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

[Mark Smith]

Gary L. Thompson wrote:
> 
> 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 know I'm leapfrogging off Gary (and Andrew's) original Wittgenstein
topic, but I think there's another kind of relevance here to Pynchon's
themes.  The adherents of creation "science" represent a substantial, if
disingenuous, group of people with access to power. They really don't
care about science, except insofar as they can subvert it to their own
purposes, in this case, religious purposes, although I use the term
'religious' rather loosely.  Like those other power mongers, the tobacco
companies, they are able to shift the center of discourse of any subject
by seeking out those very scientists who happen to agree with them, and
promoting their views through massive investments of capital and media
exposure.  They are very organized, and represent a voice out of all
proportion to their numbers, because of the power of big business which
stands behind them.  

We are seeing the same phenomenon with the current efforts by captains
of industry to subvert the clean air act.  A body of about five science
sceptics are paid huge amounts of money to throw sand in the face of the
thousands of other scientists who have sound data for their conclusions
about the effects atmospheric pollution on climate. Then guys like Ford
Motor Co. Chairman Alex Trotman, speaking here in Traverse City last
week, can go out of his way to sow seeds of gloom and doom on the
current U.S. economic boom.  Trotman predicts that the current economic
good times could be "torpedoed" if the government signs a global warming
treaty.   "Our industry has fought too long and too hard to allow our
success to be swept away on a tide of suspect science," said Trotman.  

Ross Gelpspan ("The Heat is On") calls these science sceptics
"interchangeable ornaments on the hood of a high-powered engine of
disinformation."  (I love that phrase!).  The most frightening part of
this whole process is the way such marginal boat rockers are able to
paralyze the minds of the public into apathy.  John Q. Public, being by
nature rather apathetic about lots of stuff, is able to say to himself,
"Ah well.  Whatcha gonna do?  I'm just an average guy, and even the
scientists disagree, so I guess global warming is "only a theory". So,
in the great tradition of American democracy, every backwoodsman has his
opinion, and they are all equal, but now the backwoodsman scientist gets
singled out for special patronage by the interests of Capital, and truth
takes a backseat.  How does anybody know anything anymore?  Surely a
Pynchon leitmotiv, if ever there was one. 


-- 
Beechnut Review	http://www.traverse.com/beechnut
"Go bind thou up yon dangling apricocks,/Which, like unruly children,
make their sire/Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight."