Wernher von Braun Quote

[Otto]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Maas" <tyronemullet at hotmail.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 3:49 AM
Subject: Wernher von Braun Quote


> Any thoughts on why, of all the billions of possible quotes,
> this one should open GR? Steve Maas
>

"Nature does not know extinction;
all it knows is transformation.
Everything science has taught me
and continues to teach me,
strengthens my belief in the continuity
of our spiritual existence after death."
Wernher von Braun
(Gravity's Rainbow, p. 7)

My old professor started the "reading" with this question too and left most
of us "students" speechless for a while. I remember my initial reaction; I
called it an "audacity" given the fact that his "work" had killed so many
people, not only in firing the rocket but with its production too (Camp
Dora). Then this guy tells us that nature "does not know extinction" and
about his "belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after
death" -- very comforting for the victims & their friends & relatives, don't
you think?

But what the quote really is about and why Pynchon has used it (in my
opinion) has to do with "science versus belief" -- von Braun is giving a
scientific reason for his belief, but that what makes a belief a belief is
that you don't need a scientific evidence for it. If you have a scientific
evidence for your belief it is no belief anymore but has become science. I
always quote Douglas Adams and his Bable fish example at this point:

"(...) some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of
the nonexistence of God.
'The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,"
says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
'"But," says Man, "the Bable fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not
have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own
arguments, you don't. QED."
'"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a
puff of logic.
'"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that
black is white and gest himself killed on the next zebra crossing." (HGG, p.
42, in my edition p. 52)

But it goes the other way round too: if you base your science upon a belief
it is no science anymore but superstition.

What I've found always found useful in reading Pynchon's quotes and
references is to read around a little bit the quote to get the original
context.

Von Braun opens his little speech "Why I Believe in Immortality" with a
Benjamin Franklin quote:

"I believe ... that the soul of Man is immortal and will be treated with
justice in another life respecting its conduct in this."

That's the idea: Puritanism. In becoming a faithful Puritan von Braun seems
to believe that he has been purified from his sins. If there's any justice
in heaven* nothing could be more wrong according to his own standards.
I'll meet you at Malebolge, Werrnherr.

Then he has it about ethics:

"TODAY, more than ever before, our survival--yours and mine and our
children's- depends on our adherence to ethical principles. Ethics alone
will decide whether atomic energy will be an earthly blessing or the source
of mankind's utter destruction."

His personal ethics did not keep him from first building Hitler's V2 at
Peenemünde and then developing ICBM's at Huntsville, from a simple
destructive and deadly missile to a nuclear rocket able to annihilate
mankind utterly. Strange guy indeed and I agree to Tim that Pynchon's use of
the quote is indeed highly ironical. Von Braun should have limited himself
to the field he's been an expert in. It is not ethics and the ethical
responsibility and limitations science has. In this he failed.

Furthermore the Epigraph should be read in the light of what Pynchon later
has said in which he links what is personified in Wernher von Braun:

"By 1945, the factory system - which, more than any piece of machinery, was
the real and major result of the Industrial Revolution - had been extended
to include the Manhattan Project, the German long-range rocket program and
the death camps, such as Auschwitz. It has taken no major gift of prophecy
to see how these three curves of development might plausibly converge, and
before too long. Since Hiroshima, we have watched nuclear weapons multiply
out of control, and delivery systems acquire, for global purposes, unlimited
range and accuracy."
Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite? NYT, October 28, 1984
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-luddite.html

Otto

Literature

Steven Weisenburger: "Haunted History and Gravity's Rainbow," (Pynchon
Notes, spring-fall 1998, p. 12-28)

Douglas Fowler: A Reader's Guide to Gravity's Rainbow, Ann Arbor, Michigan,
1980

Walter Dornberger: Peenemünde - Die Geschichte der V-Waffen, Ullstein,
München, 2000.

Rainer Eisfeld: Mondsüchtig - Wernher von Braun und die Geburt der Raumfahrt
aus dem Geist der Barbarei, Rowohlt, Hamburg 1996.

Why I Believe in Immortality - at tim Ware's Pynchon Pages:
http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/von-braun.html
(Nichols, William, ed., "The Third Book of Words to Live By,"
Simon and Schuster, 1962)

*"Gerechtigkeit? -- Gerechtigkeit gibt's im Jenseits, hier auf Erden gibt's
das Recht."
(William Gaddis: "A Frolic of His Own," opening sentence)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Strzechowski" <Dedalus204 at comcast.net>
To: "Pynchon-L" <pynchon-l at waste.org>; "Steve Maas"
<tyronemullet at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 4:48 AM
Subject: Re: Wernher von Braun Quote


> History, irony, and theme.
>
> The use of this quotation by Wernher von Braun has a historical
> significance
> first and foremost, I would imagine, via the subject matter of the novel
> because his major contribution to rocket science was the "discovery" of
> pitch and roll (i.e., making a rocket turn, after launch, and to utilize
> the
> earth's gravitational pull to help its positioning).  Of course, the fact
> that he was a former Nazi whose expertise was later used by NASA (remember
> that this quotation was given just prior to the 1969 moon launch) adds to
> the irony of the quotation.
>
> The notion that there is no "extinction" but only "transformation" within
> nature will be developed throughout the novel in a variety of ways, since
> many of the characters and incidents have echos later in the narrative
> (for
> example, the "theater" of war and the Apollo theater, the Adenoid, etc.).
> Furthermore, I think the term "extinction" is used in classical
> conditioning
> to describe a stimulus that no longer receives its conditioned response,
> and
> this concept will become important throughout the novel as well.
>
> http://www.creationsafaris.com/wgcs_4vonbraun.htm
>
> http://sun.science.wayne.edu/~wpoff/cor/mem/condxtin.html
>
>
>
>
> > Any thoughts on why, of all the billions of possible quotes,
> > this one should open GR?
> > Steve Maas
>
>