MDDM Ben Franklin

[Terrance]

Bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> 
> 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?

It's not a straw man and I did not try to attribute idea to  you or
anyone else here. Did I? It's really just a wisecrack and I thought you
would consider it germane. But, one never knows anything about anything
around here.  If you have read Mr Moore's book you will recall that he
demonstrate that P's scientific knowledge, at least what is present in
his fiction, is all very basic stuff, to anyone who has studied a few
years of science that is. That being said, critics have written
wonderful interpretations of P's novels based on their own studies in
the sciences or in other disciplines, like politics, religion. I think
that religion has been de-emphasized by the dominant critical approaches
and that early on in P studies science was overemphasized. This second
go round on M&D proves my point. While the chapters are loaded with
religion, very little is said about it. 

German enthusiasts? 

> 
> I don't think Pynchon is at war with the sciences, however- maybe the
> top brass, but that's another story.

Pynchon is not at war with science. I agree.  nor with technology. Who
are the top
brass? 


> 
> <<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.


Probably many more, but I get your point.  Now to my point, which was
that TRP is an author of American fiction and not a scientist and that
in his fictions science, scientific theory, scientists, serve fiction
and not the other way round. 


Today nobody could get away with making such a distinction.
Since 1959, we have come to live among flows of data more vast than
anything the world has seen. Demystification is the order of our day,
all
the cats are jumping out of all the bags and even beginning to mingle.
We
immediately suspect ego insecurity in people who may still try to hide
behind the jargon of a specialty or pretend to some data base forever
''beyond''
the reach of a layman. Anybody with the time, literacy and access fee
these
days can get together with just about any piece of specialized knowledge
s/he may need. So, to that extent, the two-cultures quarrel can no
longer be sustained. As a visit to any local library or magazine rack
will easily confirm, there are now so many more than two cultures that
the
problem has really become how to find the time to read anything outside
one's own specialty.