Luddite Re: The alien hypothesis?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

It occurs to me that Pynchon's 'Luddite' essay is worth another look in 
the context of the "Science wars" of recent times. In those first four 
or five paragraphs Pynchon talks about C.P. Snow's 'Two Cultures' 
diatribe and makes veiled references to the furore which erupted after 
that lecture was published, thinking especially of F.R. Leavis's public 
condemnation of Snow I'd imagine:

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html

Though he does tend to deconstruct Snow's "two cultures" paradigm (both 
w/r/t today's information-rich and technologically-driven society but 
also I guess seeing himself as something of an exception to or 
refutation of Snow's rule--a humanities man who had substantial 
scientific wherewithal and expertise back then in the 1950s), and 
though there is a lightness and even flippancy to the tone of much of 
the essay, I'd argue that Pynchon's defence of Luddism places him 
firmly on the Leavis side of that particular quarrel.

best