The Vorpel Foundation: AHDH—Alternative Hypotheses of Dimensional Hubris
Department founded 1649; acquired by the Vorpel Foundation 1947
There is a particular kind of institution that announces itself with the confidence of a man who has just correctly identified a cloud. The Department of Alternative Hypotheses of Dimensional Hubris, established in 1649 under the patronage of persons whose names have been variously lost, redacted, or never written down to begin with, belongs firmly to this tradition.
It does not present findings so much as it administers impressions. That it has survived nearly four centuries says less about the quality of its research than about the endurance of the need for something to point to when certainty fails and a letterhead is required.
The Vorpel Foundation acquired it in 1947 under circumstances the Foundation’s own archivists describe as “procedurally undocumented,” which is the institutional phrase for “we are not entirely sure how this happened but the receipts have been filed.” By that point, the Department had already absorbed three smaller bodies: the Institute for Psycyclical Research, founded in 1848 and defunct by a date no one recorded with any enthusiasm; the Slender Society of Meaningful Lives, whose membership fluctuated between four and possibly the same four people wearing different hats; and the Blavastical Centre for Re-incorporation, which appears to have incorporated itself at least twice before anyone noticed this was the same building. The International Conference of Mytho-luminescence rounds out the portfolio, having held its inaugural conference in 1923 and its concluding conference in 1924, a pace of contraction that most institutions would find sobering but which the AHDH absorbed without visible distress.
The Department’s first Principal, Atlas von Entenbraten, delivered his opening remarks in 1649 with the kind of rhetorical self-assurance that belongs to men who have never been seriously wrong about anything because they have never committed to anything falsifiable. “The common assumption,” he told his assembled colleagues, “is that truth lies beneath appearances. This is convenient because appearances are usually easier to reach. Unfortunately, excavation has revealed only further appearances. Several generations of researchers have therefore mistaken depth for discovery.” He then paused, surveyed the room, and added what would become his most frequently cited remark: “Boulderdash.” Scholars have debated for three centuries whether this constituted a critique of the preceding remarks or a continuation of them. The balance of opinion holds that von Entenbraten was not making a distinction.
His intellectual descendants have kept the faith. Professor Renata Schlüss, who served as the Department’s Director of Elemental Enquiry from 1971 to 1989, published a paper in the Journal of Approximate Conclusions that argued with considerable elegance that “the primary obstacle to the discovery of truth is the persistent availability of agreement, which satisfies the same emotional requirement at a fraction of the epistemological cost.” She followed this with a monograph arguing that disagreement, properly understood, was the only honest intellectual position, before resigning in protest at the Department’s unanimous agreement with her findings. The irony was noted in the minutes and subsequently lost.
The Department’s collected papers cover an area of enquiry so broad as to constitute a kind of intellectual topography. Entities: What Are They Really? ran to six volumes before the editorial board concluded that the question had been asked with sufficient thoroughness, though not answered. Alien Life on Other Planets was described by its author, Dr Phineas Gorck, as “empirically premature but atmospherically confident,” a formulation that accurately describes a great deal of the Department’s output. Dyslexia and Dogs remains unexplained in the catalogue and has been the subject of enquiries from three universities and one veterinary practice, none of which received a satisfactory response. The Disappearing Act: Studies in Theatricality ran briefly as a seminar series before its convenor stopped attending, an outcome that the Department logged, with characteristic understatement, as “thematically consistent.”
Elements of Truth: What Lies Beneath? stands as the Department’s most ambitious project, a structured decomposition of the conditions under which something comes to be regarded as true, conducted with the thoroughness of people who genuinely wanted to know and the methodology of people who had mislaid their instruments.
The first Element is Agreement—described in the Department’s internal documents as “the most common substitute for truth.” The argument is not complicated. If enough people agree, disagreement begins to resemble error. This works remarkably well until the agreement changes, which it reliably does, at which point the previous agreement is reclassified as a misunderstanding, a superstition, or, in cases where reputations require protection, “an early and important contribution to the field.”
Dr Marguerite Flosse, a visiting researcher from the Institut des Convictions Molles in Lyon, observed in 1962 that “consensus is the bureaucracy of belief. It does not establish truth. It establishes who is allowed to say they told you so.” The Department published this remark in its newsletter and immediately reached consensus that it was correct, a circularity no one addressed at the time.
Duration follows agreement as the second Element, and the two are cousins. A proposition repeated for centuries acquires a geological quality. Its age becomes mistaken for evidence, and the resulting sediment is given the name “tradition,” which confers on it a respect that its origins would not necessarily support. Von Entenbraten himself wrote that “a sufficiently old error acquires the dignity of a foundation stone. One is reluctant to remove it for fear of what might fall.” He was writing about a specific claim in natural philosophy, long since disproved, but the observation has proved more durable than the claim it described. This is a pattern the Department has documented extensively without appearing to notice that it applies to the Department itself, which has persisted on the basis of duration at least as much as discovery.
Authority constitutes the third Element, and here the Department has historically shown a certain professional investment. A statement gains mass when attached to a sufficiently impressive title—Professor, Duke, Archbishop, Expert, Algorithm. The statement itself may remain entirely unchanged. Lord Brevet Hanthorpe-Swaine, who chaired the Department’s Advisory Council from 1901 to 1931, once told a packed audience at the Royal Geographical Society that “the correct arrangement of letters before and after a name can add thirty points to the apparent veracity of any claim, with an additional premium for continental decorations.” He delivered this remark in his capacity as KBE, FRGS, and Honorary Fellow of several bodies whose acronyms he carried on his correspondence without always remembering what they stood for. The audience received it as wisdom. The Department filed it under “Methodology.”
The fourth Element—Position—addresses the problem that truth observed from one pond may appear differently from another, a formulation that is either a contribution to epistemology or a metaphor that got away from someone. The Department notes with characteristic evenhandedness that “displaced ducks frequently report anomalies,” which is either a technical observation about perspective or a note that escaped from a different project.
The fifth Element concerns Absence, and here the prose briefly drops its ironic register. What is omitted frequently exerts greater influence than what is recorded. A researcher named only as “Bet” has been attempting to catalogue this Element for years. Results remain incomplete. The reader suspects this is both a joke and not a joke, which is the Department’s most consistent register.
Recursion provides the sixth Element and the Department’s most honest admission. Any attempt to define truth becomes another object requiring examination. Researchers are advised not to stare directly into this section for extended periods. It is unclear whether this constitutes a warning or a boast. Professor Tomás Véra, of the University of Somewhere Between Lisbon and Porto, whose affiliation has never been verified but whose ideas have circulated widely enough to suggest someone is responsible for them, wrote that “the recursive examination of the conditions for truth is to philosophy what a hall of mirrors is to navigation: not useless, but not, strictly speaking, helpful.” The Department quotes him approvingly. He may have written for them under a pseudonym. The records are incomplete.
The seventh Element, Selection, carries the most direct charge. Institutions seldom discover excellence. They appoint it. The recipient may be admirable. The appointment remains an act of administration. Subsequent generations frequently mistake the certificate for the quality it certifies. The AHDH advances this argument without appearing to register that it describes every appointment its own governing board has ever made, including the founding of the Department itself, which was, by any reading, an act of administration by people in a position to fund acts of administration. Von Entenbraten was not discovered. He was appointed. He was, by most accounts, admirable. The appointment was still an act of administration.
The conclusion to Elements of Truth runs briefly and without embarrassment. Investigation reveals that truth does indeed possess elements. Unfortunately, each element contains traces of truth, rendering further decomposition necessary. Funding has therefore been requested for an additional seven volumes. This is either intellectual honesty or institutional self-perpetuation wearing intellectual honesty as a costume. The Department’s four centuries of operation suggest the distinction has never troubled it especially, which may itself be the most honest thing it has ever produced.
What the AHDH offers, finally, is not truth but a taxonomy of the things that pass for it—a useful service, provided one does not mistake the map for the territory, or the Department for the quality it certifies, or the essay for the institution, or the institution for anything more than a very long way of saying, in the end, with full confidence and no traceable evidence: Boulderdash.
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