MDDM Ben Franklin

[Otto]

John,
this sounds very much like what I've read last night in an essay by Wolfgang
Neuhaus: "Das Raumschiff zerstört die klassische Lebensform." Gotthard
Günther und die Science Fiction Literatur, in:
Wolfgang Jeschke (ed.): _Das Science Fiction Jahr 2001_, Heyne, Munich 2001,
pp. 513-532:

"Die alte These von Arthur C. Clarke, das die fortgeschrittene Technologie
der Zukunft wie Magie erscheinen werde, wird bei Günther um den Aspekt
ergänzt, dass ein komplexes *magisches Bewusstsein* dieser Technologie
entsprechen würde." (519)

According to Neuhaus the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk sees Günther in
one line with Niklas Luhmann (greetings to Hamburg and KFL) and Jacques
Derrida.

http://www.vordenker.de/
"The contents of this web are bilingual as is the lifework of Gotthard
Günther. Contributions focused on more philosophical aspects are in German.
On the other hand work done on multivalued logic and theory of
polycontexturality, i.e. polycontextural logic (PCL) is presented in
English.
Gotthard Günther himself once stated that the very core of his work lies in
the difference between his English and German publications ... something to
think about ..."

Otto

PS to my fellow Germans: I've found the SF-Yearbook for 2,50 € instead of
19,95 € in the ramsch (Real Kauf).

----- Original Message -----
From: John Bailey <johnbonbailey at hotmail.com>
To: <Bandwraith at aol.com>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 7:28 AM
Subject: Re: MDDM Ben Franklin


> At least in regard to M&D, imo, there's little separating science from,
eg,
> art, culture, religion, ad noseyum. I think that part of P's point here is
> the linkage between all of these things, esp the enlightenment project of
> science as mystic, mysterious, replacing older spiritual models with, for
> instance, electricity as miraculous, divine, and...marketable,
spectacular.
>
>
> >From: Bandwraith at aol.com
> >To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Subject: Re: MDDM Ben Franklin
> >Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 10:06:50 EST
> >
> >
> >In a message dated 1/25/02 4:43:31 PM, lycidas2 at earthlink.net writes:
> >
> ><< After a while, even Pynchon felt compelled to pull himself down off
the
> >pile science and math of books and assert that he was and is only an
> >author of american fiction. Thomas Moore (an entire book on GR) does a
> >fairly good job of demonstrating that P has not written scientific
> >theory disguised as fiction.
> >  >>
> >
> >That's quite a strawman you (or Moore) are putting together: "P has
> >not written scientific theory disguised as fiction" Who ever said he
> >had?
> >
> >I don't think Pynchon is at war with the sciences, however- maybe the
> >top brass, but that's another story.
> >
> ><<Dismissing the idea that there is a direct relationship between science
> >and culture, Hayles argues...>>
> >
> >Science 'is' culture, isn't it? ...At least one of two cultures, and
> >probably
> >many more? Are the gulfs between them so wide? Certainly the under-
> >lying assumptions are amenable to a philosophical consideration, and the
> >hubris of anyone- scientist or critic- who "knows" the truth, or any
group
> >using whatever techniques  to impose "their" vision on the others needs
> >to be understood on their own terms. That would seem especially true
> >w/r/t science, which has led to such effective means of control.
> >