Zoyd & William James

[Terrance]

We live, as it, were, upon the front edge of an advancing wave-crest,
and our sense of a determinate direction in falling forward is all we
cover of the future of our path. It is as if a differential quotient
should be conscious and treat itself as an adequate substitute for a
traced-out curve. Our experience, inter alia, is of variations of rate
and of direction, and lives in these transitions more than in the
journey's end. The experiences of tendency are sufficient to act
upon–what more could we have DONE at those moments even if the later
verification comes complete?

William James

The Essays in Radical Empiricism
Chapter 2: A World of Pure Experience

The allusion to James is ironic.  Rorty, a sophistic-"pragmatist" 
misreads Pynchon.