(a) the story is more or less as told by the late Everett Hafner
<http://www.everetthafner.com>, physicist, musician, author, and
former Science Dean of Hampshire College;
(b) Hafner regarded the story as an explicit parable for science,
which he could only see as logically circular [Raimi agrees].
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APPENDIX
THE CRAZY OLD SEA CAPTAIN
There was this crazy old sea captain who retired from the sea; he
bought a little white house on top of a hill overlooking a small
seaside village and lived there all alone. He converted the windows
to portholes and the stairways to ladders, scraped the rust off
everything and had it
ship-shape in every way. Out in the yard he mounted a small cannon,
which he fired off to sea every day at precisely noon. He associated
with nobody except the lad who brought him groceries and other things
from the village, and even then he mostly hauled the basket up to his
window with a rope and pulley. He had a peg leg, of course, but
didn't make much of it, since he wore good long canvas pants at all
times.
He spent much of his time with his glass, looking out towards the
horizon for passing ships, and sometimes studying the village, too.
He got to know all the streets and shops, and even many of the people
as they passed in and out: those who bought pork chops and those who
bought lamb, and what kind of hats and gloves they bought and where.
One shop in particular was important to him, the shop of the
watchmaker, who sold clocks and repaired them, and had a large clock
hanging outside (a real one, showing the time, hanging from two heavy
chains) as his sign. It was by this clock that the sea-captain set
his own watch, for in the days of which I tell, radio and television
had not yet been invented.
So that while the villagers did not know the sea captain, he knew
them, and one day he decided to go down and have a closer look. He
went to the butcher, the shoemaker, the baker and the dry-goods
store. Nobody knew him and he didn't tell. When he went to the
watchmaker's he spent some time looking at the displays and asking
some technical questions about the tools and such. Then he asked how
the watchmaker set the time on his clocks, and the man said, "Well,
there's this crazy old sea captain who lives up on that hill there,
and every day exactly at noon he fires off this cannon. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . ."
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Regarding the above story, Ralph Raimi wrote to me on 13 September 2007:
"It is entirely possible that Everett Hafner invented the story
himself, though when he told it to me apropos of the philosophical
discussion we were having I simply took it as the sort of story
current among physicists. Of course I have changed the wording
somewhat, but it was a sea captain and the story itself is unchanged;
my improvements were in the direction of ensuring that the surprise
at the end is not telegraphed by the wording by which the story
unfolds. I have never found it necessary to invent an ending to the
last sentence."