Chaos, Fractals & GR

[Tim Ware]

BUT, if we don't bring systems to GR, what DO we bring?  I think bringing 
systems is better than nothing at all.  Really.

Tim

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ timware at crl.com
If you are dealt a lemon ... play lemonade - CD-ROM DOS


On Sat, 20 May 1995 WildForest at aol.com wrote:

> Ok.  Now we get down to it. 
> 
> The old Nature (assuming there is an organizing principle at work there,
> which is probably so much wishful thinking on the part of the neo-paganists)
> vs. Chaos dilemma.  Of course, this discussion is as old as the
> Hashish-induced sandstone scribblings along the Euphrates, lately smashed to
> bits by Tomahawk missile raining down on these ancient artifacts in GWH
> Bush's little alley fight with Saddam. 
> 
> And it is a debate, which for my money, reached its zenith with the
> pre-Socratics, particularly the bizarre stuff of Heraclitus, which, by the
> way, figures prominently in any structuralist interpretation of Gaddis's
> JR...where things are always breaking down and being rearranged in the most
> amusing and paradoxical fashions.  Naturally, this is just so much
> philosophy, which, when paired against neo-mathemical determinism, no one
> takes seriously any more.
> 
> When I was studying GR in the hothouse of the academy in the late 1970s, we
> were frantically underlining passages out of The Dancing Wu Li Masters and
> the Tao of Physics--certain that we had found the hidden key to unlock the
> secret structure of GR.  Now the New Physics is Old Hat, but GR has survived
> to be assailed from so many new critical fronts, like rockets from the
> heavens.  Lets hope it remains impervious to them all.
> 
> I agree w/ you and Ware about the "magical interface between text and
> reader."  But it must be the anarchist-in-exile in me that cringes at any
> "systematic" approach to Pynchon.  Systems exclude or extinguish that which
> is odd, that which doesn't fit, that which is counter.  I take GR to be a
> profoundly moral and political book.  One of the lessons:  don't discriminate
> and don't exclude anything.
> 
> Despite these reservations, I am quite anxious to navigate your essay on
> Vineland.
> 
> Cheers,
> JSC
> 
> "Light one up before you mosey out that door
> Once you cuddled 'em and kissed 'em,
> But we're bring down Their system
> And it isn't a resistance, it's a war."
> 
> 
> 
>