Sun-beams May Be Extracted From Cucumbers

“Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers” was a phrase used in the 18th century to describe a pointless or absurd intellectual enterprise — the kind of scientific experiment that sounds impressive and produces nothing. Jonathan Swift used it in Gulliver’s Travels to mock the scientists of Laputa. Peter Pindar, the pen name of satirist John Wolcot, ran with it as a title, producing a pamphlet-length work that is essentially a delivery mechanism for a very good joke about academic pretension.

The premise is simple: science, in the hands of the wrong people, produces elaborate work toward completely useless ends. Extracting sunbeams from cucumbers is the Georgian equivalent of a fifteen-slide presentation about why the slide deck format is suboptimal. It is, in other words, eternal.

What’s remarkable about this particular title is how well it has aged. The phrase still lands because the phenomenon it describes — impressive-sounding activity that accomplishes nothing — remains a recognizable feature of human institutions. It could describe certain corporate meetings, certain government reports, certain academic papers in fields that shall remain nameless.

This is a historical curiosity more than a modern read, but it earns a place here for the title alone, which is one of the better titles in the English language and belongs in any serious collection of books that made interesting linguistic choices. Also, you will be the only person at any gathering who owns it.