postmodern science

[kellner at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

Matson introduces the concept of postmodern science in THE BROKEN IMAGE on
p. vi writing that the modern mechanistic and determinist science of
Galileo and Newton etc was opposed by a "countermovement in postmodern
science--from its sources in the new physics of uncertainty and
complementarity, through its consensual endorsement in the biology of
freedom, to its several distinctive formulations in those adventurous
outposts of psychology..." There are also references on pp. 115, 129, 139.

I would argue that GR and TRP's work in general attacks the modern
mechanistic, reductive, deterministic worldview and articulates in
literary form some of the insights into indeterminancy and contingency of
quantam physics and anticipates insights of chaos theory. On the whole,
this vision is articulated in the novels and stories themselves, in the
narrative and character development, in the writing, etc. What is
interesting about the sections in the GRGR read is that they are actually
articulated in the contrast between Pointsman and Mexico, in the text, in
the dialogue, in the contrasts of characters, in the writing....

The term postmodern is of course hotly contested with a variety of
competing discourses in the arts, theory, sciences, etc. In terms of
literature Pynchon is somewhere between modernism and postmodernism,
exhibiting arguably modernist traits (big visions and big issues, highly
innovative style, multilayered texts with tremendous complexity) though he
anticipates postmodern strategies (i.e. heavy use of quotation, pastiche,
popular culture, thus subverting divide between popular and high culture,
etc.). Ultimately, he escapes mo/pomo labels because he is so sui generis
u.s.w.

For more on the postmodern, see my web site below--next week when I find
out why it accesses "403 forbidden"


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/