From the Annals of Science- a lost citation?

[jporter]

This may be rather old hat for some p-listers, but it was new to me. In
1978, six years before Pynchon's luddite/C.P.Snow article appeared in the
NYTBR, Daniel Simberloff- while Professor of Ecology at Florida State
University, published in the journal: _Perspectives in Biology and Medicine_
an article entitled:

    Entropy, Information, and Life: Biophysics in the Novels of Thomas
  Pynchon

The article begins:

    "In 1959 C.P. Snow wrote, 'A good many times I have been present at
gatherings of people who... are thought highly educated and who have... been
expressing their incredulity at the illliteracy of scientists. Once or twice
I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could
describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was
also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scienctific
equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?'  Even if Snow's
efforts left the gulf separating scientist from humanist intact, Thomas
Pynchon's novels- V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow- have
informed a later generation of some elementary thermodynamics. This paper
shows that Pynchon's work develops a complex biophysical metaphor which
originates in the relationship between thermodynamics and information and
proceeds to incorporate the thermodynamics of life."

And, the article goes on to do just that. It's fascinating not only in that
respect, however, but also because of the reference to Snow's "Two Cultures
and the Scientific Revolution" article six years prior to the publication of
"Is It O.K. to be a Luddite," while at the same time specifically linking it
to the works of Thomas Pynchon.

It now seems to me that "Is It O.K..." may have been written with knowledge
of Simberloff's article, or even as an acknowledgement of that article,
although I can't prove that assertion.

The journal _Perspectives in Biology and Medicine_ is fairly obscure, and
only selectively indexed on Medline (Index Medicus). Some medical school
libraries will have it in their stacks. The relevant issue is: Summer 1978.
If someone wants a copy and can't get it, email me off list and I will
forward a copy to you. Again, this may be old news to some here.

Daniel Simberloff is a first rate scientist. He is currently at the
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he is a member of the Department
of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as the Nancy Gore Hunger Professor of
Environmental Studies. On November 1, 1999, Simberloff was nominated to sit
on the National Science Board by President Clinton.

jody