Herbert Spencer

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

Paul, "to bring Pynchon into it" (thankfully), meditates 

>on why the idea of progress (or evolution) is so appealing to the human
species.

and gives us a nice further crib sheet on one of my favorite 19th-Century
Crackpot's socio-bio-cosmo-thermodynamic theory of how change comes about
. . . . 

Very interesting that Spence had this peculiar conception of some
metaphysical sort of  _primum mobile_ underlying all change . . . It has
a kind of a whiff of warped thermodynamics about it . . . It seems to be
the obverse of entropy . . . The "absolute force," like entropy, has a
dis-organizing effect (upsetting homogeneity), but this leads to . . .
higher forms of organization . . . more complex systems (???!!!). 

Spencer considered this prime moving force to be Unknowable (he
capitalizes this word consistently, and devotes the entire first section
of the Principles to it), and therefore found in this concept something
of a reconciliation of science and religion (religion at least in the
sense of preoccupation with ultimate mysteries), a recognition that there
exists a reality beyond what is currently knowable . . . that there will
always be a perimeter beyond which there is a reality that we know exists
but can't describe . . .  "If Religion and Science are to be reconciled,"
he stated, "the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest,
most certain of all facts that the Power which the Universe manifests to
us is inscrutable."  

BTW:  Didja know our man Spence coined the term 'agnostic' as well?  

There is surely some relevance to Pynchon here, but alas I have not the
patience (or, considereing the fact that I am at work, the liberty) to
pursue it further.  Any further heroic efforts such as Paul's to relate
this stuff to the ostensible subject of the list are, as always, welcome.


Sebastian Minister-of-Pointless-Information Dangerfield,
who appreciates the charitable inclusion of the adjective "interesting"
to describe his meandering off-topic marginalia
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