TRP Themes

[Tresy Kilbourne]

>Tresy Kilbourne writes:
>
>> This reminds me of a book I stumbled across about 10 years ago that 
>> vindicated much of what I sensed was going on in Pynchon's universe: 
>> Order Out of Chaos, by Ilya Prigogine. IP is a Nobel Laureate in physics. 
>
>One shouldn't really take the '80ties Chaos cult too seriously - I'm 
>sure TRP would be the first to agree that it is just as dangerous to 
>take Chaos out of its clearly defined scientific context as it is to 
>see entropy everywhere.

I appreciate your concern. Still, are you saying that Prof. Prigogine 
doesn't know what he's talking about? The thermodynamics of 
nonequilibrium systems is what he won his Nobel Prize for, after all. 
Have you read his book? It doesn't strike me as New Age burblings.

>
>> The book addresses the central paradox of Newton's Second Law: if the 
>
>Don't you mean the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? If not, please clarify.

Sorry, you are right. Thanks for the correction.

>
>> universe is getting increasingly disordered, how does an ordered system 
>> like life come into existence? Short answer: fluctuations in systems 
>
>Closed systems are getting increasingly 'disordered', and if the 
>universe is a closed system, it is getting more disordered. The time 
>frame is such, however, that entropy on a universal level is totally 
>irrelevant to us. System earth, which is the one important for life, 
>is not a closed system (the sun is constantly pumping energy in). So 
>increasing disorder does not directly apply to us anyway. On a more 
>localized level, say a cellular level, maybe....

Still, the center not holding is a modernist preoccupation. And artists 
take from the world around them: nowadays everything from comic books to 
cosmology. Why should Pynchon only be able to make metaphoric use of the 
former and not the latter? In any event, what you are saying seems 
consistent with Prigogine (and Pynchon). I am not sure what you are 
disagreeing with.
>
>> under far-from-equilibrium conditions (i.e., severe stress) can give rise 
>> to "spontaneous self-organization". To me, this is why Pynchon is always 
>> investigating "cusps" and various other singularities in human history, 
>> because it's at these junctures that possibilities for renewal exist. I 
>
>Except the "cusp" WW2 represents is not about renewal at all, but 
>about Them further tightening their reign - only when things are in 
>flux in order to facillitate a rearrangement of Their structures, 
>opportunity exists to slip through their fingers, or just. er, 
>dissolve?

True enough, if I follow you right. But the thing about cusps and 
singularities is that the potential for alternatives is there. That's a 
pillar of chaos theory, right? The same process does not always yield the 
same results; the process is stochastic. I think Pynchon is fascinated 
with these junctures because it's there that glimpses of the road not 
taken can be found--and hopefully taken next time.

(Aside: if you ever read Noam Chomsky on the post-war scene in Europe, it 
sounds an awful lot like Pynchon;  existing structures of authority lying 
in ruins, with chaotic popular movements struggling to assert themselves 
(like the Counterforce), ultimately to fail.)

>
>> can do Prigogine's book justice here, but leafing through it just now 
>> reminded me again of how many points of contact there are with Pynchon's 
>> own deployment of science
>
>I agree that Chaos Theory, which began to be established as discipline in 
>the 
>early seventies, seems a useful (metaphoric) angle to approach GR from. The 
>problems in prediction, which gave rise to Chaos mathematics, had 
>been around for a long time, and while TRP could not have heard of 
>Chaos when he wrote GR, his grasp of both science and pop culture 
>means that he probably was aware of the general, ah, atmosphere? which 
>gave rise to it later.
Oh, definitely. The thing that's always amazed me about GR, which I read 
shortly after it was published, is how a book ostensibly about the past 
so uncannily anticipated the zeitgeist of the decades to come.

________
Tresy Kilbourne
Seattle, WA 
PGP key @ http://www.halcyon.com/tresyk/home.htm
or finger:tresyk at halcyon.com