references to binary opposition in Pynchon's novels

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2004-11-07 at 11:34, Dave Monroe wrote:
> If yr talking synapses here (sorry, only sporadically
> able these days to get to some 1400+ unread mesages
> and rising), even that isn't necessarily true. 
> SciAm's searchfunction is down at the moment, but I
> reacll something in recent years challenging this ...
> 

I was talking about the firing of the individual cell. You're getting
into the transmission of electric impulses between two nerve cells or
between a nerve cell and a muscle cell. 

>From the online Britannica.
                                    
                                    
                                    
                                    
                                    
Transmission at the synapse
Once an action potential has been generated at the axon hillock, it is
conducted along the length of the axon until it reaches the terminals,
the fingerlike extensions of the neuron that are next to other neurons
and muscle cells (see the section The nerve cell: The neuron). At this
point there exist two methods for transmitting the action potential from
one cell to the other. In electrical transmission, the ionic current
flows directly through channels that couple the cells. In chemical
transmission, a chemical substance called the neurotransmitter passes
from one cell to the other, stimulating the second cell to generate its
own action potential.



> --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> > And this is notwithstanding the fact that cellular
> > behavior is all or nothing--one or zero expressed 
> > numerically.
> 
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