NP Witt List (was something Pynchon-related at some point, maybe)

[Gary L. Thompson]

A pragmatic test for this topic: here in the US we have a fairly 
substantial body of discourse about something called creation science. 
Its adherents have a center set up in California somewhere, from which 
they have a network through "fundamentalist" Christian groups (churches 
and less formalized, more political bodies) to work through school boards 
and radio ministries and Bible publishing houses, in order to advocate 
the teaching of science only as brought into conformity with more or less 
strict versions of Genesis. This produces lines such as "it's only a 
_theory_ of evolution, it hasn't been proven" and calls for equal time to 
be given to a competing theory.

I'm content to read along about _America_ (ugh!) and _rocks_ and _fauna_ 
being concepts, more or less in the mode in which I read Pirsig's 
character talk about mathematics as a ghost in _Zen_--but that puts me on 
fairly weak ground when talking with a glassy-eyed student who wants to 
put some book about the discovery of Noah's Ark on a par with Stephen Jay 
Gould's accounts. How do I talk to this guy to suggest he broaden his 
horizons a bit and develop a framework to account for what is a substantial 
(?) chunk of the technnology he uses daily? And it's not just this guy 
but (according to polls) a slight _majority_ of those in the U.S. who 
disbelieve Darwin? Or if we roll back the calendars a few months, to the 
Heaven's Gate crew, or UFO buffs? How does Wittgenstein fit with some 
sort of public understanding, however defined and moderated? (This is out 
of ignorance--my reading of Ludwig is superficial and 20 years old, at 
least.) 

Seems to me this has some relevance to the nature-of-the-list discussions 
from a few weeks back as well, but I don't want to draw that thread now. 



On Wed, 13 Aug 1997 andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:

> Rock, soil and fauna are concepts just as much as America, the New
> World etc. The phenomena we classify under these concepts (to use a
> Tractatus era phrasing) are something else. You agree with Peter and
> allow this point for America or the New World, i.e. abstract concepts,
> yet disagree with me and stop short when it comes to more concrete
> concepts. Why so? Does the fact that a concept deals with phenomena
> rather than other concepts imply that it is thereby immanent in the
> things it conceptualizes? Cannot for the life of me see why you should
> draw such a conclusion.
> 
> Andrew Dinn
> -----------
> How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way
> Is an immense world of pleasure clos'd by your senses five

Well, yeah, Blake's lines are to the point here too, aren't they?

Gary Thompson