GWGW

[Paul Mackin]

Douglas K 's mention of postmodern science reminds me of certain
questions that I have whenever that term is used.

How does the event of so called postmodern science mesh with the much more inclusive concept of postmodernism?

The purported shift in science brought about by quantum theory would have taken place decades earlier than the 50s--the earliest point at which events in media, architecture, consumption, etc., needed such a thing as postmodernism to explain.

How general is the acceptance of the term "postmodern science"? Looked
for it in vain in a few indexes.

Finally, how big a shift in science occurred. It was definitely BIG of course. But did it  deal any kind of fatal  blow to cause and effect?  Some may have seen  it that way while others didn't.

Just some questions. Don't know the answers.

				P.


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From: 	kellner at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Sent: 	Monday, December 02, 1996 10:17 AM
To: 	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: 	Re: GWGW


The two sections that we are now discussing are among the most important
in the book IMHO. The White Visitation delineation sets up Pynchon's model
of bureaucracy and a totally rationalized society that was to be "One of
the dearest Postwar hopes" and Weber's nightmare coming to fruition for
the Frankfurt school. It also sets up the connection between instrumental
rationality and behaviorism that will be attacked throughout the book and
here I agree with J Minnich's citing of Floyd Matson's THE BROKEN IMAGE
which articulates the connection between scientific and political
behaviorism and which I too believe might have been important for Pynchon.
Maton's is also the first book to introduce the concept of postmodern
science which I think Pynchon also sketches in the next section, as I will
suggest below.
[Query: does anyone know of previous uses of the term postmodern science
before the Matson book? Does anyone have any critiques of this book or
know anything about Matson?]
The next section opens with a devastating satire on behaviorism and sets
out the key distinction between Pointsman and Mexico, and between modern
and postmodern science (Mexico, the "anti-Pointsman," a distinction I
prefer to the Christ/AntiChrist suggested yesterday, though TRP does
suggest that Pointsman, the behaviorists with their torture of animals and
manipulations, possible torture, of human beings, are evil...)
I think that the mystery x is that which eludes Pointsman's schemes but
also Mexico's probabilities. The correlations between the bombs and
Slothrop's "scores" are this X, this unknown and unknowable, that eludes
all conceptual schemes, though perhaps Mexico's "statistical oddity" comes
closest....
[what thoughts do people have on this? Does GR suggest any other
"explanations" of the correlation?]
In any case, it seems to me that the text attacks the Pavolovian "long
chain of better and better approximations" and "No effect without a cause,
and a clear chain of linkages"-- an ontology central to modern science
that Mexico's statistical probabilities, quantum theory and anticipations
of chaos theory overturns, a more discontinuous universe of probablities
and hence contingencies, mysteries, etc. It is GR's great achievement to
provide literary form and interrogation of the passage from the modern to
the postmodern....
The end of the section is a mindblower and I think more than Pointsman and
Mexico walking into the sunset (its probably pretty cloudy...). But what
does it mean that "and no one, none of us, could every completely find
them again."...

 Douglas Kellner, Dept of Philosophy, Univ of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
kellner at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu  fax: 512 471-4806
Web sites: Postmodern theory= http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~kellner/pm/pm.html
Critical theory= http://www.uta.edu/english/dab/illuminations/