Secret Government Warehouse

[Terrance]

Dedalus wrote:
> 
> This file attempts to catalog and describe the contents of a particular
> secret government warehouse.  A fascinating list!  I wondered where all
> this stuff was kept!
> 
> http://www.starfleet.com/liem/x-files/warehouse.html
> 
> BTW:  a few Pynchon-related items are stored here, too.


No 37 Ford? And what about those Jusuit machines? 



Augistine and Pynchon: Anxiety and Influence & History and
Eschatology

It is an irony that the man who bequeathed a Neoplatonic
world view to the West also gave us a way of conceptualizing
human history that is
at odds with some of its most basic contours. In the
Greco-Roman world in general and
in Neoplatonism in particular, the importance of history is
largely in the
cyclical patterns tat forge the past, present, and future
into a continuous whole,
emphasizing what is repeated and common over what is
idiosyncratic and unique. In Augustine, we find a conception
of human history that in effect reverses this schema by
providing a linear account which presents history as the
dramatic unfolding of a
morally decisive set of non-repeatable events. 

For the present day reader, it is easy to overlook both the
plausibility of the cyclical view and the sorts of
considerations that might stand in the way of the linear
model with which we have become more familiar. Not only are
there
the obvious patterns of the seasons and the regularities
discernible in
astronomical phenomena, but, at a deeper level, there is the
indispensable role that
regularity and the recognition of common features play in
our efforts to make the world
intelligible. Moreover, the emphasis upon the
common-qua-universal is a conspicuous
feature of the Greek philosophical tradition. Thus, it is
also hardly surprising
that we find Aristotle telling us that poetry is more
philosophical than history because it is more clearly
concerned with universals, whereas history tends to be more
concerned with particulars [Aristotle, Poetics
9.1451b1-7]....