which is a whole book so it's been taking awhile to pick through but it's beautiful writing. i wish physicists still wrote like this
henry.pha.jhu.edu/Eddington.2008
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probably not relevant to lovecraft but TIL: this is the book that introduces the concept of the arrow of time! nice
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i am going to guess that the chapter of this book most relevant to lovecraft is VIII. Man's Place in the Universe. beginning covers some similar material as de sitter. eddington briefly describes heat death which i imagine had an impact on lovecraft's imagination
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then he speculates a bit about alien life, 20 years before the fermi paradox and 30 years before the drake equation. some beautiful sentences here - "how many acorns are scattered for one that grows to an oak? and need [nature] be more careful of her stars than her acorns?"
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Any particular reason you’re going down this bunny trail?
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for fun. trying to sniff something out about where ideas like portals come from
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The responses to this prompt may help
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What physical embodiments of portals between worlds have been imagined in sci-fi/fantasy? My starter list:
Rabbit hole (Alice)
Subtle knife (dark materials)
Wardrobe (Narnia)
Phone booth (Doctor Who)
Platform 9 3/4 (Potter)
Wormhole with gate (Stargate)
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