Classics and the Western Canon discussion

As promised, Lily will be leading us in a one-week Special Event Read. Watch this space for her opening post!

Where will you be on August 21, 2017?

Our special one-week event opens with a short story by James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851):

"Eclipse"
https://americanliterature.com/author...

We will touch on a few other classic literature references to solar eclipses, but let us start tonight with this one based on Cooper's experiences.

Do share with us your thoughts about this rather short and straightforward story. What stands out to you? What do you note about its organization? About the elements it includes? The ones it doesn't include, for example, are you aware of common aspects of solar eclipse observation today that are missing from this account?

Based on his reporting, JFC would have been sixteen when he had the experience on which this story was based. I haven't tracked down the date of publication. To what extent does this read like an "at the time" account versus a later retelling with elements included for the sake of their artistic impact?

In reading yet again tonight, I was struck by one sentence that seemed to hark back to our recent discussion of Hume and the significance of direct observation. I'll share later which one it was for me, but in the meantime will be curious if any of you have a similar reaction to some part or another of this story.

Enjoy, and let's share a bit about the big celestial event coming to the United States in a couple of weeks. Who among us has already experienced a total solar eclipse?

Path of the 1806 Solar Eclipse

Like the anticipated 2017 solar eclipse, the 1806 event appears to have a path tracking heavily across the continental United States.

NASA provides a map here:
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsearc...

For comparison, here is the comparable 2017 map:
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEsearc...

Note these provide satellite as well as political map views.

Aarrrrrgghh.. I'm staying in Hawaii from Aug 12 to Aug 19.. Too bad I'm gonna miss it by two days..(although I think it probably won't be a total eclipse in Hawaii..)

My first question is, who is Cooper's audience?

THE eclipse of the sun, which you have requested me to describe

I was most struck by the images of the branchless pine as a sentinel, being in the eastern hills and thus leading the way, and as a mast of the ship carrying the village into he experience of the eclipse.

I was a little saddened by the silence concerning the eclipse after all of the excitement leading up to it.

But I do not remember to have ever heard a single being freely communicative on the subject of his individual feelings at the most solemn moment of the eclipse.

I should prefer Cooper's romantic suggestion that the experience of the eclipse had somehow made it too sacred to discuss. I think it sadly more likely that the silence concerning the eclipse once it was over signified the novelty was gone and it was back to business as usual. The experience seems similar to the excitement leading up to the the holidays followed by the discouraging finality of the events signified by the former Christmas trees sitting in bare silence on the curb with the rest of the discarded garbage.

Lily, thank you for moderating this.

My initial reading of “Eclipse” jogged my memory of an essay I used to teach years ago called “Moonrise Over Monument Valley” by John Young. They are similar in theme in that they describe the witnessing of natural phenomenon as leading to a spiritual epiphany.

Both essays contrast the majesty of the event with the smallness of man. Cooper says,

…but never have I beheld any spectacle which so plainly manifested the majesty of the Creator, or so forcibly taught the lesson of humility to man as a total eclipse of the sun.

Similarly, if I remember correctly (which I probably don’t since memory is not what it once used to be!), Young says something along the lines of “human beings come to feel like pretty small change, indeed.”

I tried to find a link to “Moonrise Over Monument Valley” in case anyone wants to read it, but all I could find were essays analyzing it.

I’ll have to read "Eclipse" a couple more times before I can comment on it.

Thanks, again, for moderating this discussion.

David wrote: "My first question is, who is Cooper's audience?
THE eclipse of the sun, which you have requested me to describe..."

I hope someone else has encountered an answer to your question, David. The closest clues I find are here:
http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/jo...

His daughter Susan Fenimore Cooper found the manuscript among his papers. It was first published in the September 1869 issue of "Putnam's Magazine," long after Cooper's death (1851).

According to his daughter, "'The Eclipse' was written in 1833, when Cooper was still living in Europe. However, it contains so many specific details included in an article about the eclipse published in the June 19, 1806 issue of the 'Otsego Herald,' that I [Hugh C. MacDougall?] am convinced it must have been written in 1838, while Cooper was searching the 'Herald' files as preparation for writing 'The Chronicles of Cooperstown.'"

That would have been 27-32 years after the event, with the advantage of access to a newspaper article written at the time.

More on Cooper and his work can be found here:
http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/wr...

Borum wrote: "Aarrrrrgghh.. I'm staying in Hawaii from Aug 12 to Aug 19.. Too bad I'm gonna miss it by two days..(although I think it probably won't be a total eclipse in Hawaii..)"

Borum -- breathe easy. Hawaii will have only ~20-<30% eclipse this year. The continental U.S. gets the big deal this year. (See comments below.) Hawaii had its crack at a total eclipse just a few years ago, however.

"On Aug. 21, a total solar eclipse will be visible from the contiguous United States for the first time since 1979. Sky watchers in North America and Hawaii will be able to see at least a partial solar eclipse on that summer day, but most people will have to travel to see the sun completely eclipsed by the moon. If you're considering making a trip to see the total solar eclipse, here's a guide to which states and cities fall inside the path. And remember that a trip to see the eclipse could also include stops at a few local attractions.

"To quote noted astronomer and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson, 'A total eclipse of the sun belongs on everyone's bucket list.' Although many people have likely had the opportunity to view a total eclipse of the moon (since those are visible over a larger area than a total solar eclipse), few people have been lucky enough to see a darkened sun adorned with the soft pearly white halo of the sun's corona — solar gases streaming millions of miles into interplanetary space — that blossoms briefly during totality. For any spot of land on Earth, there's an oft-cited average time of 375 years between total solar eclipses. That varies greatly, of course, but it emphasizes the general rarity of these events.

"Any one person's chances of witnessing a totally eclipsed sun without traveling far from home are quite small — the 'path of totality' of a solar eclipse is rather narrow, so many total eclipses are visible only from remote parts of the globe. But those odds will be considerably increased late this summer for an estimated 225 million people who live within a one-day's drive of the path (averaging about 70 miles wide) of the moon's dark shadow as it sweeps from one end of the United States to the other.

"On that third Monday of next August, the sun will appear to be partially obscured by the moon to viewers across all of North America and in Hawaii. Just how much of the sun will be eclipsed by the moon will depend on where you're observing from. For most people in the U.S., the moon will appear to cover at least two-thirds of the sun and in many locations it will be much more than that. Viewers located very close to the path of totality will see only a sliver of the sun remaining. If that’s the case, then most definitely you should try to make an effort to get yourself into the totality path!

"This is the first time a total solar eclipse has gone from one American coast to the other since 1918. It will also be the first time in U.S. history that a total solar eclipse will make landfall exclusively on U.S. soil, meaning it will not be visible from any other country. (This technically happened in 1257 — but, of course, the United States wasn't a country way back then.)

For that reason, some are calling this upcoming celestial event the 'Great American Eclipse.'"

https://www.space.com/35495-where-to-...

For the state of Hawaii, consider this:
http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/circu...

Also, recall this:
“'The July 11, 1991 total eclipse over the entire island of Hawaii and a little piece of Maui was a huge event,' said Mike Shanahan, Bishop Museum planetarium director. 'But for most viewers it was cloudy across the island of Hawaii.'

"The next time Hawaii will be in the path of a total solar eclipse will be in 2106."

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/36...

This map shows the path of that 1991 event:
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogl...

Lily wrote: "I hope someone else has encountered an answer to your question..."

I wonder if the "you" Cooper addresses could have just been a literary device used to give the impression of reading a private letter more in keeping with his suggestion of the silent solemnity practiced by individuals after witnessing the eclipse?

ETA: Thanks for the links, they are fascinating. Until today my only experience with Cooper, other than some obviously modified movie adaptations has been limited to Twain's list of his literary offenses.

I remember the Peanuts cartoons from 1963 about the eclipse.

(I wasn't born in 1963, but reprints of Peanuts cartoons were plentiful in the 1970s.)

http://peanuts.wikia.com/wiki/July_19...

(scroll down to July 15th-20th for the relevant strips..)

I'm struggling a bit with the purpose of the prisoner's story and all of its details. Does being allowed out to watch the eclipse symbolize the Creator's/universe's condemnation of his actions by keeping the prisoner in the dark on earth during the day, as he is in his prison cell? Is it to highlight the cruelty of man by the prison guards using the eclipse as an opportunity to air the man out other than nighttime and further deprive the man of sunlight? Is it more simply a fact that people thought the bond between a man and his Creator is so sacred that even a prisoner deserves to see such an event?

I am sure I can imagine many reasons why the prisoner's story is included, but I can also imagine Cooper is once again breaking Rule 14.
http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/project...

David wrote: "I'm struggling a bit with the purpose of the prisoner's story and all of its details. Does being allowed out to watch the eclipse symbolize the Creator's/universe's condemnation of his actions by k..."

I was confused by it, as well. It's a strange interlude. I am not quite sure the point of including this unless it is to set up a strong contrast between “the sublime movement of the heavenly bodies” and “the spectacle of penitent human guilt.” He describes it in moralistic terms, “a lesson not lost on me.”

David wrote: I am sure I can imagine many reasons why the prisoner's story is included, but I can also imagine Cooper is once again breaking Rule 14..

Perhaps even breaking Rule 4.

David wrote: "Lily wrote: "I hope someone else has encountered an answer to your question..."

I wonder if the "you" Cooper addresses could have just been a literary device used to give the impression of reading..."

I'm not sure we can ever know who the "you" is that Cooper addresses in the beginning. But sometimes writers use it as a rhetorical device to lead into their subject. I don't know if that is the case here.

I started reading the Cooper story, and noticed he has a satire of Hume, somewhat comparable to Voltaire's satire of Leibniz, btw, in terms of aptness:

The good people in general, however, were on the alert; at every house some one seemed to be watching, and many groups were passed, whose eager up-turned faces and excited conversation spoke the liveliest interest. It was said, that there were not wanting one or two philosophers of the skeptical school, among our people, who did not choose to commit themselves to the belief in a total eclipse of the sun -- simply because they had never seen one. Seeing is believing, we are told, though the axiom admits of dispute. But what these worthy neighbors of ours had not seen, no powers of reasoning, or fulness of evidence, could induce them to credit. Here was the dignity of human reason! Here was private judgment taking a high stand! Anxious to witness the conversion of one of these worthies, with boyish love of fun I went in quest of him. He had left the village, however, on business. But, true to his principles, before mounting his horse that morning, he had declared to his wife that "he was not running away from that eclipse;" nay, more, with noble candor, he averred that if the eclipse did overtake him, in the course of his day's journey, "he would not be above acknowledging it!" This was highly encouraging.

(by which I mean, there is no way Candide 'destroyed' the Theodicy...)

Finished. Ah, that was pretty good.

Tamara wrote: "Perhaps even breaking Rule 4."

Yeah, he may be more directly breaking Rule 4, but I have always thought 14 to be the wittiest of the Rules. :)

An aside: from Cooper: "I was then on a visit to my parents, at the home of my family, among the Highlands of Otsego, in that part of the country where the eclipse was most impressive. "

Are we all aware that Cooperstown, now famous for the Baseball Hall of Fame, was named after the Cooper family?

Lily hasn't mentioned, and I hope she doesn't mind my mentioning, that the reasons he is leading this special event is that she is planning to travel down (I'm not sure to where) to watch the eclipse. So being Lily she did a lot of advance research which she thought (and I agreed) it would be interesting to share.

Is anybody else going to either a) naturally be in the path of the eclipse, or b) travel somewhere to see it?

And once those who get to see it have watched it, come on back here and share your experiences, and whether like Cooper you were impressed (even awed) by it or whether is was, frankly, a bit of ho-hum.

I was interested in Cooper's report of the cows coming home in the middle of the day because they thought evening had come, and the whippoorwills starting up their evening songs. He lived in a time when people were closer to nature, and life happened more in tune with the rhythms of nature than, as seems to me the case today, being servants primarily not of the sun but of the clock.

Also, those who see it, come here and tell us how your experiences compare with Coopers in terms of, for example, not being able to see people clearly even fairly close to you, or seeing the moon suddenly emerge as a black disk in the middle of the day. (Will the moon be "out" during the eclipse? I haven't seen any information about that.)

I'm from the UK and remember our solar eclipse sometime in the late 90s: it was very eerie and atmospheric, different somehow from twilight, and I remember the birds stopped singing as they thought it was night. I was surprisingly awed!

Christopher wrote: "I remember the Peanuts cartoons from 1963 about the eclipse. (I wasn't born in 1963, but reprints of Peanuts cartoons were plentiful in the 1970s.)

http://peanuts.wikia.com/wiki/July_19......"

July 20th is delightful. I find it interesting that Schultz was living in California at the time and the eclipse appears to have basically crossed Canada and Maine. Curious as to the pickup for his strip.

Two family members who call themselves "eclipse chasers" and between them have seen 5 out of 6 and 6 out of 7 total solar eclipses missed the one when they were in a highly probable spot in China, but a monsoon moved in from Indonesia.

Here is the 1963 total solar eclipse path:
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogl...

David wrote: "Tamara wrote: "Perhaps even breaking Rule 4."

Yeah, he may be more directly breaking Rule 4, but I have always thought 14 to be the wittiest of the Rules. :)"

Agree with both of you. "Surplusage" was an unknown word to me (and my spell checker), but apparently has been in use since the 15th century. Leave it to Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910). (I checked the date because I was a bit curious about the relative timing of Twain and Cooper as American authors. As noted @2, Cooper lived 1789-1851. Anyone know whom Twain was establishing his reputation vis–à–vis? My question is tainted by just having read Chinua Achebe's famous critique of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Authors aren't necessarily kind to each other.)

Patrice wrote: "....Hume [1711-1776; A Treatise of Human Nature, 1738] wrote only decades before Cooper and i imagine his ideas were in the air."

It is easy to forget how close the American Revolution et al was to the beginning of the 1800's.

Tamara wrote: "David wrote: "I wonder if the "you" Cooper addresses could have just been a literary device used to give the impress..."

"I'm not sure we can ever know who the "you" is that Cooper addresses in the beginning...."

I wondered if finding out for whom Cooper wrote The Chronicles of Cooperstown might give a hint, but the amount of research I was willing to do didn't produce that either. I am willing to let the "you" be the "us" who are reading it today, even though, since Cooper didn't have it published, we probably weren't....still, lends credence to David's comments about it being perhaps a literary device.

I am naturally in the path of the eclipse, and local excitement is growing, almost exactly as Cooper describes it.

Maybe this is why I liked the story so much.

I will definitely try to report on it. Thanks for the invitation.

Christopher wrote: "I will definitely try to report on it. Thanks for the invitation...."

Yes, please do. David called out the line in Cooper's story:

But I do not remember to have ever heard a single being freely communicative on the subject of his individual feelings at the most solemn moment of the eclipse.

Speakers in our area suggest having a party to go with the day. One in particular encourages finding that Aunt Millie or Uncle Joe within driving distance that will let you camp on her porch or his backyard! Share the experience, even if "feelings" are kept for that personal journal.

But there are things to notice that Cooper doesn't mention and I'll try to bring some of those to our attention, or perhaps some of the rest of you have observations to pull out of your back pockets and share.

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm from the UK and remember our solar eclipse sometime in the late 90s: it was very eerie and atmospheric, different somehow from twilight, and I remember the birds stopped singing as they thought..."

A friend who was a practicing physician in London at the time of that eclipse said she didn't even bother to go out and look, but the report was that the newborn babies in the hospital began to cry. It is difficult to postulate that even their circadian rhythms might have been disturbed -- in a room that probably had artificial lighting.

As best I can tell, neither the 1999 nor the 2015 solar eclipses were total over London. Here is a map and a table germane to the question for 1999:

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/...

https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEcirc/...

If you want to keep digging:
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/usvsth3m/what...

If you are in the path of the eclipse, keep your pets indoors and away from windows -- their eyes can be damaged from looking at the sun just as much as yours can. We know not to. They don't.

I really enjoyed this essay. I think it'd be called creative nonfiction these days. It also rehabilitated James Fenimore Cooper in my estimation.

Yet the author must have considered it flawed as he never published it. I think the flaw is that an event like an eclipse no longer has any human meaning like it did for the ancients. It no longer presages the fall of empires or causes the masses to repent as they think the end in near. No sacrifices are commited to propitiate an angry god.

We know what it is--a natural phenomenon--as did Cooper: "[among the family] our conversations turned almost tirely upon the movements of planets and comets, occultations and eclipses." So, Cooper had a strong understanding in the science behind the phenomenon.

He struggles to give it meaning, the sublimity of nature and all that, but he tries too hard. It's forced. It really doesn't work.

The essay has a lot of local color and I'm certain it was a striking event on the young Fenimore Cooper but there is no wider moral. The is no communal reformation or redemption. The town drunk still drank; there was no change.

It was something that happened--a one in a lifetime natural spectacle. You think it would be something meaningful but it didn't have any wider significance. That's why it sat in a drawer and was never published. The author was frustrated and didn't know how to make it better.

One possible reading I had about one of the images:

In the beginning, the narrator compares the dead tree trunk on the eastern hill with the “eye of a young sailor the mast of some phantom ship.” He greets the image with a smile. This suggests something positive.

The mention of the tree on the “eastern” hill is significant. The east is associated with new beginnings. The sailor is on a “phantom” (unreal/supernatural) ship. I read this as foreshadowing.

We know from the opening lines the eclipse left a lasting impact on the narrator. If we connect the east (new beginnings) with phantom ship (something ghostly/supernatural/out of the ordinary), I think what we get is a foreshadowing that the boy will experience a new beginning/outlook as a result of experiencing something out of the ordinary.

He returns to the image later in the story. As the village is swallowed in darkness, his mind veers toward an image of the sea with ships gliding over the waters. This image echoes the comparison he drew earlier of the dead tree trunk with the sailor looking out on the horizon. He has become the sailor witnessing a supernatural event on the darkened sea.

And my fancy was busy with pictures of white-sailed schooners, and brigs, and ships, gliding like winged spirits over the darkened waves.

Patrice wrote: "nice. he wrote this after he went to Paris.

I don't understand the significance of his trip to Paris. Is there a connection?

Roman Clodia wrote: "I'm from the UK and remember our solar eclipse sometime in the late 90s: it was very eerie and atmospheric, different somehow from twilight, and I remember the birds stopped singing as they thought..."

11 August 1999. We were in Frankfurt at the time. We had intended to be in Augsburg that day, the place my family lives now, because it was in the path of totality. But the weather turned horrible. So we changed plans and drove into France, as the totality was to be over Paris as well. The rain was pouring buckets as we drove into France and one of our boys being a very vocal teenager at the time thought this was the dumbest idea ever. Well, around Reims we had passed the low pressure system and the skies couldn't have been bluer. So we simply turned off the interstate, drove onto a gravel road between fields, unloaded the lawn chairs and packed cooler, and waited for the show to begin. It was an amazing experience how everything hushed, the land bathed in a light I'd never seen before. The stars came out. There is a sublime beauty, a grandeur and Cooper has much better words for describing the moment than I ever could. Though there were no cows headed for home.

...and then we drove the three hours back to Frankfurt. To our great delight we later found out, the clouds broke over Augsburg as well, and my family was able to see it too.
.

This time we are just a smidgen south of the totality. So we're doing the same thing again, drive north about an hour, find a nice spot, and enjoy.

@11David wrote: "Until today my only experience with Cooper ... has been limited to Twain's list of his literary offenses...."

LOL! Perhaps it is only fitting that we should at least scan an article defending Cooper: "Reading Cooper for Pleasure" on the James Fenimore Cooper Society website:

http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/in...

I don't even remember Cooper's supposedly famous character Natty Bumppo -- or even having read JFC. Still, I suspect some excerpt from The Last of the Mohicans or other "Leatherstocking Tales" appeared in my grade school reader along with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

One does get a sense of how much literary expectations change over time, from pacing to length to treatment of realism.

Lily wrote: "@11David wrote: "Until today my only experience with Cooper ... has been limited to Twain's list of his literary offenses...."

One does get a sense of how much literary expectations change over time, from pacing to length to treatment of realism.

Hmm, and yet, I'm going out on a limb and saying no one ever got rich following Mark Twain's rules to the letter, up to and including Mark Twain.

On the other hand, the Leatherstocking Tales as described don't sound all that far from Robert Ludlum and other 'drawn out' writers of our own day.

One of the things Twain complains about is a shooting contest, as in who can knock a hole in the center of the ace of spades at 100 feet.. (or something like that), and another is a troop of Indians lurking in an overhanging tree to drop onto a boat, and all missing the boat...

Well, that is pure camp, and I'm sure Cooper knew it, and Twain PROBABLY knew it. I'm re-reading one of my favorite childhood books right now, TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR and Tarzan has killed about three lions with his bare hands already.

Patrice wrote: "my thoughts upon a second reading.

l. he uses the word sublime a lot. in 1756 burke wrote, on the sublime. i haven't read it or the Roman version with the same title but the idea, i have been told..."

You took me searching, Patrice.

I think of Ann Radcliffe and The Mysteries of Udolpho , i.e., gothic and romantic, when I hear the word "sublime."

I found this quotation: "The sublime is one of the key concepts in eighteenth-century and Romantic aesthetics. The term derives from the anonymous treatise Peri hypsous, long thought to have been composed by Longinus, in which rhetorical effects of the sublime are described in detail. " I presume Peri hypsous is probably the ancient reference you make?

From M-W (dictionary): "tending to inspire awe or uplifting emotion usually by reason of elevated beauty, nobility, grandeur, solemnity, or similar character." I also see overtones of spirituality in the word usage. But perhaps also of mystery and attempts to understand the mystery -- through natural phenomena if possible?

On a practical note, for those planning to go to the event or in the path, be careful of fake solar sunglasses.

An article on the problem, with links to sources for genuine solar sunglasses (and a warning not to try to walk with them on -- apparently they are so dark that if you're not looking at the sun, you can't see a thing!)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sol...

Kerstin wrote: "....So we simply turned off the interstate, drove onto a gravel road between fields, unloaded the lawn chairs and packed cooler, and waited for the show to begin. It was an amazing experience how everything hushed, the land bathed in a light I'd never seen before. The stars came out...."

Thanks, Kerstin! You describe exactly what we would like to be able to do. A friend did such for an annular eclipse a few years ago in Nevada.

I am fascinated by the description of the 360 sunset that surrounds an observer in the distance beyond the dark night and the stars overhead.

I promised to comment on some of the other things closely observed today and not noted by Cooper. Those include "the diamond ring" phenomena -- the sense of a diamond ring in the sky in those few seconds before totality begins and as it ends.

Another is Baily's beads, tiny pearls of light escaping through irregularities in the edge of the moon's shadow caused by its craters.

The third I'll mention here is the corona itself. During totality it can be viewed with the bare eyes -- absolutely the only time one should look sun-ward without protection, but the only way one can see during totality. All descriptions I have seen suggest the sight is awe inspiring. Much of the scientific work is targeted towards observing this area during an eclipse.

I'll try to get back later today with pictures or links for some of these and a bit of historical background on Baily's beads.

Christopher wrote: "I'm re-reading one of my favorite childhood books right now, TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR and Tarzan has killed about three lions with his bare hands already."

Two thumbs way up for the ERB fans. Wait! are you saying Tarzan is unrealistic? :)

As for the prisoner, I was beginning to lean towards something similar to Patrice's well written post @36.2, and decide that the prisoner's story, while maybe not perfect, wasn't as superfluous as I originally suspected. About that quote though, I knew it was from a movie but I am not sure of the source :)

“It's a topsy-turvy world, and maybe the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans. But this is our hill. And these are our beans!”
Lieutenant Frank Drebin, The Naked Gun (1988)

Before you get too fixed in your plans, better hope this woman's request doesn't get granted.

This plea was made to a local weatherman.

Everyman wrote: "Before you get too fixed in your plans, better hope this woman's request doesn't get granted.

This plea was made to a local weatherman.

"
Brian accepted the suggestion? You should tell us the whole story.

Rafael wrote: "Brian accepted the suggestion? You should tell us the whole story. ."

You'll have to wait to see whether the eclipse comes at the predicted time or two hours earlier.

The debate on his Twitter page is whether the woman was in earnest. The voting seems to be that she was.

Damn. I hate to wait.

Everyman wrote: "You'll have to wait to see whether the eclipse comes at the predicted time or two hours earlier. "

But that would be contrary to the uniformity of nature! Where is Hume when we need him? I suppose someone's math might be off. .

Patrice wrote: "i was impressed by the level of astronomical knowledge at coopers time. He seemed to be poking fun at Humes skepticism but also attributing the knowledge about the eclipse to reason, not observatio..."

My take is that the sense of skepticism from the villagers is an example of prioritizing their direct experience over common knowledge (or science), so at first it seems Hume might have cause to approve. But, I remember that Hume devoted quite a few pages to how we can reason based on predictable human activities, and scientists are very predictable. It's an interesting caveat - someone who had some knowledge of science, and the regularity and accuracy of scientists, would be inclined to believe in the eclipse, as Hume would believe if there were a consensus that total darkness occurred for 8 days. The gentleman may be skeptical enough for Hume, but he is also ignorant.

That's just a thought; I'm definitely not more knowledgeable than you :).

Well, I've not had the sense Hume rules out trust in the observations of others and the use of language to share those observations. But maybe I missed or garbled the relevant sentences.

Image of the the sun's corona during a total solar eclipse:


Credits: M. Druckmüller

Search for "image corona total solar eclipse" for more images. Not all will really be "total" eclipse images, but the associated pages should give you the background you need to assess their interest for you.

Many of these will be composite photographs by professionals. But I understand these do represent what can be seen by the naked eye during totality -- and only during totality, the only time safe to look directly sun-ward. Note the flares in the corona images, the brighter, denser areas near the surface that arc upward and often fall or loop back into the heart of the sun.

I really can't help us with reasons for the patterns, distances, temperatures, colors, et al. I suspect a little searching could draw some clues if you are interested. (Colors are related to the spectrum emitted by the elements present.) The NASA sites are quite amazing. I believe there are also efforts to use the work of amateur observers, many of whom have made themselves very knowledgeable. This seems to be an area where especial efforts are made to capture observations during the eclipse. To what primary objectives, I haven't identified.

P.S. This site provides some clues about the interests in the corona:
http://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTI...

Rather than go tonight to Bailey's beads and the Diamond Ring, let us consider a fundamental verification of theory that occurred in 1919 -- does gravity bend light?

http://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTI...

"Eddington realised the solution. Observe during a total eclipse, when the Sun’s light is blotted out for a few minutes, and you can see distant stars that appear close to the Sun in the sky. If Einstein was right, the Sun’s gravity would shift these stars to slightly different positions, compared to where they are seen in the night sky at other times of the year when the Sun far away from them. The closer the star appears to the Sun during totality, the bigger the shift would be."

Popular description in Wired magazine:
https://www.wired.com/2009/05/dayinte...

Map for that May 29, 1919 eclipse:
https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogl...

"In addition to his many scientific contributions, [Eddington] once penned a lyrical parody of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam about his famed 1919 expedition:

Oh leave the Wise our measures to collate
One thing at least is certain, LIGHT has WEIGHT,
One thing is certain, and the rest debate –
Light-rays, when near the Sun, DO NOT GO STRAIGHT.

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsn...

Solar eclipses continued to inspire words on the page. (This article also notes some of the subsequent measurements that corroborated the 1919 observations.)

https://www.space.com/37018-solar-ecl...

I can't find again the site I want which graphed the gravitational change in position of the star measured in 1919, but at least this has a clearer (larger) image of a picture in the articles cited previously.

This still isn't the one I wanted, but the graphs are illustrative and it is fun to see the photographs of Einstein, Eddington, and Dyson.
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_...

http://earthsky.org/space/this-date-i...

This article by Elizabeth Howell strikes me as one of the best descriptions of Baily's beads that I have seen. Baily's observations and identification came in 1836, thirty years after Cooper's experience. As the article indicates, these jagged bits of light surrounding the edge of the moon are not elements of total eclipse per se but may occur in annular eclipses and near the beginning and end of total eclipses. Their appearance is possible because of the irregular surface, mountains and craters, of the moon, allowing the passage of the sun's light.


Baily's Beads

http://www.xintyan.com/FP2010/fp2010....


Prominences

This image focuses on Prominences -- flares from the sun's surface, rather than the light which passes through the irregularities on the circumference of the moon.