Entropy Again

[David L. Pelovitz]

From: OUTRSPACIA at aol.com

>So if the central theme is entropy, it must also be death.
>
>If you buy the idea that entropy equals death, then you either give up, or
>you put some tolerable face on existence, which is what TRP has done 
>with GR.
>
>He's painted a bleak world, but he's done so in an almost absurdist 
>manner.  He's made the dying universe as entertaining as it is haunting. 
>Seems like he's going to make the best of it, take advantage of it while
>it lasts -- which could be a gazillion years, unless we manage to end 
>it all ourselves before entropy fulfills its grim promise.

IT's that last statement that is so important to me.  It might
last a gazillion years.  In Norbert Wiener's _The Human Use
of Human Beings_(which was one of TRP's major sources) wrote:

"The transfer of information cannot take place without a 
certain minimum transfer of energy, so that there is no
sharp boundary between energetic coupling and informational
coupling.  Nevertheless, for most practical purposes, a light
quantum is a very small thing; and the amount of energy 
transfer which is necessary for an effective informational
coupling is quite small.  It follows that in considering
such a local process as the growth of a tree or of a 
human being, which depends directly or indirectly on
radiation from the sun, an enormous local decrease in
entropy may be associated with a quite moderate energy
transfer." 

IF GR is full of the idea of death, it is also filled
with unlikly celebrations of life where you least
expect it.  Prentice's bananas breakfasts are only
the first example.  Or the singing of "Sold On
Suicide" in which (due to Godel's Theorem) "It''s easy
to see that the 'suicide' of the title might have to be 
postponed indefinitely." (GR, 32)

Pynchon seems to remind us of a few things in his fiction.
THe laws of thermoynamics tell us the universe is forver
moving toward death. All things will die.  In any given
situation, the most likely outcome is always death.  But
every moment that death is not the outcome, is a local
forestalling of entropy.  And we can keep finding local
ways to forestall entropy just about forever.
	
David Pelovitz - dqp5805 at is.nyu.edu