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From: tcmay at netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
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Subject: Re: Pynchon and Quantum Mechanics?
To: surfus at chuma.cas.usf.edu (signature-file=Bonnie Lenore Surfus  Department of English  Special fields:  Composition and Rhetoric,
	Contemporary Literature)
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 1995 11:31:45 -0800 (PST)
Cc: tcmay at netcom.com, nlester at mindspring.com, pynchon-l at sfu.ca
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950218193536.15086A-100000 at chuma> from "signature-file=Bonnie Lenore Surfus  Department of English  Special fields:  Composition and Rhetoric, Contemporary Literature" at Feb 18, 95 08:04:41 pm
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I'll only say a few words about quantum mechanics and Pynchon. The
stuff is hard enough to grasp as it is, so I also won't try any
allusive (and elusive?) word clevernesses.

signature-file=Bonnie Lenore Surfus  Department of English  Special fields:  Composition and Rhetoric, Contemporary Literature wrote:

> 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.


> > 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 

Yes, I think popularizations are a great thing. I cut my teeth on
popularization of science in general and physics in particular, and I
still like to use them when starting in on a new field. The various
popularizations of modern quantum mechanics--such as Zukav, Nick
Herbert, John Gribbin, etc.--are fine. Just bear in mind that some of
the more "outre" claims are suspect.

But outre stuff is fine for literature. Science fiction writers like
Larry Niven made great use of the "multiple worlds hypothesis," in
which an "interpretation" of QM is that the universe splits on each
and every quantum universe, and that there is a universe in which
Pynchon went public in 1975, a universe in which I teach literature at
Oxford, and so on, as infinutum (almost).

Pynchon picked up on the importance of information theory before
nearly anyone writing literature did, as Shannon et. al. developed
this mostly in the 1948-58 period. "Entropy" was about part of this,
and of course his novels are filled with signs, portents, probability,
etc. 

Were *I* to be writing papers on the science influences Pynchon
integrated, this is the tack I would take. (But there's room for many
papers, including papers on the observed-observer issues of QM.)

> 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? 

By the way, there are links between several areas:

- the "multiple worlds" or "possible worlds" of QM, as described above

- the "possible worlds" of AI (artificial intelligence), in which
models of possible realities are considered and accepted or rejected
(when you hear a door bell, you consider several possible realities,
or scenarios, and attempt to resolve them into what is "real"...even
animals do this, of course).

- the "alternate discourse" just mentioned above. (This isn't my home
ground, but I presume this is what text analysis is all about:
explicating various realities from the text, realities the author may
or may not have deliberately intended.)


...
> > 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 

Well, understand that I meant "Newtonian" in the precise sense of
classical mechanics (billiard balls bouncing around, for example), not
in the sense that Isaac Newton was in some sense a follower of the
magical and mystical. (He had mystical beliefs, as do lots of folks,
even today, but his physics was largely separable. In my view, arguing
otherwise would be a tough task for anyone to undertake.)

By the way, I doubt Newton knew (or foresaw) many connections to what
we now call "chaos." He might have been pleased that his physics had
within it such chaos, but the concepts needed to figure this out had
yet to be invented.

...
> 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 

Stay away from differential equations!! :-} That's a difficult field,
and mostly unneeded. They're just various equations linking variables
that are changing, the equations of motion. Literally, "rocket
science."

(And hence of interest to the (few?) who think analysis of rocket
trajectories has much to do with Pynchon. It doesn't. All ye know
about rocket trajectories, and all ye need to know, is that rockets
rise and fall in parabolas, arcs, even "rainbows." No more detailed
understanding is needed, so skip the differential equations!)

> 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.

I don't think of Doris Lessing as an expert in any kind of science,
but then I could never get into her novels either.

....
> > most precisely measured initial positions lead to "chaos."
> the layman's butterfly effect?

Yes. Even the classical physicists like Laplace and Lagrange knew the
practical limitations of the world view I am referencing ("In
principle, if the positions and velocities of all the particles in the
universe were known at some time, then the entire future evolution of
the universe could be predicted.") They knew that no agent could
possess this knowledge, so they substituted "God."

Bu this mechanistic, Deistic model has been incredibly influential in
Western culture (and hence literature). Many people who know little
about science still think the message of science is that "in
principle" the universe is deterministic!

It is NOT! And the key is not quantum mechanics and the Uncertainty
Principle. Nor is even "chaos," at least not in terms of being just
the word used.

No, the key is in information theory. The "in principle" stuff about
positions and velocities would require *arbitrary precision*, or
longer and longer strings (sequences of bits, numbers) to represent
this. In the billiard ball model, even if the position of Ball A was
given as ("x = 0.95284601332844 and y = 0.11094369078267, x-vel =
...."), then eventually the incomplete (non-infinite) specificatin
would result in *divergent histories*.

Well, this little essay is getting too long, so I'll wrap up.

The key is that we have, in this century, finally demolished the "In
principle, everything is predictable and deterministic" shibboleth.

No appeals to mysticism, or to magic, or to "The Uncertainty
Principle."

I think this is why Pynchon appeals to so many scientists...he appears
to have grasped what this does to our world view and integrated it
into his works.

--Tim May

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