references to binary opposition in Pynchon's novels

[jbor]

>> [...] 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)
> 
> 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. 

The behaviourist believes that all human reactions conform to the principle
of biological determinism. In the behaviourist paradigm there is no
distinction made between physiological and psychological reactions.

Mexico is still a scientist. But Pointsman realises that framing the
stimulus-response relationship in terms of probabilities, as Rog does,
rather than as certainties, poses a direct threat to the behaviourist
paradigm. There's no muddle about it.

best

> 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.