High School Pynchon vs. Angst

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

argus at dns.city-net.com writes:

> ps. sorry i never got a post worked up, but paranoia as recently
> described sounded a lot like "myth-making" according to Levi-Strauss:
> an unusually quick jumping to connections, a facile and perhaps
> unscientific, but certainly not "wrong" correlation process.  any
> comments?

Yes, but the tricky question is why `wrong' gets put inside rabbit's
ears. Clearly, paranoia as you describe it has to be `wrong' because
if it were `right' it would not be paranoia but science - a somewhat
Baconian science if it is founded only on correlation or co-incidence
but correlation *is* the root of the (scientific) process, as it were.
So, the interesting thing is not that paranoia and science share this
common root in co-incidence (or can I stop being paranoid and just
write coincidence?). The interesting question is what legitimizes an
observed correlation as a scientific discovery rather than a paranoid
fantasy? And the usual answer that it all comes down to the
distribution of institutionalized power relations amongst the existing
legitimising community of scientists is far too simple despite its
appeal to the paranoid side of one's nature. Because at the root of
the distinction there is a requirement that not just other scientists
but other people agree with the proto-paranoid before a phenomenon
will be accepted as just that, a phenomenon worthy of scientific
investigaton and explication rather than a non-phenomenon, a fantasy
of some poor sap's heat-oppressed brain. In other words Pynchon is not
just saying that paranoia and science share the same root, rather that
paranoia and objectivity share the same bed.

Now, here is the 64 million dollar question. Can anyone tell me
whether you can insert a Rizla paper between the meanings if you
substitute community for objectivity in that last sentence?


Andrew Dinn
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And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.