"Brian" wrote in message ...

I wrote an essay for my english class here at the University of Washington.
It's about amateur astronomy [at]

http://students.washington.edu/bsteph

Then under "Walker Percy," click "Final." It is a Word document (*.doc).

It's an interesting essay, very well written on the whole, and
heaven knows it's an interesting subject. As for the content,
half of it I find quite original and insightful, and half of
it seems forced and false. After reading your essay once over,
I had a strong suspicion that the good part is when you are
being you and the bad part is when you are trying to be Walker
Percy, so I looked up his essay and read it too. That confirmed
my suspicions. I think that you have, in Walker Percy's gently
misleading jargon "yielded sovereignty" to him. Or to put it in
plain English, I think you've been bamboozled.

I find "The Loss of the Creature" to be one part right and nine
parts wrong. I suspect that when it was first published, in 1954,
at the height of American conformity, when people were loosing
their jobs and even being imprisoned for having dissident views,
that one part of truth was a genuine contribution -- something
that really needed to be said. Today, it seems trite as well as
being grossly overstated.

You say that "Percy believes any preconceived notion one may have
of a thing causes that person to not see it as it truly is."
That's oversimplifying Percy's oversimplification, but it's
not too far off the mark. I take a different point of view:
that without preconceptions, we would not be human -- we would
not be able to see at all. Everybody brings preconceptions to
everything; there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I knew
lots about the Grand Canyon before I saw it, and that knowledge
made it *more* mine, not less, when I actually came to experience
it first hand.

Really, it all depends on the individual. Some people come to
the Grand Canyon, take a snapshot, and then as far as they're
concerned, they're done with it -- time to move on to the next
experience. Of course that attitude is deplorable -- with
respect to the Grand Canyon, the Andromeda Galaxy, today's
sunset, the mockingbird I listened to during my lunch break,
whatever. But it is quite independent of how much foreknowledge
one brings to something. Cardenas, apparently, was amazed at
the sight of the Grand Canyon -- so much the better for him!
Pizarro in the same situation would have thought of nothing
but the gold that he might find at the bottom.

Same with tourists today. But you know what? The Grand Canyon
has a way of sneaking up on you and becoming yours even if you
don't expect that or want it. I hiked down to the Colorado on
the most popular trail, part of the herd if you like, but there's
no way you can lose so much sweat in such a spectacular place
without some of it rubbing off on you -- or you on it.

Now let's talk about Capella, Jupiter, and your unknown star
cluster. With the first two, I think you had genuine epiphanies.
With the third, I you let Percy cheat you out of what might have
been a great experience.

Capella twinkling multi-colored on the horizon is a wonderful
example; we've all had that same experience. You know what's
causing it, and you know that you *ought* to be annoyed at the
atmosphere preventing you from seeing the star as it "really is."
But in the here and now, that flashing jewel is utterly
captivating; you stop worrying about science and observing
and just revel in the beauty of the moment. Astronomy is full
of unexpected beauty like that; that's one of its great joys.

Jupiter's moons is even more profound; alas that one can only
have such revelations a few times in one's life. That description
of how you saw our own Moon as if for the first time is the best
thing in your essay, by far. You relived Galileo's initial
discovery.

Now let's talk about your anonymous star cluster. You say that
by refusing to learn about it, you made it your own, but I think
that exactly the opposite is true. Unless you observed it really
carefully, with enough context to identify it today, then you
have lost the cluster irretrievably; even if you do see it again,
you will never be sure if it's really the same one. What you
have left is the *memory* of the cluster, not the cluster itself.

I had just such an experience, except that I *did* look up the
cluster, so I have *both* the memory *and* the cluster, and that
memory makes it forever specially my own. It happened about a
decade after my first burst of interest in astronomy, when I
decided more or less at random to drive out to the suburbs and
view the Leonids. I was lying on my back in the middle of a field
with binoculars and the Peterson Field Guide, and I happened to
notice a fuzzy patch in the sky between Leo and Gemini. "I bet
that's something interesting," said I to myself, so I took a
look through the binoculars, and of course it resolved into
dozens of stars. So I discovered the famous Beehive Cluster,
as if for the first time, although it was recorded in antiquity,
and no doubt was well known in prehistory.

I have view the Beehive countless times since then, with
instruments ranging from my naked eyes to binoculars to a
20-inch telescope, and every time I look, I see something
different. But I never forget the time that I discovered it;
that makes it uniquely mine.

Nor do I forget the time that I discovered the summer Milky
Way, 7 years ago almost to the day. I had been plugging away
at the Messier list -- a pursuit which ought, according to your
theory, have deadened me to authentic experience. The first
half dozen objects were indeed pretty uninspiring, globular
clusters in Ophiuchus that showed as featureless blobs through
my 70mm scope, and I really did feel like an automaton
checking things off a list. But then my next target was M23,
a big bright open cluster, and my spirits began to pick up.
Then M8 -- gasp! I had no idea that anything as beautiful
as that existed in the sky! And the next dozen objects after
that were one glory after another, each capping the previous.
I can never look at the summer Milky Way, or any of the objects
within it, without reliving the magic of that night.

Now I've got nothing against exploring at random, or looking
through a static telescope and watching the sky flow by. That
is, in essence, exactly what Messier did, before those charts
and tables existed. But he had a whole life to devote to it,
and most of us do not. And even with our limited time, we can
experience more than he ever did, because of our charts.
The universe is a very big place; you can explore it full
tilt all your life and still only scratch the surface;
there's no risk of being jaded. Identifying the name of
an object in Sky Atlas 2000 is the *beginning* of getting
to know it, not the end.

Human knowledge has been accumulated patiently by brilliant
minds over the course of millenia; no one person can possibly
reproduce it. The experts are there not to steal your experiences
from you but to enhance them. You can't be browbeat by them,
because they all disagree with each other! Even if you *try*
to see things as they see them, you'll see them your own way
anyway, like it or not. That's what's so great about astronomy;
no other science is so directly accessible, so immediate, and
so personal. It is the perfect refutation of Percy's arguments.

You know, our culture worries far too much about authenticity.
Who gives a hoot whether an experience is authentic or
inauthentic? The more carefully you analyze that distinction,
the less substance you'll find in it. What matters in experience --
any experience -- is not what baggage you bring to it, but how
much you are willing to throw yourself into it. Lazy people and
lazy minds find scant rewards, with preconceptions or without
them. Energetic people and active minds find rewards everywhere.
Preconceptions shouldn't stand in your way; they're things to
build upon.

Anyway, thanks for a refreshing new look at an old subject, and
thanks for inspiring me to read Walker Percy. I haven't been so
riled up for a long time!

- Tony Flanders