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 -
SS ...
:EVOLUTION -

THE FIRST TWOL

. . NAMICS
The Mass Psycholo&y of Fi ttism
The Mass Psycholo&y of Fi ttism
FITNESS, EVOLUTION,AND
THE FIRST TWOLAWSOP THERMODYNAMICS

Edward Yu

Undocumented Worker Press

1he Mass Psychologyof Fittism:
Fitness,Evolution, and the First Two Laws of Thermodynamics
(also known as: 2,092,726 Quick and EasyStepsto 6-packAbs)

Copyright©2015 by Edward Yu. Some rights reserved.

Formatting: Edward Yu and Silvia Ping

Indexing: Ned Liebl
Formatting Consultant: Ned Liebl
Artistic Consultants: Ned Liebl and Silvia Ping

Front Cover Design by Edward Yu and Silvia Ping

Cover Art: Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1490. Available from:
Wikimedia Commons, https:/ /commons.wikimedia.org/

Photo of author by Ann Yu

Model in Figure 1: Amanda Espy

Printed in the United States or the United Kingdom

Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data: contact publisher

Undocumented Worker Press

Echo Park, Los Angeles CA 90026

First Printing: November 2015

~O~G
BY NC ND

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons,
171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. Permissions
beyond the scope of this license may be available at http:/ /massfittism.com

ISBN - 978-1-4951-0700-9
For George,
Jessicaand Grandma

Yoursenseof humani"tyremindsme of what

reallymatters.
 TABLEOF CONTENTS

Prologue
What Does it Mean to be Fit?

Introduction
The Growing Numbers of "Unfit" 7

Part 1
Humans, Machines and the 1 Law of Thermodynamics
st 13

Chapter 1. What is Exercise? 15

Chapter 2. The Origins of Modern Exercise 27
Chapter 3. The 1st Law of Thermodynamics 35
Chapter 4. Evolution 55
Chapter 5. Cartesian Reductionism 71
Chapter 6. The Purpose of Exercise as We Know It 79
Chapter 7. The Primacy of Numbers 85
Chapter 8. Balance, Degrees of Freedom & External Constraints 111
Chapter 9. The Spine & 3 Axes of Rotation... the Neuro in
Neuromuscular 129
Chapter 10. Reliability & Accuracy, Quality of Movement and
Being Human 143

Part 2
Information, Knowledge and the 2 nd Law of Thermodynamics 171
THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

Chapter 11. Evolution, Information Theory, and a New Perspective

on Fitness 173
Chapter 12. Information Processing and Range of Strong Motion 197
Chapter 13. Information to Knowledge: The Neuro
in Neuromuscular 217
Chapter 14. Evolution (or God) Doesn't Make Mistakes 233
Chapter 15. Freedom and Response-Ability 247
Chapter 16. Learning, Novelty, Information & Knowledge 261
Chapter 17. Novelty, Redundancy and Compressing Information 285
Chapter 18. The Quick and the Dead 311

Part 3
An Old Theory and a New perspective: Relating Fitness to Evolution,
Neuromuscular Complexity, Entropy and the Ground 329

Chapter 19. A Few Words on Talent and (Over) Efforting 331

Chapter 20. Complexity, Entropy and Learning 347
Chapter 21. Learning: Sense-Ability, Neuromuscular Complexity
and Reversing Entropy 361
Chapter 22. Alternatives: Evolution, the Foot and the Ground 385
Chapter 23. Recommendations 405

Epilogue
2,092,726 Quick and Easy Steps to 6-pack Abs (and other important
secrets to getting fit) 417

Bibliography 443

Acknowledgements 455

Index 465
 ... the machine has in turn influencedman'sown conceptionof himself in
the senseof making it machine-like, mechanistic,unalive and rigid.

-WILHELM REICH, 1heMassPsychology

of Fascism1

l. Reich, TheMass Psychologyof Fascism,p. 288.

 PROLOGUE

What Does it Mean to be Fit?

For years I've been uncomfortable associating the human body with fitness.
Maybe because the marketed image of what a fit person is supposed to look like
has little to do with Charles Darwin's original conception of the word. 2 Maybe
because like other marketed images, the ones propagated by the fitness industry
so rarely materialize in real life. Maybe because nature kills off those who are
"weak" and "unfit" and in doing so, separates the chaff from the wheat, so to
speak. Meanwhile, the strong and fit prosper just like on those wildlife shows
where indomitable predator devours old, sick, or newborn prey. At least that's
how the popularized version of Darwin's theory of evolution goes.
A famous failed Austrian artist took the popular idea and ran with it. He
almost made it to Stalingrad. He killed some people along the way.

FIT FORWHAT?

s
Extreme Boot Camp® mission is to bring a unique style of physical fitness
workouts to civiliam of all levels by providing an exciting military fitness boot
camp atmosphere with discipline and structure.
-from the homepage of EXTREME BOOT CAMP®3

2. While Charles Darwin neither coined the term "survival of the fittest," nor used it in his first
four editions of Origin of Species,he did borrow it for his later editions.

3. "Boot Camp Workout & Weight Loss Camps California, Extreme Boot Camp®- Building
A Better America, One Body at a Time." ExtremeBoot Camp, N.p., n.d. Web, 29 June 2014.
<http://www.extremebootcamp.com/>
2 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGYOF FITTISM

Torture becomes systematic in the hands of a different sort of person-one who

is determined to use the powers of reason, and who believes in the rightness of
his cause.
-CULLEN MURPHY, God'sjury: 7he Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World'

When we talk about fitness, a question that we often forget to ask is: "Fit
for what?" If I am considered fit enough to be on a magazine cover, does that
also make me fit for the rest of life, which occurs outside of the confines of 8½
x 11 inches? Should Albert Einstein, who probably never performed a single
push-up, be deemed unfit?
Thankfully today as compared to a mere century ago, we are much more
lenient about who gets to be on top of the human food chain. For example, even
though the "fittest" are often considered to be the most "talented," "gifted," or
otherwise innately superior, these days the category may also include anyone
who works hard enough, possesses the right attitude, meditates sufficiently on
abundance, or burns off enough karma to climb another rung on the ladder.
Thus, with the right attitude and work ethic (from this lifetime or ones previous),
anyone can lose 100 pounds and get six-pack abs. Anyone can go from rags-or
what was once known as a middle class stature-to riches ala Sam Walton, Bill
Gates or Will Smith's character in the Hollywood blockbuster, lhe Pursuit of
Happyness. Anyone can attract abundance and love.
Of course, this means that the growing masses of people who are today un/
underemployed, homeless, or otherwise barely scraping by must either lack the
talent, fortitude, or proper amount of positive thinking to succeed. The growing

4. Cullen Murphy goes on to write: "This is what Michael lgnatieff means when he calls
torture chambers 'intensely moral places."' -Murphy, p. 56.
In an interview with Terri Gross, Murphy elaborates further on the marriage between
torture and what I call, disembodied reasonor reasonin the absenceof humanity: "When
you read accounts of torture, you get the unmistakable impression that the people doing
the torture or conducting the torture-somewhere inside them, they think they are saving
souls." -Cullen Murphy, "'TI1eInquisition: A Model For Modern Interrogators." Interview
by Terri Gross. Fresh Air. NPR. WHYY, Philadelphia: January 23, 2013. Radio.
 PROLOGUE:WHAT DOESIT MEAN TO BE FIT? 3

masses of people who are also individually growing in mass, must be too lazy to
get fit. Given this, the masses, who incidentally comprise the world's majority,
may want to spend more time in the self-improvement section of the bookstore
(re)learning the "10 steps to financial success," "9 steps to six-pack abs" or the
secret laws of attracting anything from financial wealth to the perfect mate. And
if any of these extracurricular efforts don't happen to work, it may be time for
military intervention-in the figurative sense, of course. 5
Oddly, the fact that the fitness industry has co-opted police and military
terminology, methodology and discipline doesn't seem to alarm the public. On
the contrary, military-style interventions into our private lives appear to be
gaining in popularity as exemplified by the growing number of fitness "boot
camps" and the soaring ratings of TV shows like "The Biggest Loser."6
I always felt it obvious that people tend to get in shape when encouraged (i.e.
yelled at and otherwise berated) to exercise. Yet I wonder if we are sidestepping
a more fundamental issue when we find ourselves out of shape and striving
desperately to be fit-sometimes to the point of hiring someone to order us
around like a drill sergeant. I wonder, specifically, if the conventional notion
of fitness is part and parcel of a culture that inadvertently works on a pyramid
scheme in which only a small fraction can ever rise to the top--whether in
health, fitness or any other category we deem desirable.

5. Literal replaces figurative when, for example, the police round up undocumented
immigrants and homeless people or Washington chooses ro "liberate" a sovereign nation by
sending in the marines, bombers and/or self-propelled missiles.
6. One could also make rhe case for shows like "COPS" where entertainment consists of
watching heavily armed police officers raid our neighbors' homes in a manner befitting
George S. Parron and the I Armed Corps. IfTV ratings and Emmy nominations are any
indication, the act of brutalizing and incarcerating mostly poor and unarmed blacks and
Latinos for minor drug offenses is to be not only tolerated in the 21" Century, bur valorized
and glamorized. Like the Jews, Gypsies, black South Africans, Native Americans and
aboriginals of old (and the Palestinians of !are), those who either live on the other side of
the tracks and/or in segregated encampments continue to bear the brunt of "White Man's
Burden." (For more on "reality-based law enforcement," please see Kelly Vlahos, '"COPS' at
25: The Popular Reality Series Confronts an 'Uncertain and Problematic' Furure," American
Conservative,Jan. 15, 2013.)
4 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO SUCCEED?

In another brilliantly conceivedsegment, Tonydevotespart of the seminar to

explaining thefinancial and emotional benefitsof surrounding oneselfwith
the right "peergroup"-after which a stafferbeginsa salespitch for the $45,000
Platinum program. Thosewhopurchase one of the twelve spotswill join the
"ultimatepeer group, "we are told-the "creamof the crop," the "eliteof the
elite of the elite."
-SUSAN CAIN, Quiet: ThePowerof Introvertsin a World That Can't Stop Talkinj

The fact that the great white shark has risen to the summit of the ocean
food chain doesn't mean that in a different environment it would remain there.
Great whites thrive in particular environs, which is why you won't see any of
them in Lake Michigan, a Nebraska cornfield, or busy intersection in Tokyo.
Our dominant culture similarly creates fertile conditions for the fittest, or so-
called, "cream of the cream" to rise to the top. Cultural icons, such as John D.
Rockefeller, Donald Trump, and Anthony Robbins, show us what we too could
be if we only had the right attitude. Genghis Khan would've been just another
Mongolian nomad had he not understood the power of public persuasion (not

7. Cain, p. 41. Eric Schlosser provides a similar example of this genre of self-improvement
seminar whereby society's elite attempt ro teach the "common woman/man" how ro follow
in their footsteps:

"Youare the elite of America,"Brian Tracy,author of The Psychology of Selling, tells the
crowd. "Saytoyourself 'I like me!I like me! I like me!"' He isfollowed by Henry Kissinger,
who tellssomeforeign-policyanecdotes.And then PeterLowe'sattractivewife, Tamara,leads
the audiencein a dance contest;the winner gets a free trip to Disneyland.Four contestants
climb onstageand dozens of beachballsare tossedinto the crowdas the sound systemblasts
the Beach Boys'"Surjin'USA." Thousandsof peoplestart dancing and bouncingthe striped
balls into the air. Barbara Bush is next, arriving to "Fanfarefor the Common Man," her
smileprojectedonto two gigantic televisionscreens.She tellsa story that begins, "We had the
wholegang at Kennebunkport... "

-Eric Schlosser, "Fast-Food Nation: The True Cost of America's Dier," (Parr I)
Rolling Stone, Issue 794, September 3, 1998.
 PROLOGUE:WHAT DOESIT MEANTO BE FIT? 5

to mention mass murder).

Could it be that some form of social Darwinism has crept into the workings
of the fitness industry in particular and our dominant culture in general-even
if thickly veiled as "spiritual growth," "financial wizardry," or "self-help"? Could
it be that something about our dominant culture tends to push us lower on
the food chain so to speak, and makes it nigh impossible to be other than
out of shape, and thus, unfit? If so, then being unfit need not be judged any
more harshly than being in debt, or for that matter, average-especially when
considering that the average person in today's modern industrialized world is
either out of shape, overweight, and in debt, or on her way to being out of
shape, overweight and in debt. 8

WHO'SSTOPPINGME?

Judgment aside, the fact that most of us remain unfit-at least according to
the standards of our dominant culture--doesn't mean that anyone is forcing us
to stay in this condition-just as no one is forcing us to stay in debt or remain
average. As such, critics could easily point out that no one is actually stopping
me from getting in shape. And critics could easily be right-unless, of course,
the "no one" includes me (along with and everyone trying to help my cause).
If we look closely, we discover that most of us are actually stopping ourselves
from getting or staying in shape, and then from time to time forcing ourselves
with more or less efficacy to get back or stay in shape (again, sometimes hiring

8. While this may not be as apparent in places like Japan, Switzerland, Singapore and
Liechtenstein, the global adoption of the Standard American Diet (SAD), along with the
growing disparity in wealth, both within and among nations, makes it increasingly difficult
for anybody (including citizens of the abovememioned) to insulate herself from the cultural
and economic effects of the global political economy. For more on the recent rise in obesity
among both wealthy and poor nations, please see, Barry M. Popkin, "The World Is Fat:
More People in the Developing World Are Now Overweight Than Hungry. How Can the
Poorest Countries Fight Obesity?" ScientificAmerican, Sept, 2007, pp. 88-95.
6 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

someone else to do the forcing). Could it be that the forcing has something to do
with the stopping and vice versa? That the forcing and stopping are essentially
two selves pushing on opposite sides of the same wall? Could forcing, in other
words, be part and parcel of a cultural mentality which undermines the very
thing that it proposes to aid such that failure is inadvertently built into it? If so,
then it could explain why getting and staying in shape appears to be no more of
a reality for most people than becoming a millionaire.
Of course, none of the above explains the existence of people who are fit,
making a lot of money and/or otherwise attracting abundance. How, according
to this theory, have these success stories escaped the supposed failure built into
our cultural mentality? Wouldn't being on top of the pyramid mean that at
least some portion of the population, however small, has escaped either the self-
sabotage or cultural limitations that prevent the rest of us from rising on the
pyramid? Aren't these people proof that anyone is capable of succeeding if they
simply have what it takes?9

9. Apparently not if we are to use the standards of millionaires themselves: "Silicon Valley is
thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires - nose-to-the-grindstone
people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as
they find themselves among the fortunate few. Their lives are rich with opportunity; they
generally enjoy their jobs. They are amply cushioned against the anxieties and jolts that
worry most people living paycheck to paycheck.
"But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do nor
think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people
with more wealth - often a lot more.
"When chief executives are routinely paid tens of millions of dollars a year and a hedge
fund manager can collect $1 billion annually, those with a few million dollars often see
their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age,
when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes." -Gary
Rivlin, "In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich," New York Times,August 5,
2007.
 INTRODUCTION

The Growing Numbers of "Unfit"

For more than a generationnow, we in the Westhave aggressively

spreadour
modern knowledgeof mental illnessaround the world. We have done this in
the name of science,believingthat our approachesrevealthe biologicalbasisof
psychicsufferingand dispelprescientificmyths and harmful stigma. Thereis
now good evidenceto suggestthat in theprocessof teachingthe restof the world
to think like us, we'vebeen exportingour Western"symptomrepertoire"as well.
-ETHAN WATTERS, "The Americanization of Mental Illness," New YorkTimes.10

If we measured everybody's fitness level using the standards of the health

and fitness industry, most of us would be deemed more or less, unfit. How
could this be when the industry has ballooned from virtually nothing into a
multi-billion dollar industry in four short decades?11 If we examine the boom of
the health and fitness industry and the simultaneous increase in the percentage
of people who are overweight, out of shape and otherwise, unfit, we might
conclude that a pyramid is intrinsic to either the industry or the ideology
which drives the industry. We might conclude, in other words, that the increase
in percentages of unfit is not simply a coincidence, but in fact, a necessary
component of a culture driven by a "survival of thefittest" mentality (even if the
mentality happens to be largely unconscious) just as having a large percentage

10. Ethan Watters, "The Americanization of Mental Illness," New YorkTimes,Jan. 8, 2010.
11. Dollar amounts increase by orders of magnitude if we include the medical/pharmaceutical
behemoth as a subset of the industry. Note that profits for the pharmaceutical industry have
risen steeply in the last 30 years.
8 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGYOF FITTISM

of dropouts, as well as, "average" and "below average" children and adults is
an essential aspect to adopting standardized tests and bell curves to measure
intelligence and academic competence.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the heads of the fitness industry---or any
industry for that matter-are part of an evil conspiracy to keep people from
getting in shape, attaining financial wealth, or meeting some other cultural
standard of success. What it could indicate, however, is that within a modern
and therefore, highly reductionistic context, growth in any industry tends to
foster a proportional increase in the problems that that particular industry is
supposed to solve. 12 Despite a booming fitness industry, for example, higher

12. It is instructive to note, for example, that despite rapid growth in what could be called
the "mass incarceration industry," the "politico-economic cleansing industry," or the
"paramilitary industrial complex"-i.e. private companies along with federal, state and
municipal agencies chat contain the word "correctional," "security," "anti-terror," "protect,"
or "defend" in their tides-we have not witnessed significant decreases in domestic
terrorism, illicit drug use or many of the other problems chat these entities were supposed
to long ago have reduced, if not eliminated. Notice, for example, how the creation of
the Department of Homeland Security, the establishment of the Transportation Security
Agency, and the expansion of domestic wiretapping by the National Security Agency have
not led to a decrease in domestic terrorism, even though they have resulted in a sharp
increase in the amount of activity considered suspicious, dangerous, and criminal (which,
in rum, has led to a surge in the number of people lying in jail cells, torture chambers, and
coffins).
There are, of course, obvious exceptions to my broad generalization (that within a
reductionistic context, growth in any industry tends to foster a proportional increase in the
problems that chat particular industry is supposed to solve). For example, the meteoric rise
of both the massincarcerationindustry and the paramilitary industrial complexhas arguably
played a minor role in the reduction in violent crime over the last 20 years. At the san1e
time, however, it has fueled a steep rise in the number of people being summarily beaten,
arrested, pepper-sprayed, tasered and/ or shot to death by law officers, all while contributing
to a general imprisonment rare rivaling char in the Russian Federation under Vladimir
Putin and an African American imprisonment rate rivaling the general rate in the Russian
Republic under Joseph Stalin. (Apparently, growth in these industries only helps to reduce
violent crime as long as we don't include crimes against humanity, assaults on che Bill of
Rights and transgressions against the UN Declaration of Human Rights.) For more on the
militarization of municipal police departments, see, Radley Balko, '"Why Did You Shoot
Me? I Was Reading a Book': The New Warrior Cop is Out of Control," Salon, July 7,
2013. For more on US prisons, and the crimes against humanity chat occur in them, see
Adam Gopnik, "The Caging of America," New Yorker,January 30, 2012. For more on
race and incarceration, see Michelle Alexander's important work, TheNew Jim Crow:Mass
Incarcerationin the Age of Colorblindness(New Press). For comparisons between US and
Soviet Union under Stalin, see Michael O'Donnell, "Crime and Punishment: On William
 INTRODUCTION: THE GROWING NUMBERS OF "UNFIT" 9

percentages of people than ever are out of shape.

Judging by our cultural standard for fitness, it seems that the industry's
method for getting people healthy and fit isn't working, except for a small
fraction of people who stand atop the pyramid. Could it be that a rise in the
industry necessitates a proportional rise in the number of unhealthy and unfit?

CULTURAL AND EVOLUTIONARY CONTEXT

From cable news to the nation's great newspapers, there is a tacit understanding
that in fitness storiesyou and I want to hear variations on exactly one theme: that
a just-published researchpaper in a scientific journal identifies a revolutionary
new three-and-a-half minute workout routine guaranteed to give you the body
of an underwear model. So powerful is this yearning-this burning ache to look
good naked and have great sex and live forever-that even the best-intentioned
of fitness journalists scour every little academic study for anything that might
justify telling you that same sweet story, one more time.
-DANIEL DUANE, "Fitness Crazed," New YorkTimes13

By what I've written in the pages previous and those that follow, I do not
mean to encourage anybody to get or stay out of shape. I also do not mean to
encourage anybody to get or stay in shape-at least, not by using conventional
methods. I do mean, however, to examine the social underpinnings that
affect our bodies and minds in mostly unconscious and profound ways. I am
wondering if the world of exercise-indeed, the world in general-could be
vastly richer than the one presented by our dominant culture-a model which
appears to be rooted in a sort of social Darwinist mentality-i.e. one that (ab)
uses evolutionary theory to justify a socially constructed pyramid scheme. I am

Sruntz," TheNation, January 30, 2012.

13. Daniel Duane, "Fitness Crazed," New YorkTimes,May 24 2014.
10 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

wondering, in other words, if by applying a caricature of the theory of evolution

where "only the strong survive,"-strength, in this case represented by reified
numeric values such as bench press stats, and symbolized by the (photoshopped)
images of models we see on billboards and magazine covers-we are unwittingly
thrusting a large majority toward the bottom of a socially constructed food
chain. And I am wondering if by examining the individual exclusively without
including the culture in which that individual exists, we are missing the forest
for the trees.
If someone deemed "unfit" or "dysfunctional" were examined within
their cultural context, would we see them differently-perhaps as a probable
symptom of a likely illness called modern or postmodern culture? Would we in
turn begin to see our culture as a narrow box into which many, if not most do
not fit? Would exercise and fitness take on different forms and carry different
meanings if they were placed within a broader, or even categorically different
context?
Considering all of the above, I am wondering what would happen if rather
than taking the conventional view of the human body and thereby removing
it from its cultural and evolutionary context, we began to examine it within its
cultural and evolutionary context. I am wondering if the fitness industry has it
all backward when it simply wants to mold bodies into the right shape without
regard to the mind attached to the body (and in doing so, unwittingly assumes
that most bodies are unfit), or the culture to which both are inextricably bound.
If we believe in the fitness industry, or indeed any of today's well-established
industries, then most of us probably should be spending more time in the health
& fitness, financial, and self-help sections of the bookstore. If, on the other
hand, we begin to question conventional views on fitness, finance, spirituality,
or anything else, then it may help to take a look at our dominant culture. In
questioning convention, we might notice that by trying to get fit, we generally
don't get fit. Moreover, by trying to get fit we tend to miss our on aspects of
living that could be more nurturing for our physical and emotional health-
 INTRODUCTION:THEGROWINGNUMBERSOF "UNFIT" 11

aspects that appear to have been recently excised from memory. Given this,
could it be that by dropping our current ideas on fitness, we might become
healthier, both in a physical and emotional sense? Could it be that by not trying
to get fit, we would in fact, become fitter?14

14. By "fitter" I am harkening back co the original idea of evolution and natural selection-
both in how humans evolved co move, as well as the shape the human body conforms co
when it moves the way it was evolved (or "designed") co move-rather than the popularized
notion which refers merely co a particular body type and ignores both the mind and the
sort of organic movement (as opposed co machine-like movement) which is inherent co the
human body.
 PART1

Humans, Machinesand
the 1st Law of Thermodynamics

Here is a corollaryto the eternal businessidea...

Find somethingsofundamental to life that no one could imagine it being
separatedoff asproperty. Then by some means deprivepeople of it
and sell it back to them.

-CHARLES EISENSTEIN 15

15. Eisenstein, TheAscent of Humanity, p. 212.

 Chapter 1

What is Exercise?

Secretsout-Brad Pitt wasn'tborn with theperfectbod weall know. Infact, he

workshardfor his chiseledphysique, and doing CrossFithelpshim achieveit,
accordingto WetPaint.com.What can the workout dofor you? 7hefast-paced
repetitionsand constantmovementput your body into extremeworkout mode,
soyou seeresultsquickly.
-SARAH GREENFEST, "9 Strong Stars Who Love CrossFit Workouts," Men'sFitness16

A DIFFERENTAPPROACH

While some historians believe the concept of exercise existed in ancient

civilizations thousands of years ago, the ritualized practice of moving one's
body to lose weight and otherwise get "in shape," remains by and large a late
20th Century and early 21 st Century phenomenon. That is to say for the vast
majority of recorded history and the entirety of prehistory, exercise as we know
it today did not exist. 17
Given this, one might wonder about the nature of exercise as we don'tknow

16. Sarah Greenfest, "9 Strong Stars Who Love CrossFit Workouts," Men'sFitness,Feb 8, 2013.
17. Even if we do include so-called exercise dating back to ancient civilizations, it would more
accurately be described as physical training for athletic competition, martial arts and war
rather than movement performed for the purpose of losing weight and looking more
attractive (even if participants ended up losing weight and/or looking more attractive).
We can see prehistoric behavior through indigenous peoples whom anthropologists
have never observed to exercise in an attempt to "get fit" despite the fact char they are always
highly fir.
16 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGYOF FITTISM

it today. For example, what was exercise like in the near and distant past, say
before it became a science? Was it primitive and crude without chemistry, physics
and mathematics to guide it along? Did the masses become "unfit" as a result,
and/or incompetent in their ability to perform everyday tasks? Without exercise
scientists, health clubs, Fitness®Magazine, and Suzanne Somers' ThighMaster®
to lead the way, to whom did people turn when they wanted to burn more
calories?
Of course, the assumption in all of these questions is that we know more
now about exercise than we did then. And the assumption remains be true: we
know more about exercise than we knew before it became a science. Yet if we
parse the statement one step further we could add a crucial phrase: we know
more about exercise developedfor the purpose of burning caloriesand building
musclemassthan we did in the past. 18 In the past, however, people weren't trying
to burn calories or build muscle mass. How could they if the calorie only came
into existence in the 1800s where it remained in the domain of chemistry and
physics, only to spread to the newly created fields of nutrition and exercise
science in the 1900s? And what about building muscle mass? Was it even a
concept before the advent modern bodybuilding or the 20 th Century discovery
of the protein molecule and its constituent amino acids?
Despite what movement in general and exercise in particular may have
meant to people in the past, exercise in modern and postmodern culture has
become highly circumscribed by the notion of burning calories and/or building
muscle mass. Yet, what about exercise not specifically developed for the purpose
of burning calories and/or building muscle mass? Moreover, what about
movement that's not classified as exercise? Does it not count for something even
if it is not easily quantified? Going one step further, do aspects of life that are

18. Given that our collective knowledge in the field of exercise science (also known as
kinesiology) grows with each passing year, we might conclude that the masses should be
much better at exercising roday than they were even ten or twenty years ago. And if this
were true, we would logically expect ro be fitter than we were ten or twenty years ago.
 CHAPTER1: WHAT IS EXERCISE? 17

not quantifiable stop counting in the figurative sense simply because they don't
count in the literal one?

THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF EXERCISE

The English word, exerciseoriginally meant physical activity and comes

from the Latin word, exerceremeaning "to keep busy, drive on," or literally,
"remove restraint," in reference to driving farm animals in the field. Looking
around us today, we can see that the modern use of the word has diverged from
its humble farming origins. Yet just as people in the pre-modern era knew how
to run even though the Boston Marathon did not yet exist, track and field was
not yet a sport (except as it existed in Ancient Greece), and Nike had yet to
patent the air sole, people in the pre-fitness-industrial era also understood how
to be in shape without the aid of health clubs, treadmills, and Fit Tv. People
knew, in other words, how to exercise before there were fitness experts to show
them how to do it.
While people in the past did not have the technological advantages that we
possess in postmodern culture, we in turn may be the ones who are disadvantaged.
For example, modern exercise as prescribed forms of movement (the ones that
are supposed to help us lose weight and get in shape) could be inadvertently
extinguishing other forms of movement-namely physical activities that we
do not categorize as exercise, and in turn unconsciously devalue-even though
it is precisely the other forms that humans performed for eons, well before
obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes became endemic and getting into
shape became a universal pursuit. Indeed, the reason behind the sudden desire
of the masses to get in shape and lose weight might have something to do with
the fact that once upon a time, not so long ago, humans were virtually all in
shape without the benefits of modern exercise.
Counterintuitively, as newer and "better" versions of exercise have
continued to appear, transforming not only US culture, but distant ones via a
18 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

combination of commodity and cultural export, more and more people appear
to be suffering from health problems associated with lack of physical activity.
Statistically speaking, the dramatic increase in fitness experts, personal trainers,
health and fitness gyms, exercise equipment and exercise books has been and
remains inversely proportional to the number of people whom the industry
would consider fit. 19

THE FITNESSINDUSTRY

"Yossarian,
you'vegot to help me make the men eat it. Egyptiancottonis the
finest cottonin the world "
"But it's indigestible,"Yossarianemphasized "It will make them sick don't
you understand?Why don'tyou try living on it yourselfif you don'tbelieveme?"
'1 did try,"admitted Milo gloomily."Andit made me sick."
-JOSEPH HELLER, Catch-2220

For the last forty years, the fitness industry has experienced a protracted
and rapid growth spurt, undergoing the kind of pubescent metamorphosis one
might see in a science or pulp fiction action figure, or perhaps, Hollywood
mogul on steroids who happens to play a science or pulp fiction action figure
in film. As our dominant culture has become increasingly fixated on quick

19. Where public levels of fitness are often judged by rates of obesity, individual level of fitness
can be measured by various indicators such as maximal aerobic capacity (also known as
VO 2 Max), body fat percentage and, for those attending US public schools, how well you
perform on the President's Youth Fitness Program FITNESSGRAM®. On an individual
level, however, fitness is more likely judged by how closely your physique resembles that
of the (often photoshopped) image on the magazine cover, than any test results. In other
words, fitness from a popular culture standpoint tends to be biased toward morphology-
i.e. the way you look-rather than the way you perform any given movement or what your
test scores say. Numeric data, however, remains imponant to the fitness industry in order
to determine how many more repetitions, steps, miles, minutes, etc. an individual needs to
perform in order to theoretically come closer to achieving the goal of having a fit body.
20. Heller, p. 264.
 CHAPTER1: WHAT IS EXERCISE? 19

fixes and an industry-defined version of fitness, the fitness industry's meteoric

growth has mimicked the steroid-enhanced ballooning in not only Arnold
Schwarzenegger's biceps, but his career as a bodybuilder, actor and politician. 21
In the four short decades since Schwarzenegger first set foot in the now fabled
Gold's Gym, the health and fitness industry has gone from ninety-nine pound
weakling to a proverbial Ms./Mr. Universe, metamorphosing into the economic
powerhouse that it is today---one that nobody in the 1960s could ever have
predicted. 22
Statistics alone demonstrate the industry's increase in economic muscle.
According to IBISWorld, for example, the sector known as Gym, Health and
Fitness Clubs collected well over $20 billion in 2011 and is expected to grow
despite the current recession. 23 If we add the word wellnessto the mix of gym,

21. I believe chat the endemic use of steroids, not only among professional athletes, but
members of the public at large serves to further boost sales of gym memberships, fitness
equipment, "nutritional supplements" and paraphernalia associated with getting in shape.
To get a sense of how much of a role steroids play in both amateur and professional athletics
as well as in the fitness industry, see the 2008 documentary, Bigger,Stronger,Fasterby Chris
Bell.
22. Health and fitness is also known as health and beauty,simply health,simply fitness, or any
usage or combination of one or more of these three words.
23. "According co IBISWorld's latest report, the Gym, Health and Fitness Clubs industry has
benefited greatly from the vast array of marketing campaigns and ensuing consumer trends
for fighting obesity and improving health. Gym membership numbers have increased
considerably over the past 10 years, rising from 36.3 million in 2002 to more than 42.8
million by 20 I I. This trend has resulted in soaring demand for fitness activities, and
industry operators have capitalized on this growth by expanding establishments in both size
and number. Overall, industry revenue is expected to grow at an average annualized rate of
1.7% co $24.8 billion over the five years to 2011, including growth of2.3% in 2011.
"According co IBISWorld analyst, Mary Gotaas, over the next five years, the industry
will benefit from increased youth and baby boomer memberships. 'Revenue will expand at
an average annualized rate of2.6% co $28.2 billion over the five years to 2016,' says Gotaas.
'Firms will profit from growing interest in staying fie, and the industry will transition coward
larger and all-inclusive clubs.' With total health club memberships expected to reach 47.5
million in 2016, players will capitalize on this growth and provide members with additional
services in a bid co increase registration and retention rates. -Benzinga, "Gym, Health
& Fitness Clubs Market Research Report Now Available from IBISWorld," Benzinga,
N.p., Oct. 20, 2011. Web. July 3, 2014. <http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/l l/10/
p 1999170/gym-health-fitness-clubs-market-research-report-now-available-from-ibis>.
The market for fitness apps has skyrocketed since the appearance of the Apple's first
generation iPhone fewer than ten years ago: "The market for sports and fitness apps will
20 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

health and fitness, the profits increase ten to a hundredfold. 24 And this is not
even including the sector known as healthcare,which if added would increase
the gross intake several fold. 25
Looking at these figures, one could safely say, what's good for the health,
gym, fitness and wellness industries is good for the economy. And what's good
for entities representing health, fitness and wellness is good for humans.
Or so we are told.

cross $400 million in 2016, according co a new report from AB! Research. The rise of apps
for connected wearable fitness devices will be a primary factor in the industry's growth (AB!
predicted 80 million such sensors by 2016). AB! predicts that there will be more than 1
billion annual health-related app downloads by the year 2016." -Chris Gullo, "By 2016:
$400M Market for Health, Fitness Apps," mobihealthnewsRSS. mobihealthnews, Nov. 28,
2011. Web. July 3, 2014. <http:/ /mobihealthnews.com/14884/by-20 l 6-400m-market-for-
health-fitness-apps/>.
IHRSA Industry Research indicates over $21 billion in fitness industry revenues in the US
alone and over $75 billion in revenues worldside: "Number ofUS Clubs: 30,500 (as ofO 1/13);
Number of US Health Club Members: 51.3 million (as of 01/13); Number
of US IHRSA Member Clubs: 5,900; 2012 Total US Industry Revenues:
$21.8 billion; Approximate Number of Health Clubs Worldwide: 153,000;
Approximate Number of Health Club Members Worldwide: 131.7 million;
2012 Total Global Industry Revenues: $75.7 Billion (USO)." -"IHRSA-lndustry Research,"
IHRSA-Industry Research,N.p., n.d. Web. July 3, 2014. <http://www.ihrsa.org/industry-
research>
24. "Paul Zane Pilzer, economist and author of The New WellnessRevolution:How to Make a
Fortune in the Next Trillion Dollar Industry, provides some insight into the diversiry of the
fitness market. He detects an overall trend coward a wellness market that includes fitness
among many other products and services. Estimating that wellness is a $500 billion industry
today, Pilzer projects that it will become a $1 trillion industry in the next 5 years. 1hink
about that: a billion is a thousand million; a trillion is a million million! As explained by
Pilzer, the wellness industry includes products and services provided proactively co already
healthy people to make them feel even healthier and look even better, co slow the effects of
aging and co prevent diseases from developing in the first place." -Shirley Archer, "Fitness
And Wellness Intertwine: A Major Industry Rises," I DEA Fitnessjournal, July 2007.
25. The cost of healthcare rose co $2.7 trillion or $8680 per person in 201 I. -Sarah Kliff, "The
$2.7 trillion question: Are health-care costs really slowing?" TheWashingtonPost,January 7,
2013.
 CHAPTER1: WHAT IS EXERCISE? 21

A CULTURALSHIFT

Since its debut in the late 1980's, [Men's Health] has surpassed traditional
men's books like Esquire and GQ by following the formula of best-selling
women's magazines-by catering to men's anxieties about their bodies and
sexualperformance.
-ERIKA KINEZ, "Who's the Man? Dave," New YorkTimel-6

By the time George H.W. Bush appointed Arnold Schwarzenegger to be

the new chairman of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, the
seven-time Mr. Olympia had already become a household name symbolizing
everything from manhood to heroism to the American Dream incarnate to the
dominant culture's vision of what it means to be healthy, beautiful and fit. As
gross receipts soared in the fitness industry, health clubs colonized more of the
urban and suburban landscape, and foodlike substances increasingly displaced
(real) food from the American diet, a once little-known Austrian immigrant
stood as living proof in the year 1990, that happy endings aren't limited to
fiction. Through hard work, self-promotion, and Hollywood's rigorous
endorsement, Schwarzenegger had become the figurehead-or perhaps better
put,figurebody-of the fitness world.
When an admitted steroid user dominates a profession plagued by serial
steroid (ab)use, becomes its figurehead and later gets appointed chair of the
nation's governing body for fitness and sports, it could mean a major cultural
shift has taken place.27 More specifically, it could mean that a new perception

26. Erika Kinetz, "Who's the Man? Dave," New YorkTimes,Sept. 3, 2006.
27. Since Schwarzenegger's reign, the chairmanship has also been held by two NFL football
stars, another professional bodybuilder (one of only two people in the world to hold more
Mr. Olympia titles than Schwarzenegger-eight that is, to Schwarzenegger's seven), and an
Olympic track and field gold medalist named Florence Griffith Joyner. Note that American
football and bodybuilding remain two spons that have been heavily dominated by steroid
users. Says, CBS Sports writer, Dayn Perry, "To gaze upon your average NFL player and see
nothing but the work of genetic good fortune and hard work requires a level of credulity
that should elude you." -Dayn Perry, "Why Do We Care About Steroids in MLB But Not
22 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGYOF FITTISM

of the human body has wormed its way deep into the heart of the dominant
culture, transforming the way the masses think about health, fitness and even
beauty. 28 Where in the 60s, the word fitness held a mundane place in the
American lexicon connoting simple calisthenics, jumping jacks, or a jog around
the block, Schwarzenegger's appointment signaled the rise of a new era where
such lowly standards would no longer do. 29 Several factors play a role in the
major shift that has occurred in such a short time span.
First of all, the increased use of steroids among high profile professional
athletes along with increased use of weight training in virtually all sports-from
baseball to women's tennis-has translated to a significant increase in muscle
mass among athletes_.ioAlong with this, the growing popularity of spectator

in the NFL?" CBS Sports,August 23, 2012.

Track and field has seen its share of controversy regarding performance-enhancing
drugs, beginning with the Soviet Era exploitation of its athletes and continuing to the
present day. Both Justin Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the 100 meters and
Marion Jones, the 2000 Olympic gold medalist in four sprinting events (including the I 00
meters) were at least temporarily banned from the sport after it was discovered that they
had been using steroids. Florence Griffith Joyner's meteoric rise from "also-ran" to world
record holder-mirrored a radical change in physique-led to many accusations of steroid
use. Joyner's controversial world record still stands today.
28. A cursory comparison of athletes, models, and Hollywood's lead actors from the 70s
until today reveals chat members of all three groups have become increasingly lean and
muscular. Of course, the changes would be less obvious were it nor for the face that the
media has become racier and more exhibitionist. In recent years, magazine covers, articles
and advertisements and their television counterparts are much more likely to display
professional athletes and fitness models baring exposed torsos.
29. When Jack Lalanne appeared on television for the first time on September 28, 1953, it was
for a 15-minute slot "sandwiched between the morning news and a cooking show." Today
entire channels are devoted to health and fitness (as well as hawking products from the
industry). Despite humble beginnings, commercialism did not escape Lalanne. He initially
paid for airtime out of his own pocket knowing that TV would be a good medium by which
to promote his gym and related health products.
30. One study comparing all players entering the NFL between 1970 and 2006, shows the
following size increases: Average weight of quarterbacks entering the NFL was 204.4
lbs. from '70-'75 compared to 223.3 lbs. from 'Ol-'06. Since the changes in height were
negligible (6'2"-6'3" being the average quarterback height for any given year during this
period), we can say chat quarterbacks gained close to 20 pounds. Similar comparisons in
running backs, offensive cackles, guards and centers show increases of roughly 10, 60, 60,
40 lbs. respectively. ll1e only offensive position chat didn't go up consistently was wide
receiver. -Chase Stewart, "How Much Bigger Are Players Now? » Pro-football-reference.
 CHAPTER1: WHAT IS EXERCISE? 23

sports and spectator pseudosports like professional wrestling-due in part, to

dramatically increased 1V coverage-has meant greater visibility for increasingly
buffed-up men and women. 31 Adding to the spectacle of modern sports, new

com blog," Profootballreferencecom blogRSS. Pro-Football-Reference.com, Feb. 27, 2008.

Web. July 3, 2014. <http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=493>.
In another article, ESPN writer and New RepublicEditor, Gregg Easterbrook notes
that former stars in the NFL might not survive in today's larger, more powerful game.
Easterbrook attributes at least some of the gains in football players to the invention of
Nautilus strength training equipment. For example, "[former Dallas Cowboys star, Randy]
White played defensive tackle at 257 pounds, across from centers weighing 240 or 250
pounds and guards who were considered huge if 265. Last year's Super Bowl featured
defensive tackles B.J. Raji (337 pounds) and Casey Hampton (330 pounds) versus guards
Chris Kemoeatu (344 pounds) and Josh Sirton (318 pounds). Either guard would have
steamrolled Randy White as if he wasn't there." The author goes on to note that increases
are not just limited to the professional ranks. "Last Friday, I watched the opening game of
my local high school's season. The Bulldogs lined up offensive tackles at 6-4, 305 and 6-3,
328. These were fit, muscular young men. And the high school in question is an academics-
oriented school that does not emphasize sports!" He goes on to attribute at least some of
the increases in strength and weight "to the mid-1970s arrival of Nautilus machines, which
allowed widespread safe use of slow-resistance weights without a spotter. The health-dub
entrepreneur Arthur Jones, the brains behind Nautilus, which spawned many imitators, had
quite an impact on athletics. Free weights, of course, remain integral to muscle mass gain.
Sporrs science, itself a new field, has found ways to time lifring routines to render them more
effective than just pumping iron." -Gregg Easterbrook, "TMQ Sizes Up Players, Writes
Haiku," ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, Sept. 6, 2011. Web. July 3, 2014. <http://espn.
go.com/ espn/ page2/ story/ _/id/69 33214/tmq-mel-kiper-jr-size-increase-football-players>.
31. With the NFL, NBA, MLB having become multi-billion dollar industries, networks have
created more stations and set aside more airtime for sports. ESPN (jointly owned by The
Walt Disney Company and Hearst Corporation), for example, dedicates more time to pre-
game shows, analysis and highlights than ro the actual sporting events themselves. Many
local news stations offer post-game shows for local professional teams.
Television coverage of everything from the Olympics to the National Football League
to beach volleyball has become increasingly lucrative. In December 2011, for example,
"the NFL signed a record setting television rights deal with the three major networks, Fox,
NBC, and CBS that will result in the networks paying approximately $28 billion in fees
over a nine year period (2013- 2022). The new deal goes into effect in the 2013 season,
as the networks still have two years lefr under the current arrangement. The average $3.1
billion fee per year represents a substantial 63% increase over the $1. 9 billion paid annually
currently. This deal comes on the heels of an eight year agreement (2014-2022) signed with
Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN that has the network paying $1.9 billion annually for its NFL TV
rights. When you factor in the approximately $1 billion per year that DirecTV pays for its
Sunday Ticket package, that means that the NFL will soon be taking in roughly $6 billion
per year in television rights fees alone." -"The U.S. Professional Sports Market & Franchise
Value Report 2012," WR HAMBRECHT+ CO, 2012. Web. July 3, 2014. <https://www.
wrhambrecht.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/SportsMarketReport_2012. pd&.
24 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

billion-dollar stadiums housing some of the largest television screens in the

world (thereby giving spectators the opportunity to watch the live broadcast,
instant replays and commercials on a fl.atscreen without directly observing the
actual event as it occurs in real time-space), popular video games rendering
famous athletes, and increased branding have raised many more athletes to
celebrity status.
Of course, celebrity is not just for the athletes. Unlike when I was growing
up in the 70s, sex has become a much more integral part of sports broadcasting.
Not only have seductive professional cheerleaders captured a larger portion
of airtime for sporting events (aside from the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders,
women on the sidelines in slinky outfits and performing high kicks were rare
to nonexistent in the 70s), but advertising during these events is now rife with
svelte, barely clothed bodies selling everything from beer to cars to tortilla chips.
While sponsors may be selling products, such advertising indirectly and perhaps
inadvertently, sells something else: a new kind of body, and one the fitness
industry has to offer.

THE REVOLVINGDOOR

It is increasingly difficult to discern who is influencing whom in the

revolving door between Hollywood and the health, fitness and beauty
industries. In the last three decades, screen actors and fashion models have not
only come to resemble fitness trainers, but some have actually become fitness
icons themselves. These days, health, fitness and fashion magazines are as likely
to feature well-sculpted Hollywood actors who talk about their "six-pack abs"
as they are to include fitness models/trainers and fitness gurus/trainers. At the
same time, models and gurus in the industry are gaining celebrity status, getting
more television airtime and more exposure in popular magazines.32

32. Fitness trainer, Jillian Michaels, provides the latest example, starring in one of the highest
 CHAPTER1: WHAT IS EXERCISE? 25

Professional athletes and fitness gurus are also now in the mix doing
magazine photo shoots where they show off heavily muscled torsos and thighs.
Like Schwarzenegger, high profile athletes and fitness gurus have entered the
revolving door to both Hollywood and the fashion world, either playing bit
parts in movies and/or peddling new lines of clothing and shoes. 33
Astonishingly, even top-level politicians have entered the fitness limelight.
During the lead-up to the 2012 general election, for example, Time Magazine
featured Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan donning trendy
workout clothes and earbuds while performing bicep curls. Even though the
photo-op turned out to be more of a marketing plug for Tony Horton and
his best-selling P90X workout plan (as well as for manufacturers of the Apple
iPod and fitness apparel) than for Ryan himself, I believe it is symptomatic
of how mass-corporate-sponsored-culture not only permeates all sectors of the
population but gains legitimacy through media exposure. 34

FOCUSING ON HOW TO LOOK RATHER THAN HOW TO FEEL

For many of us, this cultural shift in attitudes in favor of objectifying the
human body has translated into mounting pressure on how we should look.
As mentioned above, individuals pumped up with steroids in an industry
benefitting both directly and indirectly from the sale of illicit and licit
"nutritional supplements" and performance-enhancing drugs are to a large

rated TV shows. See Michael O'Connell, "TV Ratings: 'Biggest Loser' Bests 'Bachelor'
Premiere, 'Deception' Opens," 7he Hollywood Reporter, Jan 8, 2013. <Imp:/ /www.
hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-biggest-loser-bests-409723>.
33. A new branch of fashion called, "sports and fitness clothing" has become a big business in
rhe last few decades. Virtually unheard of in the 1960s, the international sports and fitness
clothing market is estimated to reach US$126.30 billion by the year 2015. -"World Sports
and Fitness Clothing Market to Reach US$126.30 Billion by 2015, According to New
Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc.," PRWeb.,Feb. 8, 2011. Web. July 3, 2014. <http://
www.prweb.com/releases/sports_clothing_apparel/firness_clothing/prweb8 l l 7767.htm>.
34. Belinda Luscomb, "Paul Ryan: All Pumped Up for His Closeup," Time, October 11, 2012.
26 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

degree setting the standard-even if they are doing so inadvertently. In other

words, where bodybuilding, prominent abdominal muscles and highly sculpted
shoulders drew scant attention four short decades ago, the media in virtually
all forms-including film, television, internet sites, magazines, newspapers and
advertising-have contributed heavily to making the bodybuilder's physique
one toward which we should strive.
Of course, this is not to ignore a growing sector in health and fitness not
bent on Schwarzenegger-like phenotypes, such as yoga, Gyrotonic@
and Zumba@,
but rather to say that for close to a half-century, the dominant culture has
been leaning more and more coward an aesthetic created by a bigger and more
profitable fitness industry-more and more, that is, toward increased muscle
mass and less fat. Perhaps more importantly, our culture-including the worlds
of yoga, Zumba@, dance, martial arts, television, film and even politics-is
leaning ever more heavily on the side of appearance at the sacrifice of something
else. In doing so, we have focused so heavily on the body that we appear to have
forgotten about the mind within it. In this sense, we have taken the mind out
of the body.
 Chapter 2

The Originsof Modern Exercise

Our culturalprogramis a programof human diminution and destruction,but

becausecultureis as invisibleto the acculturatedhuman beingas is water to the
fish, we cannot seethat thesebreakdownsare not the normal inevitableresults
of agingbut are the abnormaland preventableresultsof culturalconditioning.
Stated simply, the typical mental and physical diseasesof our society are
learned.
-THOMAS HANNA 35

BEAUTYAND THE CALORIE

In the past few decades, the words health,fitness, exerciseand even beauty
have become increasingly interchangeable, not only in their ability to conjure
up images of attractive models on magazine covers, but in their meaning and
connotation. In this day and age, our image of what it means to be healthy
has become inextricably linked to our ideas of fitness and exercise. Meanwhile,
fitness has come to mean something you gain throughexercise, and exercise has
come to connote something you do at the gym. 36 Similar to the fetters modern
culture has placed on good health, beauty cannot be attained if you are not

35. Hanna, Bodyof Life:CreatingNew Pathways

for SensoryAwarenessand Fluid Movement,p. xi.
36. After being on a dating site a while back I noticed how many people like to emphasize their
level of fitness and even how ofi:en they workout or do yoga every week. The unspoken
message is, 'Tm attractive due in part to my being fir, and I'm fit due to my discipline in
working our and/or doing yoga x number of rimes per week."
28 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGYOF FITTISM

fit-or stated more literally and less charitably, if you are unfit-due to lack of
exercise and/or improper diet. The unspoken presupposition here is that our
natural state in modern society is in fact, not so beautiful.
Of course the simple fact that meanings and connotations change, does not
mean that all of us accept and abide by the changes. Most of us are probably
not so narrow in our ideas about health, fitness, exercise and beauty-at least
not consciouslyso. Many, for example, are aware that each of these four words
can encompass so much more than the dominant culture dictates, and that
how we define them may even contradict conventional notions propagated
by the dominant culture. Yet what we consciously think and unconsciously
feel are often in conflict-sometimes to the point of being locked in diametric
opposition.
The overwhelming power of culture lies in the fact that it lays the very
foundation for our unconsciousperception. In this manner culture remains both
eminently invisible and profoundly influential. Just as a fish at the bottom of the
ocean knows nothing other than the murky water surrounding it, we humans
have a tendency to know nothing other than our culture, which acts like an
invisible force incessantly washing over our senses. The key here is that the
knowing of which I write is predominantly unconscious and therefore below the
radar, so to speak. This type of knowing isfelt deeply in our bodies and forms the
unconscious background, which rests beyond the narrow band of frequencies
of that familiar world called, consciousnessor awareness.Unconscious knowing
in other words, powerfully informs our perception-even largely limits it-
despite our conscious thoughts trying to convince us otherwise. And because
the influence tends to remain below the level of consciousness, any change in
culture is likely to change our feelings about and perception of both ourselves,
and the world. In this manner, culture remains quintessentially powerful in
influencing and even circumscribing behavior and self-image. Psychologically
speaking, when the cultural tsunami rolls through, it is difficult to resist its
powerful currents.
 CHAPTER2: THE ORIGINSOF MODERNEXERCISE 29

THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN EXERCISE

[Accordingto Andrew Ure,}the taskfor thefactory owner was to make sure that
workerswould be disciplinedto servethe needsof the machines- "in training
human beings to renouncetheir desultoryhabits of work and to identify with
the unvarying regularityof the complex automaton. "
-KIRKPATRICK SALE37

Though based in the latest scientific findings from exercise science, sports
medicine and biochemistry, the modern practices of exercise and fitness have as
much to do with a 1Th Century theory written down by philosophers donning
wigs and stockings as it does a 21 st Century science propagated by researchers
wrapped in goggles and lab coats. And with the industry's growing influence
on culture we are currently witnessing the apex of a centuries-old trend toward
controlling both nature and people. While machines today are increasingly
capable of minimal human-like functions, humans today are increasingly
exhibiting machine-like traits. Furthermore, where basic civil and constitutional
rights are on the decline with recent legislation like the Patriot Act, the rights
of nonliving entities such as corporations (including the multinational kind)
are on the rise, with recent Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United vs. the
Federal Election Commission. 38 In this sense, control in the postmodern world

37. Sale, p. 59. Andrew Ure, who was a professor of applied science at the University of
Glasgow, became an influential proponent of the factory system during the early period of
the industrial revolution.
38. The 2010 US Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United vs. The FederalElection Commission,
gives corporations "personhood" and thus, First Amendment rights of free speech (including
the kind that influences and to some degree decides political elections): "Overruling two
important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided
Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by
corporations in candidate elections. The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority
said, of the First Amendment's most basic free speech principle - that the government has
no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money
to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy." -Adam Liptak, "Justices, 5-4,
Reject Corporate Spending Limit," New York Times,January 21, 2010.
30 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGYOF FITTISM

is culminating in fewer and fewer distinctions between the quick and the dead.
Interestingly, the historical trend toward controlling and therefore
mechanizing more and more of the world outside our bodies is turning out
to exterminate more and more of the biological habitat known as nature.
This trend, which is mirrored by the one toward controlling and therefore
mechanizing more and more of the world inside our bodies, is turning out to
imprison more and more of the emotional and intellectual landscape known as
sensing, feeling and imagining. As we shall see, the dominant concept of health,
fitness, exercise and beauty in the 21" Century is contributing ever more to the
mechanization of the human being.

THE RISEOF MUSCLE MASS

Prior to the late industrial era few people worried about what in the 20th
Century became known as exercisefor the simple fact that most engaged in
plenty of physical activity just by going about their daily routines. With the move
toward mechanization and desk jobs and the subsequent decline in physical
exertion, however, experts began to promote the idea of physical activity, which
they called, exercise,as something performed to improve one's health. More and
more, physical activity thereby came to mean what experts were promoting, and
thus, something that they could prescribe for our purported benefit. Later still
it came to mean something you did to lose weight, or put more succinctly, to
lose fat. Losing fat, in turn, reflected a cultural trend toward gaining a slimmer
body in order to look good. Beauty, in other words, was becoming increasingly
judged by body fat percentage.
Eventually, health and fitness became a booming industry in and of itself
And with the aforementioned crossbreeding between Hollywood, professional
sports, fashion, and fitness, our standards of beauty began to change. Chunkier,
softer body types commonly seen in the '50s and '60s no longer fit the mold as
"hard bodies" began to replace them in the '80s and '90s. In the decades since
 CHAPTER2: THE ORIGINSOF MODERN EXERCISE 31

her death, Marilyn Monroe inexplicably gained weight and everybody suddenly
agreed that she would never make it onto the cover of the latest issue of any
popular fashion magazine.
By the mid-80s the fitness industry had attained a high public profile,
exemplified by the massive popularity of workout videos, aerobics classes,
newfangled "health clubs," designer workout apparel, and personal fitness
equipment. While fitness instructors were beginning to achieve star status-
writing bestselling books, getting interviewed for national magazines, and
appearing on television, a handful of movie stars were gaining recognition
as fitness experts. Jamie Lee Curtis, for example, may have played a fitness
instructor in the Hollywood blockbuster, Perfect,but Jane Fonda played one in
real life, teaching her own brand of workout and subsequently selling millions
of videotaped versions of it. In the music world, Madonna brandished chiseled
biceps on stage (her trainers later became famous) while Bruce Springsteen
looked as if he was auditioning for a Sylvester Stallone film. Stallone himself
appeared to have gotten a fitness makeover in the ten or more years since his
breakout film, Rocky. By the time the Italian Stallion defeated his evil Soviet
nemesis in '85, he appeared altogether a different organism; as the run-down
fighter living in a two-bit Philadelphia slum somehow got flabbier each time
you played back the '75 original, you got the feeling that somebody had been
doing an unreasonable amount of sit-ups (and perhaps taking some under-the-
counter nutritional supplements) between sequels.
If Jamie Lee Curtis was Hollywood's poster girl for perfection, the reigning
poster boy was not about to be outdone. Schwarzenegger would pull off a string
of major hits in the '80s and '90s including the '88 comedy, Twins, in which he
played a prototypical Uber-man (at least Hollywood's prototype). 39 Meanwhile,

39. Not since the ?Os film, BoysFrom Brazil, had genetic determinism been so convincingly
promoted (convincing, that is, absent what one learns in a middle school biology class). In
a twist of irony, the film's Jewish producer-director-screenwriter, Ivan Reitman, seems to
have forgotten about the other Austrian-born political figure who gained notoriety decades
before Schwarzenegger back in the 30s and 40s-that is, the one who touted genetic
determinism in his campaign to maintain the "purity" of the Aryan race. ( 7he BoysFrom
32 THE MASSPSYCHOLOGY
OF FITTISM

Schwarzenegger portrayed a machine disguised as a human in the Terminator

trilogy in which both he and co-star, Linda Hamilton got the chance to show
off their heavily trained bodies. Both films, though thematically unrelated,
portrayed the bodybuilder physique as an image of perfection and invincibility.
In doing so, both helped to reinforce the notion that a body exhibiting maximum
muscle mass with minimum body fat was an ideal toward which to strive. As the
new more muscle, lessfat, prerequisite for making it in film, television, sports,
fashion and fitness instruction, appeared to be in play, it wouldn't be long before
six-packabs would gain official entry into the Oxford English dictionary.

A NEW TYPE OF EXERCISE

People in the '80s and '90s were apparently doing something different than
those in previous generations. As physical activity increasingly meant exercise,
which in turn meant something you did to get fit, which meant something you
did to lose weight, which meant something you did to lose fat, which meant
something you did to be healthy and look more attractive, the distinctions
between our ideas of fitness, health and beauty were beginning to blur. With
the Baby Boomers handing off the baton to Generation X, it was becoming
apparent-at least on television and movie screens, billboards and magazine
covers-that the public image of health, beauty and fitness was being increasingly
represented by someone with prominent muscles and minimal body fat.
Of course, not everybody was successful in fulfilling the industry's
standards. From the statistical record we can see that most people were gaining
weight (from fat, rather than muscle) and becoming less fit-to use the
industry's terminology. 40 At the same time, more people were going to the gym

Brazil, Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, Perf. Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck, James Mason, 20th
Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1978. Film.)

40. "Figures from the National Center for Health Statistics showed 34% of Americans age 20
 CHAPTER2: THE ORIGINSOF MODERN EXERCISE 33

and exercising-at least if measured by the number of gym memberships and

gross sales of fitness equipment and fitness videos.41 This being case, we may
wonder what was happening back in the 80s and 90s and what is happening
today, two decades later, when one small fraction of the population continues to
look like a pinup model while an overwhelming majority could easily star in a
health advisory bulletin. If more people are supposedly exercising, but very few
are actually in shape-even by yesterday's less stringent standards-perhaps it
is time to ask ourselves, what exactly is exercise?And more to the point, what is
exercise as we know it? (Which might lead us to ask, what is exercise as we don't
know it?) Furthermore, if it's true that the "unfit" are generally avoiding exercise
or simply engaging in it for the perfunctory two weeks during which their New
Year's resolution still means something (and all the while spending loads of
money on gym memberships, fitness equipment and an impressive assortment
of exercise paraphernalia), perhaps it's time to wonder why.
To get some answers, it will be helpful to look at the mother of modern
exercise: 1he 1st Law of1hermodynamics.

and older were obese in 2007-08, according to a study of CDC data published in JAMA
[Journalof the American Medical Assocation]today. Add in people who are overweight and
the total goes to 68%. Seventeen percent of children ages 2 through 19 were obese and 32%
were overweight, another JAMA study said.
"Sounds grim. But CDC statisticians said the rapid obesity growth rates of the '80s and
'90s were slowing for women and, more recently, for men as well. The obesity rate for men
rose to 32% in 2007-08 from 27% in 1999-2000, but most of the increase was in the early
years of that period." -James A. White, "Fat Chance: Obesity Rate Isn't Dropping, But It
Isn't Climbing," WallStreetjournal, Health Blog, January 13, 2010.
41. "The heyday of Jack Lalanne and Jane Fonda may have gone the way of leg warmers and
Betamax, but fitness videos have not only endured, they are back in vogue. During the
recession, the fitness DVD industry has thrived as consumers opted for $15 videos instead
of gym memberships, according to the research firm IBISWorld, which says that fitness
DVD production revenue jumped 12.6 percent in 2012, to $264.5 million." -Stephanie
Rosenbloom, "Trading the Elliptical for Video," New York Times, May 9, 2012.
"According to IBISWorld's latest report, the Gym, Health and Fitness Clubs industry
has benefited greatly from the vast array of marketing campaigns and ensuing consumer
trends for fighting obesity and improving health. Gym membership numbers have increased
considerably over the past 10 years, rising from 36.3 million in 2002 to more than 42.8
million by 2011." -Gym, Health & Fitness Clubs Market Research Report Now Available
from IBISWorld," PRWeb, N.p., Oct. 20, 2011. Web. July 3, 2014. <http://www.prweb.
com/releases/2011/ l 0/prweb8894650.htm>.
..
 Chapter 3

The 1st Law of Thermodynamics

Professionscould not have becomedominant and disabling unlesspeople had

been ready to experienceas a lack that which the expert imputed to them as a
need
-IVAN ILLI CH 42

THE EXERCISEREVOLUTION

There was a time when members of a species known as homo sapiensmoved

their bodies without the aid of heart rate monitors, Stairmasters, ACE Certified
personal trainers or calculations of body mass index. While the young explored
and played freely within a natural environment, quickly learning to move their
bodies with impressive flexibility, strength and agility (despite the absence of
a President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition), the adults moved their
bodies in a highly complex, sophisticated and coordinated manner (despite not
having first consulted their physician). Somehow growing numbers within each
successive generation survived to bear children. That's how humans came to
spread across the African savannah and eventually across the planet.
All of this changed in the 20th Century, however, when exercise became a
science-a bona fide field of study fittingly called exercisescience,or as it's known
today, kinesiology.Yet the roots of the science of exercise go much further back
than the origin of this field. Engineers had planted the seeds to a new way of

42. Illich, "Useful Unemployment and its Professional Enemies," Towarda Historyof Needs,p. 29.
36 THE MASS PSYCHOLOGYOF FITTISM

moving the body way back in the l 9'h Century when a newly conceived branch
of chemistry and physics called thermodynamics gained sudden notoriety.
Specifically, it was the 1st Law oflhermodynamics and its unit of measure-the
calorie-that would revolutionize the worlds of chemistry and physics and give
birth to the science of nutrition, fitness and exercise.

THE STEAM ENGINE

In the late 1700s the invention of the steam engine heralded the dawn of
the Industrial Revolution. Steam produced by the burning of coal-and later
the burning or processing of other inorganic fuels-would quickly become
the designated workhorse of newly re-conceived and burgeoning industries.
As the driving force behind industrial power and the precursor to the internal
combustion engine, steam was to change how humans all over the world would
work and live. As the subject for laboratory study, coal-produced steam would
lead to theories in chemistry and physics that would forever change how we
looked at food and moved our bodies.
By the early to mid- l 800s engineers were scrambling for ways to squeeze
more heat and thus, more work out of coal. In 1824, French physicist, Nicholas
Sadi Carnot published a theory on and equations for what later became known
as the Carnot Engine, an imaginary, "ideal" engine which could convert 100
percent of inputted energy into a combination of both heat and mechanical
force (i.e. no energy would be lost to friction, heat loss to the combustion
chamber, etc.). Carnot's ideal engine would in turn lay the groundwork for the
2 nd Law oflhermodynamics, which states that heat does not spontaneously flow
from a colder body to a warmer one, or put more generally, order tends to move
toward chaos-a subject to which I will return later.
In the 1850s German physicist, Rudolf Clausius, extrapolated from
Carnot's theories and formally observed what became known as the J" Law
of lhermodynamics-a theory that along with the 2 nd Law of lhermodynamics,
 CHAPTER3: THE ,ST LAWOF THERMODYNAMICS 37

would become the foundation for modern chemistry and physics. The 1st Law
importantly states that the total energy within a system is always conserved
such that no energy is created or destroyed. This means if energy (fuel) is added
to a system, such as a steam engine, it must either stay in its present state, or
be transformed into heat and/or movement (work). Thus, if I have a pile of
coal and put one chunk of it into a steam engine, all of the energy from that
piece will be transformed into heat, which will in turn boil water, which will in
turn produce steam, which will in turn produce movement (work) by driving
a turbine or piston. Each stage in the process-from the initial piece of coal,
to the heat it produces when combusted, to the steam produced by the heat, to
the movement produced by the steam-signifies a transformation of the energy
from its previous state. Meanwhile, the energy in the unburned coal remains as
potential (unused) energy that I can convert into heat and/or movement in the
piston-when I so desire. In any case, all of the energy has been conserved-
some of it being transformed into heat, some ofit into movement (work), some
of it remaining as unburned fuel.

NUTRITION SCIENCE AND THE CALORIE

French engineer, Nicholas Clement is considered by some to be the first

person to use the word calorieas a unit of heat. His usage found from lecture
notes dating back to 1824 helped to create a standard by which to measure fuel
in terms of the amount of heat and thus, work it could produce. By the 1830s
and '40s the 1" Law of Thermodynamics, accompanied by the calorie-the 1"
Law's new measuring stick-had spread throughout much of Western Europe.
When in 1827, British chemist, William Prout identified protein, fat, and
carbohydrate as the three fundamental building blocks of all edible food, a
collision course between the steam engine and the human body was underway.
By the 1840s and '50s, German scientists had already begun experimenting
with livestock to determine the conversion of food into work. In 1848, for
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 Lesley. 520 (May 19, baptized Pierre Jean Edouard, but his
publications and his literary correspondence show that he had
dropped the first two names, and few persons were aware of his
having any other personal designation than Edward. His father’s
name was Jean Desor, and his mother’s maiden name was Christine
Albertine Foucar. ““Desor’’ was originally ‘‘Des Horts,’’ meaning ‘‘of
the gardens.’’ A Catholic branch of the family Des Horts still reside at
Marsillargues, in the south of France, on the route from Lunel to
Aigues-Mortes. From this little village many, Protestant families were
chased into exile, by Louis XIV, in 1685. M. Fritz Berthoud in his ‘‘
L’Hiver au Soleil,’’ describes how, in one of their journeys to the
Mediterranean coast, Desor and he stopped to make the
acquaintance of this scene of persecution. Jean Desor, at
Friedrichsdorf, conducted one of those manufactures which France
iost by the folly of her so-called Great Monarch. He died and left his
two boys to the care of their mother; but she, too, worn out with
misery and loneliness, died, and they grew up as best they could.
Young Desor’s education was, however, on the whole a good one;
and the peculiar constitution of his native town gave him this
advantage : French and German were alike his mother-tongue. This
made it easy for him, when the time came, to lead a useful life in
Paris, and to settle finally at Neufchatel, where both languages are
spoken alike by all. He acquired a good knowledge of English, also.
Several years of residence in the United States made our language
as familiar to his ear and tongue as his own native dialects. Although
he never overcame the difficulty of pronouncing such sounds as th,
and always spoke of sick and sin rocks, he nevertheless wrote
English in a singularly pure style, and spoke it with admirable
precision and force. His long intercourse with Italian geologists and
his frequent residences in Italy gave him command of the Italian
language. His earlier education was gained at the gymnasium in
Hanau, Thence he was transferred to the University of Giessen, and
commenced his studies for the legal profession, which he afterwards
continued at the University of Heidelberg. His elder brother adopted
the career of a physician. At Giessen also was educated Desor’s
colleague in science and life-long bosom friend, Karl Vogt, who was
six years his junior, and who still survives to mourn his loss. Vogt
afterwards studied chemistry with Liebig at Heidelberg, and (1835)
anatomy and physiology with Valentin at Berne, when Desor was
already established with Elie de Beaumont in Paris. As his forefathers
had been persecuted out of France into Germany for their religious
and political heresies, so Desor and his brother were driven back
from Germany into France by persecution, on account of their
enthusiastic sympathy with the revolutionary excitement of 1830,
which pervaded all Europe, the principles of which were elaborated
in the universities of Germany, and preached and practised by the
entire burschen— =r
 18382. ] 521 [Lesley. schaft, inflamed with vague hopes of
a repetition of the French revolution, the destruction of irresponsible
princedoms, and the liberation and unification of the Fatherland.
Vogt fled to Switzerland. Desor’s brother, after a short stay in Paris,
settled also in Switzerland, at Neufchatel, although that canton was
an appanage of Prussia, and its inhabitants spoke French ‘and
German indifferently. But Desor himself remained in Paris from 1832
onwards until his brother’s marriage to a wealthy lady, M’lle de
Pierre, in Béle-over-Colombier, proved too strong an attraction, and
he became a Swiss, not only in residence, but in heart and soul and
character, and re. mained a Swiss to the last day of his life. In Paris
he tried at first to support himself by translating, for a French
publisher, Ritter’s Erdkunde. He was also employed by Dr.
Hahnemann as his private secretary. I have heard him affirm of his
own knowledge that the transfer of simple homeeopathy on to the
trancendental ground of infinitesimal doses, with correspondingly
high powers, was the work of Madame Hahnemann ; her husband
having nothing to do with it. In Paris, Desor studied geology under
Elie de Beaumont who, then 34 years old, had become Professor of
Geology in the College of France in 1832 the year of Desor’s
expatriation. This year of 1832 is famous in the history of our
science, for it marks best the date of the labors of Sedgewick and
Murchison in England and Wales. It was also the year of the cholera.
In 1833 Elie de Beaumont was made Chief Engineer of Mines ; an
with Dufrenoy commenced the preparation of the great geological
map of France, published in 1841. His Mountain Systems did not
appear until 1852 ; but during the interval of 20 years he was
elaborating that masterpiece of geological genius in lectures which
raised him to the pinnacle on which he stood until his death as the
greatest living geologist, while it overthrew the factitious reputation
of his great popular rival Leopold von Buch. Desor, however, was not
much influenced by the special views of his great master regarding
the structure of the earth, and was too much influenced by the
vague notions of the Swiss geologist Thurman, who tried to apply a
modification of Von Buch’s elevation theory to the anticlinals of the
Jura. Nor is it strange that Desor, only 21 years old, should not have
been more influenced by Elie de Beaumont’s peculiar structural
theories. It cannot be otherwise, however, than that his subsequent
devotion to geology was born in him by the teaching of his great
master. In after years he threw himself with ardor into orographic
research ; but it was always more practical than speculative ; and
the extensive crographic studies which he continued at intervals until
his death were probably mainly due to his experiences on the glacier
of the Aar. His memoirs on the Massifs of the Alps are inspired by
quite a different motive from that which impelled Elie de Beaumont
to the construction of his crystalline globe. For Desor the structure of
valleys through which descended his glaciers was the main thing!
The surface, and not the underground, held
 is ¢ : J ; Lesley.] » 522 [May 19, his attention. His
systematization of Alpine ranges is wholly topographiea] ; not at all
mineralogical, much less plutonic. In my many conversitions with}
him I heard no theory escape his lips which went deeper than the
erosion of the surface, nor was Elie de Beaumont ever alluded to.
His orography was essentially systematic and descriptive. He
accompanied Elie de Beaumont to the meeting of the Helvetic
Society, at Neufchatel, in 1837, and there became acquainted with
Agassiz ; and this became the turning point of his intellectual life.
But the first result of the influence which Agassiz. exerted over him
was hostile to any train of thought suggested to him by Elie de
Beaumont. It drew him first into the study of the fossil forms in the
rocks of the Jura Mountains, and then into the study of the glaciers
of the Alps. It was not until Desor joined the corps of Pennsylvania
geologists, in 1852, that his eyes were really opened to the
wonderful phenomena which had long before inspired the genius of
Elie de Beaumont to reconstruct the fundamental axioms of
structural geology. In fact, the bent of Desor’s mind was for
investigating the forms and habits and metamorphoses of the animal
world ; and the large way in which he afterwards pursued these
studies was due not to the instructions of Elie de Beaumont in Paris,
but to the influence of the superior genius of Louis Agassiz in
Neufchatel, and through Agassiz of that coryphus of modern science,
Agassiz’s great master, Cuvier. After his return from America to
Switzerland Desor studied the structure of the Jura Mountains with a
clearer vision ; but, while his definition of structural forms was
singularly” precise and complete, his theoretical conclusions were
always based on more violent hypotheses than those in vogue in the
school of Lyell. He remained to his last days a moderate cataclysmist
both as to plication and as to erosion. After leaving Paris to take up
his permanent residence in Switzerland Desor lived for a short time
in the house of Professor Vogt, the father of Karl Vogt, in Berne. At
one of the annual reunions of the Helvetic Society of Natural
Sciences Vogt introduced Desor to Agassiz, who induced him to
settle in Neufchatel. Agassiz, born in 1807, was only 4 years older
than Desor, and they soon established a close brotherhood in society
and science, which lasted nearly twenty years. Agassiz had studied
medicine at Zurich, Heidelberg and Munich; but by a curious
accident, which he was fond of narrating, his residence in the same
house with an old man whose rooms were filled with preparations of
fish, Agassiz became enamored of that special branch of Natural
History ; had studied the fish brought from Brazil by Martius & Spix,
and published his Latin description of them in 1829-31 ; and was
appointed Professor of Natural History at Neufchatel in 1832, where
he was now in the full tide of his researches into the nature and
distribution of fossil fish, It was during a visit to Paris that Agassiz
made friends with Cuvier and Humboldt ; and at Paris his great work
on the Classification of Fish went through the press during the te
years from tS32 to 1842. The summer vacations of Agassiz were
spent on the glacier of the Aar.
 1882.] 5 23 [Lesley. his ‘‘ Studies of Glaciers’’ appeared in
1840, and his ‘‘ Glacial System ”’ in 1847. For eight successive
summers Agassiz and Desor lived upon the glacier of the Aar, and
each summer ascended, mostly for the first time, one or more of the
peaks of the Oberland. With two friends and four guides they were
the first to stand on the summit of the Jungfrau. The great flat rock
in the middle of the medial moraine of the glacier of the Aar, pictures
of which are so familiar to all readers of books treating of the glacial
phenomena of the A!ps, was called the ‘‘ Hotel des Neufchatelois,’’
and during its slow majestic descent of the valley it entertained more
celebrities, and listened to more scientific talk than any other house
in Europe. All the world of science bent its steps, summer after
summer, to this unique council chamber in which caroused and
debated and slumbered side by side Agassiz, Desor, Vogt,
Duchatelier, Nicollet, Pourtales, Coulon, De Pury, Dolfus-Ausset and
their innumerable friends and visitors. Perilous were the
undertakings plotted beneath and executed from this alpine boulder
on the moving ice; and exciting beyond the common text of scientific
publication ure the published descriptions of the first ascent of the
Schreckhorn, the first ascent of the Jungfrau, and especially the first
ascent of the terrible Galenstoc during which the son of Dolfus-
Ausset lost his life. Among the later comers was James Forbes, who,
having learned from the veterans of the glacier of the Aar all that
close and long and repeated observations could impart, established
himself on the Mer de Glace, repeated and verified their data, and
then returned to England and anticipated their conclusions by
publishing his own celebrated book on the formation and movement
of the ice. Vogt also settled in Neufchatel, but not until 1839, and
assisted Agassiz for five years in natural history, especially in the
preparation of his work on the fresh water fishes. Vogt published in
1842 his Geburtshelferkrote, and in 1843 his own book entitled ‘‘In
the Mountains and on the Glaciers.’’ Vogt then went to Paris (in
1844) and stayed until 1846, when he was appointed to a chair in
his native city of Giessen. But the troubles of 1848 breaking out, he
became again a political exile, and accepted the chair of geology at
Geneva in 1852, and at Bern in 1853. This brilliant coterie of men of
science, in the prime of life and in the hear of investigation laying
the foundations of more than one department of human knowledge,
included two other names of equal fame, Arnold Guyot, and Leo
Lesquereux, both of whom still live to illustrate and enlarge our
science. While Agassiz, Desor and Vogt were at work in the
mountains Guyot was at work on the plain ; while they studied the
movement of the glacier, he defined the limits of the ancient
moraines. As for Lesquereux, his study of the peat bogs of
Switzerland, and then PROC. AMER. PHILOS. soc. xx. 113. 3N.
PRINTED FEBRUARY 23, 1883.
 Lesley.] 524 [May 19, of all northern Europe, led naturally
to those broad generalizations respecting the coal-beds of all ages
which have given him an immortal fame. In 1847 Agassiz settled in
the United States and commenced his career at Cambridge, Mass.,
after having opened the eyes of the British geologists to the glacial
phenomena of great Britain. He soon drew after him to America
Desor, Guyot, and Lesquereux. Desor, before going to America, had
published his own ‘‘ Geological Alpine Journeys,’’ and had traveled
through Norway and Sweden in order to compare the moraine
phenomena of Scandinavia with those ot Switzerland. In the winter
of 1847-8 I found Agassiz and Desor at work together in a zoological
laboratory in East Boston, watching a multitude of living creatures
which they had obtained from the neighboring shore and kept in
plates and bowls full of sea water. When Agassiz moved to his
professorial residence in Cambridge Desor insisted upon remaining in
this laboratory at East Boston. He soon became one of the lions of
Boston society, but attached himself with the ardor of warm
friendship to Edward Cabot, Theodore Parker and Josiah D. Whitney,
who remained ever afterwards his devoted friends. He became
intimate also with Asa Gray and Henry D. Rogers. It is needless to
say that the circle of his habitual personal intercourse included such
men as Emerson, Longfellow, Dr. Howe, and James Freeman Clarke.
The story of the separation of Agassiz and Desor which produced so
great a sensation in the brilliant society of Boston men of letters and
science will never be told, and need not be. In fact, however, the
closest intimacy of years was sundered in a few weeks and the two
never met again. Agassiz pursued thenceforth an independent
career; became the idol of the western world; connected himself
closely with Pierce and Bache and Gould; founded a school of
natural history research ; erected a vast museum; trained a
considerable number of scholars to be the men of science of the
present generation, and in fact not only gave Harvard College a new
destiny, but inspired the entire population of the United States with a
zeal for discovery in every branch of human knowledge which
continues to burn and illuminate the world. Desor at first turned to
the study of the osars of the coast, and spent a summer with Davis
in the study of the tidal gravel banks, always with an eye to glacial
action. He then joined Forster and Whitney in the survey of Lake
Superior, under a commission from the United States Government;
his special task was to study the ailuvions and their fauna.* In 1850
and 1851 he accepted proposals made to him by Henry D. Rogers to
participate in the revision of the geological survey of Penn*His term,
Laurentian for the recent deposits along the St. Lawrence and the
Lakes has not been accepted by geologists, because of its
subsequent application to the fundamental gneiss of the mountains
of Canada. His views on the Northern Drift he published in the Amer.
J. S., xiii, 93, 1852.
 1882.] 525 [Lesley. sylvania. As his task was to investigate
the surface deposits, with a special regard to the possible existence
and activity of a boreal glacier invading Pennsylvania, I saw much ot
him in my topographical studies for the construction of maps to
show coal terraces, &c. and learned much from him about the
movements of the surface sub-soil and local drift. The study of
glaciers led him to regard with critical eyes all phenomena of
erosion, and his measurements of the retrocession of the falls of
Niagara gave him a very different scale of geological time from that
of Hall, Lyell and others. His diagramatic cross-section of the Via
Mala, placed him partly in accord with and partly in opposition to the
glacialists of the Ramsay school. His glacial researches led him also
necessarily to study rain and snow, the fohn or schnee-fresser and
other winds ; ina word he became a good meteorologist and made
one of the band of early investigators, with Dové at their head, who
established that branch of modern science. After his return to
Europe he published papers on the ‘‘Climate of the United States and
its effect on habits and manners.”’ At the close of 1851, or early in
1852, Desor was recalled to Neufchatel by the serious illness of his
brother, whom he nursed until his death, taking care of his property
and becoming his heir. Here a new career opened before him ; he
became a teacher. He was appointed to a chair in the Academy of
Neufchatel, made famous first by Agassiz, and now more famous by
the lively, clear, eloquent, fresh teachings of Desor. In the meantime
he pursued his train of original research, and gradually devoted
himself to the special branch of fossil echinoderms. His “Synopsis
des Echinides’’ procured him a doctorate from the University, of Bale.
: In 1856 his brother’s death and the care of his inherited property
induced him to resign his chair in the Academy ; but while he tended
his vineyard overhanging the lake, and farmed the old hunting-lodge
of Combe Varin overlooking the Val de Travers, he pursued his
researches in natural history, and continued his dredgings on the
sites of the aboriginal lake-dwellers. He made unobtrusive use of his
wealth in assisting others in their researches. ‘He was himself,’’ says
one of his intimates, ‘‘not without some ambition. It flattered him to
stand in relations to the first men of science and be known as their
equal. The hospitality which he practised in the most liberal manner
enlivened and preserved to him this intercourse which he so dearly
loved. Every summer Desor’s farm at Combe Varin, on the mountain
top overlooking the railway station of Noiraigues on the road to
Pontarlier, was a gathering point for notabilites not only of
Switzerland but of all foreign countries, not only his friends but his
acquaintances ; and there reigned in this old hunting-lodge of the
Depierres such a comfortable simplicity of entertainment and such
perfect liberty of occupation that each guest felt himself entirely at
home.
 5 26 [May 19, Lesley.] ‘“On both sides of the level road
which led from the brow of the mountain to the house stood rows of
trees, each dedicated to some guest and marked with his name.
More than a hundred names distinguished in politics and science
may here be read, many of them now, alas, beneath a cross, to
indicate their departure to a better world.” Four times Ihave myself
shared his hospitality, and can testify to the charms of the place and
of its master; and I esteem it as a kind of patent of nobility that my
name stands among the rest. Here in 1859 Theodore Parker found a
retreat, the summer before he died in Italy (1860), and his double-
headed pine stood, at some distance off the road, on the open slope
descending to the peat bogs which spread across the plateau
between Combe Varin and the village of Les Ponts. Desor followed
Parker to Italy, and was with him when he died. His attachment to
him was based on their intercourse in Boston ; and whatever
spiritual theories Desor accepted were more or less formulated
under the guiding influence of this powerful thinker and good and
generous soul. Desor was an active member of the Natural History
Society of Neufchatel,and published many short memoirsin its
transactions. He leaves his remarkable museum of prehistoric
antiquities to its care. He was a constant attendant at the meetings
of the Swiss Congress of Science, and would make iong annual
journeys to attend other similar national associations ; especially of
late years the annual meetings of the Anthropologists, as at
Copenhagen and at Stockholm, where he was received with
distinguished honor. In fact Desor may be considered the chief of
modern geological archeologists. After the first discovery of lake-
dwellings in the winter of 1853-4 at Meilen on the shore of the lake
of Zurich, and the commencement of Keller’s great museum there,
all the lakes of Switzerland were explored for similar discoveries. At
least 200 villages were found by Desor and Clement in the lakes of
Neufchatel and Bienne; by Morlot and Troyon in the lake of Geneva,
and by other seekers in other lakes. It avas concluded that the Swiss
lakes were unique in this respect, although Herodotus was quoted as
authority for the existence of lake-dwellers in his day in a lake of
Thrace. Desor however insisted upon the generality of the
phenomenon, and at length made a rendezvous with Von Siebold, of
Munich, to test the question in company with his own trained
dredger. The immediate result was their great discovery that the
palace of the Bavarian King was built on an island in the Sternsee
around the edge of which could be seen the piles of the aboriginal
lake-dwellers ; and in the little museum of the palace they found a
considerable number of needles, knives, chisels, &c. which had been
dredged from the foundation of the palace. Upon this demonstration
of the correctness of the large view which Desor alone had taken of
the subject the geologists and antiquaries of Southern Germany and
Austria set heartily to work and did not fail to find prehistoric relics
in all the lakes of that part of Europe.’ Desor subsequently (1864)
joined Escher von der Linth the Swiss geol 
 1882.] 527 [Lesley. ogist, and Charles Martins the botanist
of Montpellier, with a commission from the French government to
explore the desert of Sahara, which they discovered to be of recent
age by finding in its rocks recent shells. Here also Desor gratified his
love of dolmens and menhirs, and greatly enlarged his prehistoric
studies in that direction ; but it was not until 1875 or thereabout
that he became a zealous student of the mysterious cup and circle
markings on the erratic blocks of Switzerland, and learned by a wide
spread and laborious correspondence with his fellow-workers in all
countries that they were not only to be seen on rocks from India to
Scotland, but on the walls of the most ancient Christian churches of
Northern Germany. Desor was always recognized as an able
geologist. His local work in the Jura, mostly carried on with the
assistance of his poor friend and able paleontologist Gressly, showed
ample ability to grapple with difficult structural problems, although
he never freed himself from the prejudice in favor of-split anticinals
which the extraordinary section across the mouth of the Val de
Travers would naturally inspire in any man who lived within sight of
it. This prejudice, moreover, he shared withall the geologists of
middle Europe. His astonishment and admiration for the unbroken
arches of the Appalachian belt therefore, when at length his eyes
were opened to their true character, wasunbounded. But in spite of
the impression thus made, he remained a consistent opponent of
those views of cyclical erosion which were gradually forced upon
American geologists, and were afterwards made popular in England
by Beete Jukes in the course of the Irish survey. Desor was the
colleague of Bernard Studer, Peter Merian and Esher von der Linth in
the commission of the geological survey of Switzeriand. During my
last visit to his own‘home in Neufchatel, in 1880, he showed me an
upper room in which the commission kept its archives and met for
consultation. But the venerable Studer, the chief of the survey, has
his home at the capital of the Confederation, Bern. One of the most
remarkable pieces of geological investigation ever made was a
section of a range of the Jura north of Neufchatel, through which a
long railroad tunnel was to be driven. Desor and Gressly projected
the stratification as it should be found by the enginecrs. When the
tunnel was finished the actual and hypothetical sections were almost
absolutely identical. Each formation, almost each stratum, was
struck at exactly the point indicated. It was a notable triumph of
exact application of science to practical ends. The political life of
Desor is viewed differently, of course, by different classes of his
friends. There is intense conservatism in Switzerland, and the
overthrow of the aristocracy of the Canton of Neufchatel by the
democrats or radicals has never been forgotten nor forgiven. As late
as 1878, when I rode one day with Desor and Berthoud up the Val
de Travers, they were making merry over some scurrilous attacks
upon themselves in one of the newspapers; Desor pointed out to me
a passage in which they were called derisively the two small gods of
Neufchdatel.
 Lesley.] 528 [May 19, In one of the obituary sketches of
Desor (Basler Nachrichten), written perhaps by Desor’s very
steadfast friend Prof. Riitimeyer, I find the following paragraph : ‘‘The
burghers of Ponts honored Desor with the burger-right, and sent
him, alternately with Noiraigue and Neufchatel (as soon as the
radicals got the majority in Neufchatel), as member to the Grand
Council, which once chose him its President. Formany years Desor
was a member also of the Standerath, and of the Nationalrath (or
Swiss Parliament), and one of its most distinguished members.
Perhaps it would have been better for Desor the investigator had he
devoted less of his time to politics ; nor did politics always bring
sweet fruits to Desor the man. For ever since he fellaway from his
old comrades on the question of the repurchase of the Jura railway,
and engaged himself personally in an endless newspaper war, which
became ever more and more bitter and thankless, his health began
to fail, and five years ago the symptoms appeared of that serious
malady which led him inevitably to his grave.”’ The last three years
Desor was sent by his physicians to spend the winters in Nice, where
he became an active member of two scientific societies. He thus
came to preside at the discovery of the fossil man of Carabacel
which produced so great a sensation in the geological world. He
directed also the researches made in the grotto of Peymanade,
discovered by M. Bottin de St. Vallier. He managed in spite his
sufferings to ascend considerable heights, and discovered
satisfactory proof of the former existence of glaciers descending the
southern slope to the shore of the Mediterranean. His letters to me
pn that subject display all the pleasure and zeal ofa boy. His little
maps and sections of the structure of the Ligurean coast are
perfectly fresh. Last February I went from Paris to Nice to see Desor
for as I feared the last time, and found him extremely feeble and full
of pain ; but I had so often seen him thus in former years that I
dreaded no immediate danger. In our conversations he dwelt with
lively interest on a plan whiclr he was organizing to observe the
temperature along the summits of the Pyrenees, and at the level of
the plain. He went over again the old story of the Féhn or-Alpine
snow devouring south wind, in connection with the establishment of
high winter sanataria for invalids in the Tyrol; and also in connection
with the observed winter temperature observed on the Puy de Dome
relatively higher than on the plain at Clermont-Ferrand. He earnestly
demanded data from the American stations to help discover the law,
if it were one. In a few days Desor was no more. The lamp that
burned so brightly flickered a moment, and went out. All research
was at an end. One of the sweetest, simplest, most honest, most
affectionate, most robust and energetic, most independent natures
that ever acquired fame abroad and inspired respect at home,
suddenly ceased to suffer and ceased to think. Science had lost
another star, Switzerland a sturdy champion of democratic liberty,
and many of us a rare friend who cannot by any means be replaced.
 1882 ] 529 [Claypole, Geological Notes. By HE. W. Claypole.
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, October 20th,
1882.) A. On an Error in Identifying Two Distinct Beds of Iron Ore in
Report G@ of the Geological Survey of Bradford County. In Report G,
Bradford and Tioga Counties, and on page 36, occurs the following
passage : **6. In Leroy township, about a mile and a half west of
Leroy, in the main road, near the house of J. Wilcox, we found a bed
of iron ore which appeared to be three or four feet thick, and of very
good quality. See the following partial analysis by Mr. McCreath :
Tirana) sreaysc, sx s'0, Oe STH DOSE Ad OM Ode COA erSA © 29.5
SUTURE AS occa hor, ey acne s eioteyrewinia a eae ne ete trace
ANOS DMONUSL ay. srccusisiniciel oi alec slain aa elolerosiominione
.204 esol Ste sian Caco cite cais or ttn eisai eal Rae marne ait “7,
The same bed is exposed at Leroy village, in Gulf brook, where it is
nearly four feet thick and of good quality. A partial analysis of this
ore by Mr. McCreath resulted as follows, though it can hardly be a
fair _ test, for the average percentage of iron must be greater : MRD
egs forge sh eestor cia aa) agai iapehh ahah he pin cache oy tod
nae 20.7 PUMA LU say eys avo, stoi to core ease sts te otal is ero
ovocsveie wictisvaale trace PRMOSDROUES gene an eee ier oe sy
ee. aa eewias .185 TL AMIC ri. «a0 ial Salat sale paras is casas
arate) pve. vn, Sain ato plete 8.71 PURE OMS EN co tt Nan itn) win
a wlotia evn fa afew ins, = 6vini a Sia, sin ata 1.3 MGS OM Le RE
SIONS tar eveteteteyeveraiaiale «/-rsleleteheccteietcen fetal 46.655
”’ In reference to this passage I was informed during a recent visit in
Bradford county by Mr. A. T. Lilley, of Leroy, that he considered it
entirely erroneous, and that these beds of ore so far from being one
were separated by a very considerable thickness uf rock. The
arguments which he adduced appeared to me quite satisfactory, and
we went out to examine the ground. Antecedently, if the two
samples of ore were fairly taken, the analyses induce suspicion: they
differ so largely from each other; the quantity of iron is half as large
again in the former as it is in the latter. It seems improbable that a
bed of ore should vary so much in so short a distance. The plan of
this part of the valley given in Fig. 1, page 535, will make this line of
argument intelligible. The lowest bed of iron ore occurs in the Gulf
brook in connection with
 Claypole.] 530 (Oct. 20, a mass of red sandstones, forming
what are called the Mansfield Red beds. These beds, with a solid
sandstone, continue westward and may be easily traced. The
sandstone forms the buttress of the hill, and the Mansfield Red beds
form a terrace higher up the slope. The direction of the strike of
these beds is about N. E. by E. and 8. W. by W. ; but the flattening
of the dip curves the outcrop line and throws the basset edge farther
and farther from the road. In addition, higher beds continually pass
across the road from south to north as one goes westward, the
azimuth of the latter being slightly nearer the meridian than that of
the former. With the aid of Mr. Lilley, I traced the sandstone for
about five hundred yards to the west from the mouth of the Gulf
brook where the strata are vertical and found it gradually flattening
down to a dip of about 45°. Leaving this bed I went across the
outcrop of the strata southward, coming, of course, on newer and
newer beds at every step. At the distance of about three-quarters of
a mile from Leroy is a strong exposure of a hard red sandstone in
thin beds covered with peculiar fucoidal marks. It forms a low ridge
in the valley and crosses the road at a short distance farther on. The
strike of this bed agrees with that of the others above mentioned,
and the whole district is quite undisturbed by any dislocation.
Following it for some distance, I left it and crossing the strike again
to the southward, found a bed of green shale quite in the bottom of
the valley, and immediately upon it a second bed of iron ore, very
much like that at Gulf brook. It crops out in the road a little farther
west, as mentioned in the extract from the volume G, given at the
head of this note. Beyond this bed of iron ore, which can be traced
north of the road up the hill lie the highest beds of the Chemung
group—the Grammysia elliptica bed, the Productella bed, and the
Cap-rock—the last a thin shale full ot crushed and unrecognizable
fossils. Each bed is separated from the next by a considerable
thickness of unfossiliferous shale. It is therefore beyond a doubt that
these two outcrops of ore mentioned in the extract from G@ given
above, are not parts of the same bed, but belong to two different
beds separated from one another by an interval of several, perhaps
250, feet. If any further proof of this conclusion is desired it may be
found near Franklindale. Reference to the map will show that the
road forks about a mile west of the village.* The two branches again
meet at the distance of halfa mile east from the fork. By walking
from the latter point along the south road the order of succession,
from the Mansfield Red beds upwards, may be distinctly seen. In
particular, the two seams of iron ore may be readily detected by the
red ground and the red road formed by their destruction. * The site
of the village is wrongly given in the mapin Report G. Itshould be
where the four roads meet. about a mile east of the spot where itis
marked. The two roads also should be drawn meeting each other
again, as above mentioned.
 1882. | 531 [Claypole. B. Note on the occurrence of
Holoptychius, about 500 feet below the recognized top of the
Chemung Group, in Bradford County. The base of the Castkill group
has been assumed on paleontological grounds at the lowest stratum
in which the remains of the great Ganoid fish Holoptychius
Americanus have been found. Lithologically and stratigraphically this
dividing horizon has been placed where the green fossiliferous shales
of the Chemung are supplanted by red shales and sandstones,
mostly without fossils. Sometimes these two principles of division
give coincident, sometimes discordant, results. Often the fossil
remains cannot be found, and almost as often the line between red
and green material cannot be firmly drawn. In Bradford county,
however, these difficulties do not occur. The green rocks give place
almost suddenly to the red ones, and the line between Chemung
and Catskill is easily drawn on stratigraphical evidence. The red
Catskill rocks also in many places abound in remains of fish near if
not at their base, consequently the two lines of evidence converge to
almost coincident results. The occurrence therefore of a well marked
and unmistakable scale of Holoptychius Americanus considerably
below the dividing plane is a fact worthy of some notice. The scale in
question is on the surface of a slab of green sandstone and was
quarried out of the solid rock by Mr. Lilley, of Leroy, when getting
stone for the foundation of a barn. AlthoughIam unable at present to
determine exactly the position of the sandstone, yet from the fact
that it lies at a very small distance above the Mansfield Red bed with
iron ore, it must be not far from four hundred feet below the base of
the Catskill group, as recognized in this county. In further proof cf
the occurrence of the above-named fossil in this horizon, I may add
that while engaged with Mr. Lilley, in examining the evidence for the
presence of the Catskill, north of Franklindale, Mr. L. picked up a
loose slab of green sandstone showing on its surface three large
scales of Holoptychius. The point where it was discovered is very
near the horizon of the specimen first mentioned, the bed rock is
very near the surface, little or no drift material is present, the slab is
not rounded, and the Catskill rocks are on the other side of the
valley of Towanda creek. All this evidence concentrated, leads me to
believe that this second specimen is of Chemung age and comes
from the same horizon as the first. C. Ona Mass of Catskill Rocks
supposed to exist on the North Bank of Towanda Creek, near
Franklin. Reference to the geological map of Bradford county will
show a patch colored to represent the Catskill on the north bank of
Towanda creek, in Franklin township. It measures about four miles in
length by one in its PROC. AMER. PHILOS. soc. xX. 113. 30.
PRINTED FEBRUARY 23, 1883.
 Claypole.] 532 (Oct. 20, greatest breadth, and is apparently
intended to represent a cap of that formation overlying the Chemung
of the same township. The existence of this cap of Catskill, or at
least of a great part of it, is beset with numerous difficulties to one
who is familiar with the ground, and during my recent visit in
Bradford county I became strongly suspicious of the accuracy of the
map. The following consideration was very weighty in this direction.
The Chemung rocks all along the north bank of Towanda creek dip
to the south at angles varying from 90° to 15°. At Leroy, the former
occurs, and east and west of Leroy the dip flattens down, but not
regularly to the latter figure. The dip also flattens down as one
recedes from the road and goes northward, but very gradually, so
that at Leroy it does not disappear, and render the strata horizontal
in less than a mile. With this inclination of the beds and with the
highest beds of the Chemung far out in the valley, probably in the
west end of it on the south side of the Towanda creek, it seemed
quite impossible that any such mass of the Catskill could occur
capping them so near the road upon the north bank. The
generalized section along the valley is given in Fig. 2, page 535.
When it is recollected that the total thickness of Chemung rocks
between the top of the group at a, and the horizontal exposure at},
must be at least 1500 feet, and is probably more, the difficulty of
realizing a cap of Catskill on the top of a hill only 200 or 300 feet
high becomes obvious. Aside, however, from all antecedent and
theoretical considerations, it was desirable to obtain the evidence of
actual observation, in order to ascertain the truth, and also, if
possible, to detect the cause of the mistake, if mistake had been
made. On the morning, therefore, of leaving Leroy, I obtained the
assistance of Mr. A. T. Lilley, a gentleman well acquainted with the
district and with its geology, and set out to investigate the ground. =
Leaving Leroy by the Towanda road we first established the fact that
lower and Jower beds of the Chemung come continually out of the
hillside and point out into the valley for several miles, throwing the
Catskill farther and farther to the southward, and giving a constantly
thickening mass of Chemung to be placed on the hill-top, before the
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