Time, epiphany and Protestantism

[jporter]

> From: Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu>


> 
> The development of this duality occured at a quite specific moment
> within the academy.  In the mid-nineteenth century, European thought
> underwent a revolution with respect to time comparable to the revolution
> with respect to space that resulted from the Age of Exploration (or
> better, teh Age of Reconnaissance) ... (67)
> 
> The initial ... moment in the temporal revolution was the series of
> geological and paleontological discoveries and arguments that culminated
> in the notion of the antiquity of humankind as a natural species ....
> The second moment ... was the discovery of the antiquity of humankind as
> a recognizable and familiar cultural species.... Israel and Greece were
> not, as had been hitherto thought, the foundations of Western
> civilization.  They were later, secondary, perhaps even derivative
> cultures.  (68)

> 
> At the forefront of this second moment ... was a group of German
> scholars who came to be known as the Pan-Babylonian school.  Among their
> many claims ... was one that, curioulsy, has survived criticism: their
> insitence that the essential Weltanschauung (a term largely popularized
> by the school) of the ancient Near East ... was based on an uncommon
> faith in the cyclical order of the heavenly bodies and an imperative to
> harmonize earthly affairs with this order.... the "Babylonian" pattern.
> Brought down to earth and expressed in teh language of the alternation
> of seasons ... it was called teh "Canaanite" pattern.  If the cycle was
> stretched into an ellipse and then a line, and focued on human rather
> than "cosmic" or "natural" activities, it was termed the "Israelite"
> pattern.  The first two patterns, the school maintained, were
> relentlessly cyclical ....  The Israelite pattern, by contrast, was
> linear ... (68-9)


A fusion of the two notions of natural species and cultural species, and,
*meaningful* chronicity is deftly provided by Pynchon in GR. It is the
double helix, mentioned earlier, as hidden in the double integral shape, a
trope for the "guidance systems" of species and rockets (our stand-in for
culture in this example). What's missing, however, is consciousness, as an
arbiter of the meaningful. But there is another double helix referent in GR
that allows for the strange emergence of consciousness into this trope.

Since the time frame of the novel is before its discovery by W&C, et. al.,
the structure of DNA is not overtly alluded to, but recall Pirate making his
"descent" down the spiral ladder, bearing bananas, just after having been
"christened," in his mind, anyway, by the V2- the whole weight of which is
balanced just so...

A fairly chilling allusion, ala Kubrick's 2001, of the evolutionary
interplay, or mutual co-dependence, of genes and culture, as they "jigged"
to create consciousness, myth and history, and other meaningful enterprises,
me thinks.

jody

"...'Temporarily out of touch with my Brain,' he mumbles, 'Sorry
ev'rybody...' "   M&D, H.H.&Co., p76.