The Blazing World

The Empress has many different peoples as advisors: bird-men astronomers; bear-men experimental philosophers; ape-men chemists; fly-men, worm-men, and fish-men natural philosophers; spider-men and lice-men mathematicians; jackdaw-men, magpie-men, and parrot-men orators and logicians; and giant architects.

The Empress decides to use her position and her ability to speak the language to learn about the Blazing World. She asks the statesmen why the land has so few laws. They respond that laws cause conflict. The monarchy is their preferred form of government because just as a body has one head, so they have one Emperor. Similarly, even though the people attend many different churches, they all worship the same God with the same prayers.

Next, the architects explain how that the city’s buildings are low to the ground to avoid damage from the weather and heat.

The Empress convenes the bird-men astronomers and asks them about the sun, moon, and stars, learning that the Blazing World gets its name from its only perceivable celestial objects, the Blazing Stars. She then asks them to explain things about the air, wind, snow, thunder, and lightning. After they answer, she commands the experimental observers, the bear-men, to train their telescopes on the pole to see where she came from. The experimental observers can only see the Blazing Stars, though they quibble over whether it was actually three stars or one star seen three times. This indecision angers the Empress, who thinks that the telescopes only deceive their users. She orders them to destroy their telescopes and use their eyes instead. When the experimental observers object—they delight in the telescopes’ imaginings, even if they aren’t factual truth—the Empress allows them to keep the instruments, as long as their disagreements are kept to only their schools and not allowed to spread more widely.

To show their gratitude and make amends, the bear-men offer to use their microscopes to show the Empress small things. Afterwards, the Empress asks to see a large whale through a microscope; when the microscope is unable magnify the whale, the bear-men invent a device to make the large things small. They also try to make a glass that could see a vacuum, but they are unsuccessful.

Next, the fish-men and worm-men natural philosophers teach the Empress about the Blazing World’s fauna. Revealing her scientific knowledge, the Empress asks what happens to the ocean’s salt when ice floes melt, but neither the worm-men, fish-men, nor the bird-men know the answer. When the Empress asks why natural springs are not saltwater like the sea, the worm-men and fish-men declare that spring water is freshwater because of the internal heat in the earth—the unequal distribution of heat creates different minerals in different places around the world.

Inspired by the discussion, the Empress requests that the ape-men chemists conduct an experiment to see if moderate heat can create gold, artificial metals, or minerals.

The Empress wonders if underground minerals and animals are colorless, which prompts the worm-men to laugh: Since there is no such thing as a natural nothing and since the different parts of a body all work to create one thing, it is impossible to have a body without color. Delighted by their answer, the Empress excuses them for laughing at her question.

Next, the Empress talks with the ape-men chemists about transmutation. The chemists give a long answer outlining how core elements create natural bodies, though they disagree on whether these elements are only fire, air, water, and earth or something else, too. In their experiments, the ape-men discover that all natural bodies are made of water. The Empress is unimpressed—she believes nature is all one collective body with many parts and disagrees with the beliefs that there are only four elements and that nature is made solely of water. She chastises the ape-men, saying they should use their experiments to benefit society instead. For instance, the ape-men should figure out why the Blazing World’s Imperial Race appears so young despite living for up to 400 years. The Empress believes that they have found the philosopher’s stone (a nonexistent substance believed by real-life alchemists to be capable of many feats of magic, including turning base metals to gold and granting immortality).

The Empress consults her galenical (that is, following the work of 3rd century Greek physician Galen) physicians, herbalists, and anatomists. She asks the herbalists about the effects of certain drugs, anatomists about monsters, and the physicians about the causes, symptoms, and spread of diseases and plagues.

Moving on from science, the Empress turns to the spider-men mathematicians and the lice-men geometricians. The spider-men confound the Empress with shapes and lines. She admires them greatly for this, and for their work as magicians and spiritualists. The lice-men explain how they measure and weigh things. When they argue over how to weigh air, the Empress becomes displeased, as there seems to be no truth in their work.

The Empress then conferences with the magpie-men, parrot-men, and the jackdaw-men orators and logicians. Two parrot-men attempt to give eloquent speeches, but instead confuse themselves so badly that they disgrace their whole profession. The Empress tells them to focus more on their ideas than on rhetoric. The Empress asks the logicians to model their debates. They use syllogisms, or deductions based on two propositions assumed to be true, to prove their points, but this only leads to arguing. The Empress interrupts, criticizing their inconsistency, lack of reason, and obscuring of the truth. The logicians claim that natural philosophy would be incomplete and imperfect without debate, but the Empress counters that nature and knowledge can never be perfect, as perfection lies only with God. The Empress banishes the logicians forever.