"To remove this obstacle I repeat or refer to such knowledge as has come under my notice, my own previously expressed views, and also describe and exhibit my last experiments and explain their novelty and utility"
About this Quote
Hargrave’s sentence is a small act of engineering in prose: he’s designing a ramp over an “obstacle” that is almost certainly skepticism, confusion, or institutional inertia. The opening clause frames his audience as a bottleneck in the system, not as peers already aligned with him. He isn’t asking for belief; he’s assembling an evidentiary pathway.
The structure matters. “Repeat or refer” signals impatience with reinventing the wheel, but also a pragmatic awareness that scientific memory is short and attention is scarce. By invoking “knowledge as has come under my notice,” he quietly asserts credibility without sounding grandiose: not omniscience, just the disciplined accumulation of observation. Then he tightens the screw with “my own previously expressed views,” anchoring the work in a consistent intellectual trajectory. It’s a preemptive defense against the charge of tinkering or chasing novelty for its own sake.
The most revealing turn is his insistence on “describe and exhibit my last experiments.” Exhibit is doing a lot of work: Hargrave is positioning proof as something that can be seen, handled, replicated. In the late-19th/early-20th century world of aviation and mechanics, that’s also a political gesture - a rebuttal to armchair theorists and a pitch to funders, militaries, and manufacturers who wanted demonstrations, not metaphysics.
“Novelty and utility” is the closing handshake between science and industry. Hargrave is reminding readers that innovation isn’t merely new; it’s new in a way that performs. The subtext: if you still doubt him after this, the obstacle isn’t the evidence - it’s you.
The structure matters. “Repeat or refer” signals impatience with reinventing the wheel, but also a pragmatic awareness that scientific memory is short and attention is scarce. By invoking “knowledge as has come under my notice,” he quietly asserts credibility without sounding grandiose: not omniscience, just the disciplined accumulation of observation. Then he tightens the screw with “my own previously expressed views,” anchoring the work in a consistent intellectual trajectory. It’s a preemptive defense against the charge of tinkering or chasing novelty for its own sake.
The most revealing turn is his insistence on “describe and exhibit my last experiments.” Exhibit is doing a lot of work: Hargrave is positioning proof as something that can be seen, handled, replicated. In the late-19th/early-20th century world of aviation and mechanics, that’s also a political gesture - a rebuttal to armchair theorists and a pitch to funders, militaries, and manufacturers who wanted demonstrations, not metaphysics.
“Novelty and utility” is the closing handshake between science and industry. Hargrave is reminding readers that innovation isn’t merely new; it’s new in a way that performs. The subtext: if you still doubt him after this, the obstacle isn’t the evidence - it’s you.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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