“Truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him.” — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Lichtenberg was an eighteenth-century scientist who spent most of his life in the Holy Roman Empire. He was born in Hesse-Darmstadt. When he was about twenty-one, he was granted tuition from his local ruler to go to the nearby University of Göttingen, which was in the Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, one of the domains of George III. (The king/elector sent several of his sons to study at the University of Göttingen.) Lichtenberg spent the rest of his life there as student and professor with the exception of a couple of trips to England (one of George III’s other domains). He is probably best remembered today due to Lichtenberg figures, traces of paths left by electricity that are named for him. These are often seen in people who have been struck by lightning, for instance.
Lichtenberg could have taught Roy Moore a few things on the art of loving younger women, but in the Eighteenth Century, nobody seemed to care if a sixteen-year-old girl moved in with a thirty-eight-year-old man who had known her for three years.
Then there were his satirical activities. Most of these were aimed at other scientists or pseudo-scientists. There was, for instance, one Jacob Philadelphia, who billed himself as a scientist, although most of what he did was sketchy stuff, and much also would have fit in the realm of entertainment. Lichtenberg produced a poster of the extravagant wonders that would be seen at Philadelphia’s show, and Philadelphia left Göttingen without gracing the city with one of his performances.
A fool. A child. A child-like fool. A scientist. A philosopher. And a very naughty boy. Lichtenberg was an interesting figure in history.
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