Bertie and Trips

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

Charles F. Albert writes:
> Could he have had other motives than shared philosophy?
> I only took math for poets in college but what I do recall (probably 
> in error) is that Russell tried to create a comprehensive system 
> bereft of chaos.
> Hasn't P's point been that all such systems are illusions, or at the 
> very least, faith placed in such is misguided? If so, wouldn't the 
> most celebrated expression of the obverse be of considerable 
> interest?

I think Pynchon almost certainly read the Tractatus. And that implies
he probably read Russell's introduction to it with it's attempt to
salvage expressability from insight (that's sagen from zeigen to you,
bud) via a hierarchy of logical languages. Not too far from his grand
Tower of Babel, the Ramified Theory of Types - pretty much the nadir
of Russell's efforts at a comprehensive formalization of mathematics.


Andrew Dinn
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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