Eco: Foucalt's Pendulum eco foucault (highly illogical behavior txt) 📖

spoke, but it seemed to methat the path his eyes followed was neither idle nor random, thatthey were reading, in those images, what he only pretended to bedigging from his memory.

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Now, from apex to base,the volume of the Great Pyramid in cubic inches is approximately161,000,000,000. How many human souls, then, have lived on theearth from Adam to the present day? Somewhere between153,000,000,000 and 171,900,000,000.

¡XPiazzi Smyth, OurInheritance in the Great Pyramid, London, Isbister, 1880, p.583

"I imagine your authorholds that the height of the pyramid of Cheops is equal to thesquare root of the sum of the areas of all its sides. Themeasurements must be made in feet, the foot being closer to theEgyptian and Hebrew cubit, and not in meters, for the meter is anabstract length invented in modern times. The Egyptian cubit comesto 1.728 feet. If we do not know the precise height, we can use thepyramidion, which was the small pyramid set atop the Great Pyramid,to form its tip. It was of gold or some other metal that shone inthe sun. Take the height of the pyramidion, multiply it by theheight of the whole pyramid, multiply the total by ten to thefifth, and we obtain the circumference of the earth. What's more,if you multiply the perimeter of the base by twenty-four to thethird divided by two, you get the earth's radius. Further, the areaof the base of the pyramid multiplied by ninety-six times ten tothe eighth gives us one hundred and ninety-six million eighthundred and ten thousand square miles, which is the surface area ofthe earth. Am I right?"

Belbo liked to conveyamazement with an expression he had learned in the cinematheque,from the original-language version of Yankee Doodle Dandy, starringJames Cagney: "I'm flabbergasted!" This is what he said now. Agliealso knew colloquial English, apparently, because he couldn't hidehis satisfaction at this tribute ttrhis vanity. "My friends," hesaid, "when a gentleman, whose name is unknown to me, pens acompilation on the mystery of the pyramids, he can say only what bynow even children know. I would have been surprised if he had saidanything new."

"So the writer is simplyrepeating established truths?" "Truths?" Aglie laughed, and againopened for us the box of his deformed and delicious cigars. "Quidest veritas, as a friend of mine said many years ago. Most of it isnonsense. To begin with, if you divide the base of the pyramid byexactly twice the height, and do not round off, you don't get IT,you get 3.1417254. A small difference, but essential. Further, adisciple of Piazzi Smyth, Flinders Petrie, who also measuredStonehenge, reports that one day he caught the master chipping at agranite wall of the royal antechamber, to make his sums workout...Gossip, perhaps, but Piazzi Smyth was not a man to inspiretrust; you had only to see the way he tied his cravat. Still, amidall the nonsense there are some unimpeachable truths. Gentlemen,would you follow me to the window?"

He threw open theshutters dramatically and pointed. At the corner of the narrowstreet and the broad avenue, stood a little wooden kiosk, where,presumably, lottery tickets were sold.

"Gentlemen," he said, "Iinvite you to go and measure that kiosk. You will see that thelength of the counter is one hundred and forty-nine centimeters¡Xinother words, one hundred-billionth of the distance between theearth and the sun. The height at the rear, one hundred andseventy-six centimeters, divided by the width of the window,fifty-six centimeters, is 3.14. The height at the front is nineteendecimeters, equal, in other words, to the number of years of theGreek lunar cycle. The sum of the heights of the two front cornersand the two rear corners is one hundred and ninety times two plusone hundred and seventy-six times two, which equals seven hundredand thirty-two, the date of the victory at Poitiers. The thicknessof the counter is 3.10 centimeters, and the width of the cornice ofthe window is 8.8 centimeters. Replacing the numbers before thedecimals by the corresponding letters of the alphabet, we obtain Cfor ten and H for eight, or C10H8, which is the formula fornaphthalene."

"Fantastic," I said."You did all these measurements?" "No," Aglie said. "They were doneon another kiosk, by a certain Jean-Pierre Adam. But I would assumethat all lottery kiosks have more or less the same dimensions. Withnumbers you can do anything you like. Suppose I have the sacrednumber 9 and I want to get the number 1314, date of the executionof Jacques de Molay¡Xa date dear to anyone who, like me, professesdevotion to the Templar tradition of knighthood. What do I do? Imultiply nine by one hundred and forty-six, the fateful day of thedestruction of Carthage. How did I arrive at this? I dividedthirteen hundred and fourteen by two, by three, et cetera, until Ifound a satisfying date. I could also have divided thirteen hundredand fourteen by 6.28, the double of 3.14, and I would have got twohundred and nine. That is the year in which Attalus I, king ofPergamon, joined the anti-Macedonian League. You see?"

"Then you don't believein numerologies of any kind," Dio-tallevi said,disappointed.

"On the contrary, Ibelieve firmly. I believe the universe is a great symphony ofnumerical correspondences, I believe that numbers and theirsymbolisms provide a path to special knowledge. But if the world,below and above, is a system of correspondences where tout setient, it's natural for the kiosk and the pyramid, both works ofman, to reproduce in their structure, unconsciously, the harmoniesof the cosmos. The so-called pyr-amidologists discover with theirincredibly tortuous methods a straightforward truth, a truth farmore ancient, and one already known. It is the logic of researchand discovery that is tortuous, because it is the logic of science.Whereas the logic of knowledge needs no discovery, because it knowsalready. Why must it demonstrate that which could not be otherwise?If there is a secret, it is much more profound. These authors ofyours remain simply on the surface. I imagine this one also repeatsall the tales of how the Egyptians knew aboutelectricity..."

"I won't ask how youmanaged to guess."

"You see? They arecontent with electricity, like any old Marconi. The hypothesis ofradioactivity would be less puerile. There is an interesting idea.Unlike the