Pynchon / Nabokov / Borges / Mathematics

[Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt]

Bonnie writes:

> N. Katherine Hayles speaks of Godel's (sorry, no umlaut) Theorem in her 
> THE COSMIC WEB:  SCIENTIFIC FIELD MODLES AND LITERARY STRATEGIES IN THE 
> 20TH CENTURY.  She speaks of postmodern literature, generally.  It's 
> interesting.  I've used a bit of her arugment to discuss BEckett's THREE 
> NOVELS, but have never, I think, applied it to Pynchon.

Thanks for the ref. Goedel's (1st Incompleteness) Theorem is, 
together with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (and, to a lesser 
extent, Einstein's relativity theories) at the centre of the paradigm 
shift seperating modern science from postmodern science. This shift 
from exact to approximate predictions, echoed in the new dominance of 
statistics, is one of the major shifts 'documented' in GR. (I wrote a 
MA thesis, last year, on GR, postmodern science, and language - it's 
all still pretty fresh.)

hg
hag at iafrica.com