pynchon-l-digest V2 #2648

[Betsy -]

What sort of annoyed me about Zukav's book was how he treated Newtonian 
physics as secondary to Einstein's revelations.  Each new discovery in 
physics is built upon the progress of the previous discoveries.  I feel that 
there has to be a love of physics that is inherent in all of the discoveries 
that are now the foundations of physics--Kepler spent 16 years searching for 
the laws which are now named after him--and "traditional scientists" were 
also looking to see how the world was, and thus paved the way for quantum 
physics.

That said, I did enjoy the book very much....

-Betsy


>From: FrodeauxB at aol.com
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #2648
>Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 09:32:42 EDT
>
>Dear betsy,
>I have heard of QED but not yet read it. I shall try although it seems the
>stack of things to read grows ever taller on the nightstand. As to the
>mystical aspects, Zukav does not so much treat them as mystical but rather
>proposes that quantum theory is a parallel expression of some of Tibetan
>Buddhism's fundamental concepts. For example, he refers to both Western
>Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism as "psychologies." He tries to analogize.
>Additionally, to him quantum theorists are not scientists in the 
>traditional
>sense of that word; i. e. , they do not do experiments in the lab, collect
>the data, and publish the results for fun and profit. Their concern/goal is
>to find the light, or, as Zukav says "that which is." Not to explain it,
>because in our logocentric state of being, we have no tools to do so. 
>Perhaps
>mathematics, and Leibnitz invented(?) calculus, may provide the necessary
>tools. Even this is problematic because mathematics too is finite.
>Nonetheless, Herr Doktor Leibnitz was neither so secular as to reject a
>Divine Being nor so spiritual as to reject his perception of reality. He
>searched for the correct combination of both. To say it another way, he
>believed that we are killer angels. We continue to search for proof of 
>this,
>proof meaning either affirmation of the idea or rejection of it. As for 
>yours
>truly, well, I doubt we will ever settle the debate in this plane of
>existence. That which is is that which is.
>
>TTFN,
>
>Frodeaux B




http://www2.bc.edu/~yoonel

The addict regards his body impersonally as an instrument to absorb the 
medium in which he lives, evaluates his tissue with the cold dead hands of a 
horse trader.  "No use trying to hit there."  Dead fish eyes flick over a 
ravaged vein.
          -Burroughs, Naked Lunch


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