The Grand Academy of Lagado – The Professors and Their Projects – A New Way of Thinking
The Academy is not a single building but a sprawling collection of houses along both sides of a street. These properties, having fallen into ruin, were purchased by the state and converted into laboratories. I was received with great courtesy by the warden and spent several days exploring the facility. The Academy is vast; I must have visited at least five hundred rooms, each containing one or more "projectors"—men dedicated to wild and often impossible schemes.
The first person I encountered was a man of meagre appearance, with sooty hands and a singed beard. He had spent eight years working on a project to extract sunbeams from cucumbers. His plan was to store the light in hermetically sealed vials and release it to warm the air during cold, damp summers. He confidently remarked that in another eight years, he would be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine at a reasonable cost. However, he complained that his funds were low and begged me for a small contribution to encourage his "ingenuity." Thanks to my lord’s generosity, I was able to give him a small gift.
In the next chamber, I was nearly overwhelmed by a horrific stench. My guide whispered to me not to take offense, as the researcher was a highly respected senior member of the Academy. This professor was attempting to reduce human waste back into its original food components. He spent his days separating the various parts of the waste, attempting to remove the odors and colors it had acquired during digestion. Despite the revolting nature of his work, he received a regular allowance of materials from the society to continue his "operation."
Further on, I saw a man trying to turn ice into gunpowder and an architect who had developed a method for building houses from the roof down to the foundation. He justified this approach by pointing to the "prudent" examples of the bee and the spider. I also met a blind man who was teaching his apprentices how to mix colors for painters by using only their sense of smell and touch. Unfortunately, their results were far from perfect, as the professor himself was frequently mistaken about the colors he was handling.
One project that particularly amused me was a new method of ploughing. Instead of using expensive tools and cattle, the professor proposed using hogs. By burying acorns and chestnuts deep in the soil, he believed six hundred pigs could be driven into a field to root up the ground in search of food. In doing so, they would effectively turn the soil and fertilize it at the same time. Although initial experiments had resulted in high costs and no actual crops, the Academy remained optimistic about the invention's potential.
I also visited the "Universal Artist," a man who had spent thirty years attempting to improve human life. His laboratory was filled with fifty assistants working on various absurdities: some were trying to condense air into a solid substance, others were softening marble to make pillows, and some were attempting to breed "naked sheep" by applying minerals to lambs to stop their wool from growing.
We then crossed into the wing of the Academy dedicated to "speculative learning." Here, a professor showed me a massive wooden frame, twenty feet square, linked together by wires and covered with tiny bits of wood. On each piece of wood was a paper with a word from their language written on it. By turning forty iron handles, the students could completely scramble the order of the words.
"With this engine," the professor explained proudly, "the most ignorant person can write books on philosophy, poetry, or law without the need for genius or study." Whenever the students turned the handles and found a few words that made sense, they would dictate them to scribes. They had already collected several large volumes of these broken sentences, which they intended to piece together into a complete system of all arts and sciences.
In the School of Languages, I found professors discussing how to improve communication. One group proposed shortening all words into single syllables and removing verbs entirely. Another more radical group suggested abolishing words altogether. They argued that speaking is physically exhausting and shortens our lives by wearing out our lungs. Their solution was for people to carry a collection of physical objects that represented the things they wanted to discuss.
I have often seen two of these "sages" almost collapsing under the weight of the massive packs they carry on their backs. When they meet in the street, they put down their burdens, open their sacks, and "talk" for an hour by showing each other various items. While this method was theoretically more "healthful," it faced strong opposition from women and the uneducated, who insisted on the right to speak with their tongues like their ancestors.
Finally, I visited the mathematical school. The master’s method of teaching was unlike anything in Europe. A mathematical proposition was written on a thin wafer using a special medicinal ink. The student had to swallow the wafer on a fasting stomach. As it was digested, the ink would supposedly carry the knowledge up to the brain. However, this method had not yet proven successful. The students found the wafers so nauseating that they usually spit them out in secret, and they were quite unwilling to follow the three-day fast required for the "medicine" to work.
By the end of my visit, I was left in no doubt about the immense creativity of the Lagadians, though I couldn't help but notice that despite all this "progress," the city below remained in a state of miserable decay.