The Rev. Dr Opimian – Why, Lord Michin Malicho, Lord Facing-both-ways, and two or three other arch-quacks, have taken to merry-andrewising in a new arena, which they call the Science of Pantopragmatics, and they have bitten Lord Curryfin into tumbling with them; but the mania will subside when the weather grows cool…

Miss Gryll – But pray, doctor, what is this new science?

The Rev. Dr Opimian – Why that, Miss Gryll, I cannot well make out. I have asked several professors of the science, and have got nothing in return but some fine varieties of rigmarole, of which I can make neither head nor tail. It seems to be a real art of talking about an imaginary art of teaching every man his own business. Nothing practical comes of it, and, indeed, so much the better… Like most other science, it resolves itself into lecturing, lecturing, lecturing, about all sorts of matters, relevant and irrelevant; one enormous bore prating about jurisprudence, another about statistics, another about education, and so forth; the crambe repetita of the same rubbish, which has already been served up “twiës hot and twiës cold”, as at many other associations nicknamed scientific…

[Lord Curryfin] had been caught by the science of pantopragmatics, and firmly believed for a time, that a scientific organisation for teaching everybody everything, would cure all the evils of society.

 

Thomas Love Peacock, Gryll Grange (1860)