The Great Divide

[Michael McAulay]

I've been looking for an opening for this for a while now...check page
616 of M&D where there is a clear reference to G. Spencer-Brown's Laws
Of Form.  In LOF the fundamental operation of thought is identified as
drawing-a-line, which operation is explicitly identified with naming.

So is TP saying that dehumanization is inherent in cognition?

[a plea, an imprecation: enough, already, with the non-Pynch msgs in
this list!  My mailbox runneth over.  Surely there are other, more
suitable venues, etc. etc...]  

========
Mike McAulay
Sr. Engineer
3DO

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Jules Siegel [SMTP:jsiegel at mail.caribe.net.mx]
> Sent:	Monday, July 14, 1997 7:28 AM
> To:	pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject:	Re: The Great Divide
> 
> At 03:09 PM 07/14/97 BST, andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk wrote:
> >Pynchon later baldly states that the purpose of carving all those
> >grid lines on the land was so that it could then be divided up,
> >possessed and fought over. However natural the original demarcations
> >might appear to be once you look up at the stars the orientation we
> >have chosen to impose on these `natural' coordinate systems says more
> >about humanity (rather, inhumanity) than it says about the physical
> >world.
> 
> Beyond excellent! One might say that the unifying theme of V.,
> Gravity's
> Rainbow and, possibly, Mason & Dixon, is the process of dehumanization
> that
> begins with the grid system.
> 
> 
> --Jules Siegel Apdo 1764 Cancun QR 77501
> http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm