references to binary opposition in Pynchon's novels

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 2004-11-06 at 06:38, jbor wrote: (quoting GR)

> [...] But in the domain of zero to one, not-something to something,
> Pointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like Mexico,
> survive anyplace in between . Like his master I. P. Pavlov before him, he
> imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny on/off elements. Some
> are always in bright excitation, others darkly inhibited. The contours,
> bright and dark, keep changing. But each point is allowed only the two
> states: waking or sleep. One or zero. "Summation," "transition,"
> "irradiation," "concentration ," "reciprocal induction" -- all Pavlovian
> brain-mechanics - assumes the presence of these bi-stable points. But to
> Mexico belongs the domain *between* zero and one -- the middle Pointsman has
> excluded from his persuasion -- the probabilities. [...] (_GR_, p. 55)

Not as a criticism of Robert, but I've always been a little taken back
by this passage. 

Elsewhere Pynchon is able to contrast Pointsman and Roger quite
effectively but in this particular passage it seems to me that rather
obvious objections can be raised.  

Pynchon surely doesn't want us to think Pointsman is a dope. Naturally
Pointsman would like his experiments to reach intelligible results.
Hopefully something should either happen or not happen. 

However Pointsman is being hopelessly clueless about animal physiology
when he brings the action of individual cells into the conversation.
True, the cortex of the brain IS a mosaic of on/off elements. The
zero/one talk DOES make sense at the cellular (neuronal) level of
organization of the animal. It's called the all or nothing principle. 
It applies also to muscle cells.

However, at the behavioral or psychological or social levels of
organization, which are the levels at which all parties--Pavlov,
Pointsman, and Mexico--are working, there is no "all or nothing"
principle. Some subjects may respond in one way, some may exhibit
seemingly opposite behavior, some may fall between the "extremes," and
some animals may not respond at all. The one/zero responses of the
individual cells are of course still going on in the animal subjects,
but for purposes of writing up the experiment and drawing conclusions
the zero/one business is meaningless. So, though Pointsman may not be
statistically and probabilistically as sophisticated as Roger, he
couldn't conceivably be working in terms of either/or anything. No more
than Roger could be. Pynchon is making his pavlovian talk like he never
took a course in either scientific method or in animal physiology.

Of course Pynchon often does do fairly outlandish things to science, and
to good effect, but here I think the level-of-organization muddle is
kind of pointless. Even for a pointsman.

Just my take of course.