Pynchon and science

[Paul Mackin]

There has been a lot of talk lately about what Pynchon does with
science. It might be fun to try to develop a set of categories of just
what it is he does do with science. (It might even throw a little light
on the entropy question.) I will volunteer to start.

One thing he does rather well is exemplified in that "sound shadow" 
passage in GR we discussed here a while back (p. 695, Viking ed.).

He presents a scientific impossibility. But in order to appreciate
_why_ it is an impossibility, we need at least an elementary understanding
of _real_ scientific data and theory.

In the sun shadow case we need to know:

that sound requires a medium to travel through;

that outer space is mostly empty (no medium) so there can be no sound
from out there;

that _ordinary_ shadows are caused by blocking out light (even little
kids know this);

that the light we perceive from the sun (which makes _ordinary_
shadows possible) is transmitted via a totally different mechanism
than is sound (a mechanism not requiring a medium);

that turbulence is not uncommon in nature, and where it does occur
it can "empty out" certain spaces that would otherwise not be empty.

A person would be ill advised to try to _learn_ science from Pynchon.
But once you know a little, he's a whole lot more enjoyable.

				P.