WvB/Hawking

[Greg Montalbano]

On Mon, 8 Jan 1996 17:48:42 +0000 (GMT) you said:
>Greg Montalbano writes:
>
>> After reading Andrew Dinn's amazingly (inappropriatly?) vitriolic comments
>> on vonBraun and Hawking,
>
>You thought *that* was (amazingly) vitriolic? I prefer `pithy' but
>there you go.
>
>> I have two quotes I would like to submit.
>
>> The first is Kim Stanley Robinson:
>>    "He had taken it as a figure of speech.  But now he recalled Kuhn, as-
>> serting that scientists who used different paradigms existed in literally
>> different worlds, epistemology being such an integral component of reality.
>> Thus Aristoteleans simply did not see the Galilean pendulum, which to them
>> was a body falling with some difficulty; and in general, scientists debat-
>> ing the relative merits of compteting paradigms simply talked right through
>> each other, using the same words to discuss different realities."
>
>Yeah, it's a bit like atheists talking to Catholics - different
>worlds. Only, don't get the idea that a scientist is allowed to see
>the relativity of the paradigms either. The problem with paradigms is
>that they are your world view. And the thing about world views is that
>you cannot believe in two of them at the same time - a bit like being
>an atheist Catholic. It seems to me that Hawking along with most
>popularisers of science (e.g. the execrable James Burke - he could get
>me to spray some real acid) is attempting this trick, saying that the
>everyday is both everyday and familiar and yet at the same time
>something totally unfamiliar. This trick belongs to Bertrand Russell's
>spinning head school of philosophy.
>
>> ...and the second quote is from Anthony Burgess:
>
>>    "Crikey, aren't you 'arf a snot!"
>
>One of the things I dislike most about Burgess is his habit of missing
>the mark ever so slightly and thereby falling flat as old bitter (and
>there's another thing I dislike about him, but I digress). So, whilst
>`Crikey, you aren't arf a snot' would be perfectly pucker proletarian
>(forgive me the paradoxymoron) your quoted inversion rides up front in
>the Dick van Dyke sweep stakes.
>
>
>Andrew Dinn
>-----------
>Daran, nachdem die Wasserwogen / Von unsrer Suendflut sich verzogen
>Der allerschoenste Regenbogen / Als Gottes Gnadenzeichen steht!
Dick van Dyke?  What did HE write?

I think what I was working towards was the idea that, this being a forum for
the discussion of literature in general and TRP in particular, we should keep
in mind: that literature is an art form;  that Pynchon's novels are not
simply schematics for paranoids, but works of art in which he "uses words to
describe what cannot be stated in words"; and that many artists achieve some
of their best results by combining, juggling and colliding different world
views and showing us the resulting fallout.

"Don't get the idea that a scientist is allowed to see the relativity of the
paradigms" --- I'm sure many don't see outside their own specialization;  but
I also know that, just as Pynchon isn't ONLY a writer, Einstein, Hawking and
von Braun aren't ONLY scientists;  their attempts at reconciling some of the
allegedly incompatible world views of their respective times & places
appeals to someone like me, who believes in the accretive nature of knowledge
and experience.
I agree that some of them are more successful that others, but hey, what do
you expect from fuzzy-thinking commie pinko queer liberal tree-huggers like
me?