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)

>> however, Pynchon's parody of a behaviourist scientist of the
>> 1940s in the shape of Pointsman is an accurate one.
> 
> Even as a parody, the quoted passage can't be described as "accurate."
> It's an impossible portrayal of even a zany pavlovian or behaviorist.
> The ones and zeros and the calling up of Pavlov's on and off switches on
> the cortex couldn't in sensible way put P at odds with Roger and his
> probability. Yet there differences were supposed to be what the passage
> is about. Even Pointsman couldn't possibly think that just because an
> all or nothing principle is a work at a lower level that such uniformity
> would prevail at the higher (behavioral) level.

I'll take neuroscientific understanding in the 1940s for 50 thanks Regis.
Seriously, the point of the passage is that Pointsman, a behaviourist,
following Pavlov, "imagine[s]" the brain and all its functioning as a
"mosaic", or constantly-changing pattern, of tiny on-off light switches.
It's this mechanistic analogy which underpins his work and his view of human
psychology, and it's based on the principle that if you were able to
eliminate completely all extraneous variables then behaviour (the
stimulus-response relationship) could be predicted (and manipulated) with
100% certainty. That's why Skinner put his pigeons (and his infant daughter)
in sensory deprivation boxes -- it's why Pointsman administers Slothrop with
Sodium Amytal at St Veronica's.

Mexico is a statistician, and his probability analyses raise the possibility
that Pavlov was wrong (he was), that brain functioning at the neuron level
*in terms of transmission* -- of data or energy or whatever -- might not be
"like" an on-off light switch after all, but more like a dimmer switch, or
even a timer switch; i.e. that there are gradations, or levels of
functioning (speed, intensity, duration, delay), between the hard and fast
limits of zero (off) and one (on). The excluded middle. The troubling thing
in all this for Pointsman is that once the mechanistic analogy starts to
fall apart -- inferring back, from Mexico's statistical collations of
aberrant behaviour to brain functioning ("mind") -- so does everything he
has worked for and had faith in.

You keep deferring to the analogy of the human mind as a computer. But it's
actually not an apt analogy at all. That's the point. However, it *is*
precisely where behaviourism ultimately led (cf. Skinner: "The real question
is not whether machines think but whether men do."), it's the model of
intelligence upon which cybernetics and computing is based, and it's
precisely the idea which Pynchon has contested throughout his work. It's
also precisely the idea which Chomsky was able to debunk in his review of
Skinner's _Verbal Behavior_ back in 1959, which is where that later
interview comment of his comes in (Chomsky: "As soon as questions of will or
decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.").
Not that Chomsky's "innatism" came any closer to the mark in terms of
language acquisition, but what he did show was that behaviourism was
off-beam. He demonstrated its fallibility, in other words.

Hope this helps.

best

> That he could do without
> statistics. That would be like saying that just because a computer bit
> can only register on and off the only words storable in a computer can
> be on and off.  Why is any of this so hard to acknowledge? It's nothing
> any of us did. It's something Pynchon did. His cleverness is not
> invincible.