In the Beginning Was…Gas? by Regis Martin

   “In the beginning was the word and the word was hydrogen gas.” —Harlow Shapley, Astronomer 

Two of the looniest thinkers who ever existed—until, that is, Professor Shapley came along—were a pair of 18th-century Frenchmen named Jean-Jacques Rousseau and M. de Voltaire. Now, we mustn’t blame France for the sheer nuttiness of their ideas. Did she not also give us Montaigne and Pascal?

Posterity is another matter, of course, having canonized their memory since practically the day they died, which was within two months of each other in the year 1778. However, not everyone has been taken in by the ruse. Dr. Johnson, for instance, in weighing the proportion of iniquity between the two, determined that it was comparable to that of a flea versus a louse. …