Perihelion

Perihelion

per·i·he·li·on  (OED Defintion)

1. Astron. The point in the orbit of a planet, comet, etc., at which it is nearest to the sun.

When Dr. Cervantes suggested using the ECCO database for a blog post, I was intrigued with the idea of uncovering the origins of Jonathan Swift’s word choice (and the potential for extra credit in the form of two for one blog posts). But as I read the first two books in Gulliver’s Travels, I never really stumbled across anything that truly piqued my interest. But in book three, I found a paragraph that made me really curious. The paragraph in question, or the word, actually, can be found a few pages into chapter two.

“For if its perihelion it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will conceive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red-hot glowing iron; and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long; through which if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus or the main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes.”

Now, initially, I wanted to look into the word “comet.” To my knowledge, I wasn’t even aware that 18th century british writers would have any idea what a comet is. After all, it was less than a mere 5 centuries before Swift that humanity had discovered that the earth wasn’t flat. The notion of Swift understanding what a flying rock through space is was definitely interesting. However, during class we discussed Newtonian discovery pre-Gulliver, so I figured that analyzing the word comet would simply be a rehashing of the information we had already covered. So I went for a different approach. I decided to go for a word that seemed to imply celestial bodies while also being a word that I don’t often hear: Perihelion. So, after searching the word “perihelion,” I found this:

Astro-theology or a demonstration of the being and attributes of God, from a survey of the heavens. Illustrated with copper plates. By W. Derham. Chapter 4 –

“Thus according to the before commended Sir Isaac Newton’s (b) computation, the Comet in 1680, in its Perihelion, was above 166 times nearer the Sun than the Earth is; and consequently its Heat was then 28000 times greater than that of Summer: So that a Ball of Iron as big as the Earth, heated by it, would hardly become a comet in 50000 years.”

This is definitely interesting material. Not only does this work sound very similar to Swifts, but it seems that Swift’s work directly echoes this passage. This passage seems to tell me everything I was looking for: it tells me that the comet that Swift is talking about is definitely formulated from what he had heard from the work of Isaac Newton. Following this, the use of Perihelion is directly associated with Comet, which tells me that perihelion is definitely a word that has to do with celestial bodies, and not just a word to describe an object in motion. Finally, I can get a glimpse as to why Swift used this information as a satire. This information just sounds crazy for the time, and I’m sure Swift felt it was probably a little ludicrous as well. No wonder he used it to describe a culture of seemingly crazy individuals.