Way back in 2012, I was publishing an anonymous Wordpress blog on writing and other things that interested me. That was around the time I learned about Patrick Gunkel. I wrote a blog post about him, and almost immediately received an email from someone who was researching Gunkel.
Did I know him?
What else could I say about him?
I had to write back with the unfortunate truth: I didn’t know anything else about Gunkel other than what I found on MIT’s website.
For about 15 years—since work on the MIT ideonomy website stopped in 2006 and when Betsey Dyer turned over all the materials she had to the MIT Distinctive Collections archive in 2022—that’s how it basically went over and over again.
Anyone who was interested in learning more about Gunkel and ideonomy simply didn’t have anywhere else to turn.
My research has found that Gunkel was active on message boards and other sites across the Internet at least into the early 2010s, but unless you happened to connect with him that way, you were out of luck.
Now, with the launch of my newsletter and the establishment of a 501(c)(3) organization to preserve Gunkel’s legacy, I’ve taken a number of key steps to keep the momentum going.
Since launching my newsletter in January of this year, I’ve published one issue every week.
That’s over 30 issues providing biographical color, never-before-seen archival material, analysis of ideonomy, potential research directions, and other information.
I also published a Gunkel-adjacent peer reviewed study.
I forced an academic journal to edit its false statement about ideonomy.
In addition, the Wikipedia page on ideonomy I created appears to have snowballed thanks to the ravenous information needs of LLMs.
Grokpedia now has a very long entry on ideonomy, and AI-generated web searches for Gunkel and ideonomy yield good results.
What gives me the right to do this, anyway?
What right do I have to call myself the world’s preeminent Patrick Gunkel scholar?
Well, for one thing, I like cats.
For another thing, I grew up in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where Gunkel lived for many years.
I’m also smart, a liberal arts generalist with wide intellectual interests and an unusual range of professional experiences.
And I’m a writer.
I won’t bore you with the details, but during my career I’ve taken on a lot of tough communications challenges. I see ideonomy as the toughest communications challenge I’ve ever faced, but every day I’m excited to put my talents to the test in order to share information about Gunkel and his ideas with the world.
Claims of personal suitability aside, I cared enough to familiarize myself with almost everything Gunkel wrote.
I was willing to spend time and money to gather and review original Gunkel documents.
I was willing to risk embarrassment by advocating for Gunkel extensively in writing using my own, real name and photograph.
I picked up the phone and called over a dozen people about Gunkel, and I learned all kinds of incredible things about him that I haven’t even shared yet. I’ve also obtained or photographed numerous original Gunkel documents that were never posted to MIT’s website, and I’ve been methodically sharing them online. I’m not even close to getting through what I have, either.
I’m convinced that, as a result of my care and interest, I’ve come to understand what Gunkel was saying in a way nobody ever has.
No, I don’t know exactly what Gunkel had in his head.
But I can see the clear outline of it, and I can even step beyond what Gunkel did because I can recognize the reasons he did not succeed.
So here’s where you come in, loyal readers of the world’s first and only Patrick Gunkel newsletter.
No—this is not an appeal for financial support, although certainly it should be known that I’ve spent thousands of dollars on this project.
I’m appealing, instead, for logistical, moral, and even technical support:
Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your classmates, tell anyone you think might be interested in this project. Tell a Reddit board. Tell your Discord chats. Tell them they can catch up on all the back issues of my newsletter for free before the story gets even more complex, and have them sign up here: https://ideachemistry.ggrp.org/
Do you have a website with a links section? Please consider linking to my 501(c)(3) organization, the Gunkel Global Renaissance Project: http://ggrp.org. We are legitimate: you can look us up on the IRS website; the EIN is 39-3775520: https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/
Public source editing. There are many opportunities for proactive editors to raise Gunkel’s profile in the public information sphere. For example, Gunkel’s presence on WikiData could be expanded. If you do make any edits, please let me know! I would be excited to feature them in my newsletter, with or without your name attached.
Gunkel citations: It may be too much to ask for anyone to write an academic article focused on Gunkel, but if there is a way to cite Gunkel in your peer reviewed articles and/or conference proceedings, every little bit counts. I have an academic email address and would be excited to publish academically focused papers on Gunkel via arXiv, but do not have any collaborators or endorsers at present.
Research agenda: Are you interested in collaborating and becoming one of the world’s first Patrick Gunkel scholars? I have a significant list of projects, research directions, gaps that need to be analyzed, sources that need to be consulted, potential academic papers that could be written, etc., and I would be happy to share this with the right person or people. Just hit me up at [email protected].
Guest posts: Please consider proposing a guest post for this newsletter at [email protected]. (See the above bullet about collaboration and potential topics.) More perspectives are needed especially with respect to LLMs, and I have always intended this newsletter to be a focus of general Gunkel scholarship rather than just my own research findings. Come on in, the water is fine and there is plenty to explore and write about, especially now that the age of artificial intelligence makes Gunkel’s vision so much clearer.
Sure, we are still a long way from having most spell-check programs recognize “ideonomy” as a legitimate word instead of doing a red squiggly underneath, but I’m convinced this will happen one day—and I’m inviting you to help participate in the effort.
Thanks so much for considering your non-financial support.
And I’ll see you next week, with another original document drop—a curious handwritten, autobiographical list Gunkel wrote titled “Map of Gunkel.”