Oedipa?

[Basileios Drolias]

On Tue, 9 May 1995, Andrew Dinn wrote:

> Of course, Mondaugen, being a scientist, is bound to be tarred with a
> certain amount of ambiguity. As a scientist he has to come up with
> accounts of why things happen. 

Isn't GR a mockery of exactly this though: A mockery of cause and effect, of 
why things happen?


> But his success as a scientist requires
> that he maintain a certain level of disbelief in any of the
> explanations he gives. Pynchon's favoured scientists - Mondaugen,
> Mexico, Pokler, even Stencil - all exhibit this ambiguity towards
> their beliefs at the same time as displaying a dogged earnestness in
> their attempts to provide an adequate explanation. His objects of
> derision are the true believers like Pointsman who already know the
> one answer they are willing to accept and are merely busy trying to
> explain how the phenomena support it. The crisis which all the good
> guys (apart from Stencil) go through is the recognition that this
> semi-sceptical ambivalence may (or may not) be scientifically sound
> but is personally inadequate.
> 

You really think so? I somehow think that all the scientists appearing in 
TP's works are sad data collectors with high ideas about the future, with 
great minds from the past as their inspiration, but who are incapable of 
living `normal' lives. The crises that they  suffer do not have 
to do with the (deeply Dostoyevskyian I would think) debate between 
scepticism and pure belief but with the inadequacy of their personalities.

Speaking about scientists I was thinking that TP at some points is trying 
to lift the stigma of the German scientists who were working for the 
VIIs. (They were really people with high morals thinking about reaching the 
moon, having nothing to do with politics etc.) I find this extremely odd, 
or maybe I am missing something (which is quite probable ).

basil