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Date: Sat, 18 Feb 1995 20:04:41 -0500 (EST)
From: "signature-file=Bonnie Lenore Surfus  Department of English  Special fields:  Composition and Rhetoric, Contemporary Literature" <surfus at chuma.cas.usf.edu>
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To: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay at netcom.com>
cc: nlester at mindspring.com, pynchon-l at sfu.ca
Subject: Re: Pynchon and Quantum Mechanics?
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Thanks for you help.  I do need much of it.  But let me see if I can 
clarify somewhat.  then tell me if my deployment of chaos is inappropriate.

On Sat, 18 Feb 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

> 
> Briefly, I haven't been posting much on this list lately. I'm not a
> lit-crit type, just a former physicist at Intel, now retired, who
> happens to also like Pynchon. I stay connected to the chaos sort of
> work, so I want to comment on chaos and QM in GR.
> 
> Bonnie Surfus wrote:
> 
> > 	About _The Dance of the Wu Li Masters_, a great book.  I have 
> 
> I'd call it a provocative book, but not accurate. Zukav's spin on QM
> is idiosyncratic to that community which thinks Bell's Theorem puts
> the magic back in the universe. Most physicists don't see it quite
> this way.
> 
Might I point out that you later, in this post, suggest that accuracy is 
always problematic.  and that us lit types may need help in understanding 
contemporary physics?  This is the point at which Zukav begins 
structuring his text--at a conjuncture wherein multiple disciplines are 
integrated, converging on one (or many related) issue/s (i.e., the 
humanities' take on complexity.)  This would be the "spin" you speak of, 
but it's really, as I see it, a way of testing theoretical constructs 
via, or realtive to alternate discourses (which is what academics do, I 
think.)  Isn't it that the "magic" is already in the universe--or often 
so--in the case of seemingly random systems that nevertheless demonstrate 
a kind of order, across scales, over time? 

> > done a bit of work on Pynchon and chaos theory (Look for my article on 
> > _Strange Attractors in VINELAND_ in CRITICAL MASS.)  I am reading GR for 
> > the second time and hope to scan the surface via chaos, which is a 
> > monumental statement.  I hope to do this, anyhow.  Certainly, quantum 
> > physics, as prob. the 2nd major scientific disc. of this C., will figure 
> > into this work.  Without it, chaoticians would have had little 
> > opportunity to locate the necessary bifurcation points relative to their 
> > evolution.
> 
> No, chaos theory never needs to invoke QM. In fact, if Planck's
> Constant, h, were zero, and we were thus in a "classical" world
> (classical physics, aka Newtonian), we'd still have chaos.
Evoking Newton is interesting here, esp. in light of your earlier 
comments on 'putting the magic back in the universe."  Newton, it is 
suggested, was aware of various kinds of order that evolved within 
non-linear, unstable  chaotic systems.  the 'magic" thing was called 
God.  And he was a favorite with the Bacon/Boyle set.  To examine these 
kinds of order (chaotic) would be to say that the big guy was not so very 
organized .  But beyond that, I agree-chaos need not invoke QM.  But the 
cultural and technological scene (for lack of the right jargon) that 
prevailed relative to QM, postmodern and poststructuralist discourses, 
interdisciplinary studies, cultural studies, and other discourses, 
encouraged chaos as a "field."  This has been suggested by N. Katherine 
Hayles, from whom I get much of my info.  I am a lit person, as you say.  
My knowledge is limited to the filed and the ways in which it has felt 
the influence of chaos in yours (that's "field." )  I have read David 
Ruelle's book and am still confounded by non-differntial equations, etc.  
But I do believ that the poseimparts somtehitn useful. and if nothing, 
else, I plan to examine that --and so my work with Pynchon.  I'm also 
interested in Barth, relative to chaos.  I had hoped for more from Dorris 
Lessing, as I began to read the Golden Notebook.  But I coulen't get past 
the first 100 pages.
> > Information theory is at the core of modern 
notions of uncertainty.
> String complexity, to use the jargon of Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and
> others.
a kind of order?  a kind of structuralism?  Can you elaborate?
> 
> We can't predict the trajectories of billiard balls beyond a few
> collisions. Not because of quantum mechanics, but because "tiny
> errors" march in from the 30th decimal place to the 20th to the 10th
> to the 5th to the 3rd, etc. After only a handful of interactions, the
> most precisely measured initial positions lead to "chaos."
the layman's butterfly effect?
is this chaos not simply a different kind of order, one that has 
traditionally escaped our Newtonian eyes?
> 
> It is true that researchers are looking at how quantum theory
> interacts with chaos theory, but the connections so far have been
> minor.
> 
> I offer this commentary only to help the lit folks in my domain, as
> they have helped me in their domain.
> 
Above, I refer to structuralism without a damning implication--there is a 
tendency to think everyone finds it a nasty little secret.  

Tim May
> -- 
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