The Uncertain Virgin (was- Evan & Hugh)

[jporter]

> From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
> Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 11:13:41 -0800 (PST)

> On authorship, the author as a legal construct, as
> perhaps a prosopopoetic mask for the copyright of the
> corporate publisher, see ...

                      [snip]
> 
> .... but note also the palindrome of Stencil ("The
> plaindrom of Bolton is Notlob ..."), "licnets,"
> "license," as in "poetic."  Hm ...

Actually I had Herbert Spencer in mind.
 
> Was it Sir Karl Popper who pointed out that, without
> difference, under, say, a perfectly (...) totalitarian
> regime, there is, strictly speaking, no politics?
> 
> Popper, Karl.  The Open Society and Its Enemies,
> Vol. 1: The Spell of Plato.  Rev ed.  Princeton,
> NJ: Prnceton UP, 1950.

Popper and falsifiability- the link with Spencerian positivism- a theory
cannot be falsified without faith in the comforting sea of randomness from
which it might be discerned (plucked?) by a measuring eye.
 
> This is not unrelated to the necessity of
> misunderstanding to understanding, miscommunication to
> communication, mistaking to taking, et al., I think.
> Here see the various works of Jacques Derrida ...
> 
>> Indeed. I would find it difficult to function in a
>> context where uncertainty
>> were not tolerated. Speaking of which, isn't it time
>> we started to
>> demonstrate a little Sympathy for the Inanimate
>> around these parts? Who's to
>> say what challenges our own children might have to
>> cope with, when we're
>> long gone.
>> 
>> jody
>> 
> 
> And I think that this "sympathy" for the presumably
> diabolic "inanimate" is somhow related to that
> "convergence" of "the curves of research and
> development in artificial intelligence, molecular
> biology and robotics" Pynchon claims "will be amazing
> and unpredictable," which will catch "flat-footed"
> "even the biggest of brass, let us devoutly hope,"
> "certainly something for all good Luddites to look
> forward to if, God willing, we should live so long"
> (and note the "God" and "we" there).  See, again ...
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

As will become clearer later when our sensiblities are subjected to what
seems like the morally reprehensible activities described by Kurt, filtered
through Stencil, a choice might be offered between evil and inanimacy. The
two are not to be confused. Only the animate are capable of evil. Inanimacy
is a poor mirror, after all. When it comes to suffering, or fear, or pain-
only the living can reflect a grimmace, choose to be controlled, acknowledge
kinship, beg for mercy, etc, while the inanimate is a tar-baby that can't
punch back, or even whimper. But there is another dimensional axis besides
animate v. inanimate, and that is free-will versus determinism or
predestination. What is the meaning of "animacy" if history is
predetermined?

Stencil is trapped, according to Eigenvalue, in the folds of history, unable
to view the panorama. His is a "stochastic" point of view. He must deal day
to day with the nearby, the chaotic swirl of seemingly random clues that
"the case that is the world" presents him with, much like Oedipa/Clementine,
as she slipped into the river of trivia flowing past her ken, renamed it
Trystero, and bobbed toward the random sea. "The Situation" is more integral
than that, however, Stencil is part of the pattern he is unable to grasp.
This opening with Eigenvalue suggests the failure of reductionism and
determinism to "make the explanatary jump" from one level of history to the
next (cf. Maijstral). Effects perfectly described and predictable on one
scale are completely incapable of predicting conditions on another scale.
(cf. Slothrop being *literally* forced down the ladders of the Anubis, by an
unknown, unseen presence) The behavior of water molecules is responsible for
the formation of ice, but ice qua ice is completely unpredictable from the
properties of individual water molecules, as, for that matter, is the liquid
part of the curve. Still, the changing phases must have existed, at least
potentially, before they ever came into being, and so with animacy and
inanimacy. Who's to say there will be no new surprises?

jody