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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 20:25:22 -0800 (PST)
Cc: tcmay at netcom.com, nlester at mindspring.com, pynchon-l at sfu.ca
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950219213136.24595B-100000 at chuma> from "signature-file=Bonnie Lenore Surfus  Department of English  Special fields:  Composition and Rhetoric, Contemporary Literature" at Feb 19, 95 09:38:56 pm
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(I am responding here to Bonnie Surfus' comments. Some might argue it
is time to take it to e-mail, and I will if things get too far off of
Pynchon.) 

signature-file=Bonnie Lenore Surfus  Department of English  Special fields:  Composition and Rhetoric, Contemporary Literature wrote:
> 
> So, would I be correct in assuming that you don't think I'm an idiot?

Right, I don't think you're an idiot. Why would I?

Snow's "two cultures" are of course heavily biased towards we science
types being better able to follow non-science than the reverse
situation. It comes with being embedded in the social world, speaking
and writing English, etc. (Many a time in college I took non-science
classes--classes in Chaucer, for example--and breezed through them
even as my chosen major, physics, required lots of hard work.)

> Toward the end of your "essay," you said you had to wrap it up.  but let 
> me say that i greatly enjoyed and appreciated your responses.  Oh, and 

Thanks. There must be other science lurkers here on this list, but
there is little discussion of science and Pynchon. Maybe we can change
things here.

...
> look into the "technical stuff."  He really said that.  I argued that my 
> interest in chaos was encouraged via lit and that my diss was intended 
> for an audience of similar motivational orientations.  He kind of bought 
> it.  Still, I want to read the "technical stuff" anyhow, and 3.)  (I 
> know, I said, "a couple") I originally intended to be a chemical engineer 
> but was daunted by calculus--I'm trying to see if anything had changed, 
> cognitively speaking--or would that be hermeneutically speaking?  You 
> know what I mean.

For something as conceptually simple as calculus is, it has a fearsome
reputation ("calculus" has magical connotations, even today) and has
turned off many a student. Part of it is the memorizing of all of
those "forms" for integrals. (I'll reveal a secret known to most
practicing scientists, let alone the theoreticians: the integrals one
memorizes in Calculus 1A, 1B, etc. are *almost never used again*!
There are parallels to classical educations in English grammar, for
example. While I am said to write reasonably well, I'd flunk any test
that called for me to conjugate verbs on command, to identify
"subjunctive future imperfect" parts of speech, etc. These are things
we are just not, most of us, taught. If English 1A and 1B were run
this way, as Calulus still is, we'd certainly see a lot of people
dropping English the way they now drop Calculus!)

> Also, much of what I suggested about Newton comes from an article in 
> Hayles' _Chaos and Order. . ._  I'll give the ref. tomorrow.  The book's 
> in my office.

I haven't seen this, but then, again, I'm not reading much on the
history (or is "herstory"? :-}) of science. Having gotten a pretty
good feel for physics, I'm pretty skeptical of the feminist
interpretations of physics as "Newton's rape system," which one of the
major feminist scholars (may've been Evelyn Fox Keller, but maybe not)
charaterized Newton's theories as.

(The idea, as I understand it, is that physics talks about forces and
"pushing" and "pulling," with gravity dominating other objects. This
is said to be a "male" system of metaphors. As I follow the theory, a
more "gynocentric" view would have gravity as an "enfolding" process.
I'm probably trivializing the theory, but it shows that I see nothing
wrong with the notion of "forces." It works. Moreover, it looks to be
the way the world "really is," which is the ultimate evolutionary
test.)

I suspect one could find some interesting facets of this debate in GR,
to get back to Pynchon. The male-oriented rocketeers vs. the Feminine
(Katje?).

But this is your domain, so I'll shut up.

--Tim May



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