Fahrenheit & Freemasonry

It occurred to me that ice melts at 32 degrees Fahrenheit- could it be masonic?

It doesn't appear so:
answers.yahoo.com...

Some believe that Fahrenheit was a Freemason, and because there are 32 degrees of enlightenment, he chose to use 32 as the melting temperature of water. Degrees are also used as levels with the Freemasons, hence the use of the word on the scale. However, there is no documented evidence that Fahrenheit was a Freemason.

That Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was from 18th century Germany tells me he was likely not even exposed to Freemasonry.
en.wikipedia.org...
But then there's this

He visited England in 1724 and became a member of the Royal Society.

-the same year he assigned the number 32 a special place in DEGREES of temperature.
Now I know he was pre-Bavarian Illuminati with likely little-to-no exposure in Germany but in England? Still, probably not but a little interesting.

Wow.Great job connecting some dots there man.

It seems like too much of coincidence.

32 degrees may just have some sort of elemental significance that we were previously unaware of.

Either way,way to think outside the box.

Cheers,
HLF

reply to post by Moonsouljah


Royal Society. BINGO!

I've got the Robert Lomas book "Freemasonry And The Birth Of Modern Science" so this makes sense to me. It is obvious.

Also check out "Uriel's Machine: The Ancient Origins of Science" by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. There is a part in there where they describe how time and measurement relate. It was a wow moment for me. They say a standard of measurement was derived from the number of times a pendulum swings during the time it takes a star to move through a henge gate.

Considering the Scottish Rite (and the 32nd degree) were not created until almost a century later a highly doubt there is a connection.

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus


Ah, but the concept of 32 was in existence long before this Rite you speak of.

Originally posted by Cabaret Voltaire
reply to post by AugustusMasonicus

 

Ah, but the concept of 32 was in existence long before this Rite you speak of.

Yes. It is quite likely that the concept of 32 was devised shortly after the concept of 31 by the first person who ever counted that high. That is, indeed, many millennia before this Rite he speaks of. Still doesn't make it particularly significant.

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire

I have that book also but I don't think I've cracked it once. Woops.


I had considered the whole Scottish Rite thing yes.

reply to post by JoshNorton


That's funny. Both you guys are Masons and you haven't the foggiest clue where 32 comes from. It comes after 31.... It was invented in the 1800's.... It was just totally random and made up by some sno-cone maker of the 1700's.... No, no, no! Sno-Cones are a modern invention.... It's my shoe size. It's my IQ....

What could be the origin of the 32, Grand Interwebule Inspectigator???

Mr. F chose 32 as the freezing point when he could have made a scale of 0-100 and chose 50 as the freezing point. The fact stands that he chose 32. I'm saying he picked it for the same reason your Scottish Rite picked it. The guys at the Royal Society probably had a hand in influencing Mr. F of course.

Originally posted by Cabaret Voltaire
Ah, but the concept of 32 was in existence long before this Rite you speak of.

But the concept of 32 in relation to Masonry came about many years after the Fahrenheit scale was created.

No, the connection is not that Fahrenheit was a freemason, but rather properties of the number 32 itself---what some people would call sacred geometry or sacred mathematics.


Fahrenheit marked a glass mercury-filled tube at zero with the coldest temperature he could produce--ice being stirred through salt (like making homemade ice cream).

The highpoint on his scale was the temperature of human blood (measured by putting the thermometer in someone's armpit). He set THAT temp as 96 degrees. He did this so that other scientists could make their own thermometers without having to come to the Netherlands and physically copy his laboratory--they could make their own thermometer and use his scale, by calibrating their thermometer to "universal" temperatures they could create in their own labs.

The reason for 96 at the "top" is that 96 can be subdivided 12 times, and still have subdivisions within each sub-unit. In a world of handmade measuring instruments, this was critical.

The freezing point of water is two twelfths of the way of the glass. He marked that point as 32 because 32 is 2^5 ; which means that 32 can be divided in half five times.

The point of all this is that you could, living on another continent, with nothing more than his book, recreate every experiment farhenheit did, and set up your own weather laboratory, with hand-made tools, a glass tube, a metal file, and a bottle of mercury.

Originally posted by Moonsouljah
It occurred to me that ice melts at 32 degrees Fahrenheit- could it be masonic?

No. The Scottish Rite of Masonry has 33 degrees, not 32. Further, the Scottish Rite was not formed until 1801, and its 33 degree system is the result of a blend of degrees from various other rites.

That Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was from 18th century Germany tells me he was likely not even exposed to Freemasonry.

Masonry was actually alive and well in 18th century Germany. Goethe, Mozart, St. Germaine, and many other notables became Masons in German Lodges during that period. However, they all mostly belonged to the Rite of Strict Observance (not the Scottish Rite, which was not yet in existence).

Originally posted by Cabaret Voltaire
What could be the origin of the 32, Grand Interwebule Inspectigator???

Stephen Morin devised a 25 degree system in the 1760s. In 1761 the French Grand Lodge at Paris granted him a patent as a Grand Inspector, "authorizing and empowering him to establish perfect and sublime Masonry in all parts of the world."

The "Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree for the United States of America" was first opened in 1801, stemming from the Constitutions of 1786. They didn't really get organized & codified until around 1842. Pike didn't join until 1853...

(Bear in mind, the Farenheit scale was proposed in 1724.)

reply to post by JoshNorton


you silly masons don't know that the original 32 came from a masonic tradition of not letting more than 32 masons enter a meeting. A keg of beer holds 160 beers. No mason shall consume more than 5 beers at any one time, hence 5 X 32 = 160. I could go into way more detail, but I fear that I have already given more masonic secrets away than I should have.

Originally posted by network dude
No mason shall consume more than 5 beers at any one time, hence 5 X 32 = 160.

In your case you really do not have to worry about alcoholic beverage consumption, do you?

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus


a bit below the belt there yankee? We here in the south enjoy or tea. As a matter of fact......Oh nevermind, who am I kidding, yea we would like a beer instead.

32 is a very old mystical number stemming from thousands of years ago, from the Hebrew and Pythagoreans. It represented the heart. 32 is the munber of the paths of the tarot, and more. Scottish rite masonry was really the first to kick it up a notch to 33 degrees, quite unfoundedly might I add.

Originally posted by tovenar

No, the connection is not that Fahrenheit was a freemason, but rather properties of the number 32 itself---what some people would call sacred geometry or sacred mathematics.


Fahrenheit marked a glass mercury-filled tube at zero with the coldest temperature he could produce--ice being stirred through salt (like making homemade ice cream).

The highpoint on his scale was the temperature of human blood (measured by putting the thermometer in someone's armpit). He set THAT temp as 96 degrees. He did this so that other scientists could make their own thermometers without having to come to the Netherlands and physically copy his laboratory--they could make their own thermometer and use his scale, by calibrating their thermometer to "universal" temperatures they could create in their own labs.

The reason for 96 at the "top" is that 96 can be subdivided 12 times, and still have subdivisions within each sub-unit. In a world of handmade measuring instruments, this was critical.

The freezing point of water is two twelfths of the way of the glass. He marked that point as 32 because 32 is 2^5 ; which means that 32 can be divided in half five times.

The point of all this is that you could, living on another continent, with nothing more than his book, recreate every experiment farhenheit did, and set up your own weather laboratory, with hand-made tools, a glass tube, a metal file, and a bottle of mercury.

What?

How about this explanation....

"Daniel Fahrenheit arbitrarily decided that the freezing and boiling points of water would be separated by 180 degrees, and he pegged freezing water at 32 degrees. So he made a thermometer, stuck it in freezing water and marked the level of the mercury on the glass as 32 degrees. Then he stuck the same thermometer in boiling water and marked the level of the mercury as 212 degrees. He then put 180 evenly spaced marks between those two points. " HowStuffWorks.com

There is more!
There is more confusion!

Check out Contemporary College Physics, 3rd ed., 2001 which tells us that Fahrenheit started at 0 for the coldest ice/salt slush, and that Fahrenheit never explained why he chose 96 to mark the human body temperature.

However, the authors of that college text guess that it is because 96 is easily divisible, like Tovenar says. That seems to make sense. Then it goes on to say that Fahrenheit noticed that water would freeze at 32 on his scale of 0 slush to 96 armpit. What?!!! It just happened to work out that way??!!! I think this college book is crap.

There are now 3 ways discussed....

1.) Fahrenheit sees Roemer make a thermometer marked from Coldest 0 to Boiling 60, goes home and makes his own model scaled from Coldest 0 to Human 96 for the easy divisibility factor (I guess some people thought 0 to 100 was a cool way to break stuff down, but F-Man wanted divisions of 12, 8, 4 and 2) and later just happens to dig on the fact that water is freezing at the 32 point on his weird scale. That would fall into the Sacred Geometry world of Tovenar.

2.) Fahrenheit starts at Freezing 32 and goes up to Boiling 212 because there are 180 degrees from 32 to 212, in some ''opposite direction'' sort of thought process. As if to say water can be made solid and then turned the other way towards vapor, passing through the human range of liquid in the process.

and my thought....

3.) Fahrenheit purposefully picks 32 as Freezing Dead and mystical 3 times 32 as 96 Living Flesh. This is what I'm thinking. I'm saying he was clued into picking 32 to reference first. Then he did the 3 times magic thing. I don't know how 212 worked out. That must be the sacred geometry. I feel like I'm chasing my tail.

Look. You can believe Fahrenheit just randomly stumbled upon some 32 Freezing point after cleverly arranging the 0 to 96 scale, but I think he picked 32 with something else in mind. It might be some Revelation-Of-The-Universe-Sacred-Geometry-number-2-raised-to-the-5th-power-Pentagon-Venus-Goddess trick. That would be pretty cool in my book. But I think there is even a more significant origin of the 32 voodoo. I would have to reconstruct a thermometer using Fahrenheit's method of marking 0 and 96, then see if water really did just sacredly and geometrically freeze at the 32 point, and then when the scale is extended above 96 it just happens to vaporize 180 degrees away at 212. That would be the true scientific method.

Starting at Coldest 0, going up to 96, fortuitously stumbling on Freezing 32 and then Boiling 212, 180 degrees away? Insane!

Starting at Freezing 32, mystico-magically picking 96 as the Human temperature, and then just fortuitously stumbling on 212 which just happens to be 180 degrees away? Equally Insane!!!

Starting at Freezing 32, topping out at 212 Boiling, and then stumbling into 98.6 Human temperature seems logical yet oddly real close to some Sacred Geometry.

This is an insane topic. Somebody call the Royal Society. We need HELP!!!

And nobody so far has explained why there are 32 degrees in the Scottish Rite (plus the 33rd honorary thing), but I have my own theory including the idea that 33 is like the Omega to the Alpha.


[edit on 10-2-2010 by Cabaret Voltaire]