Back to the roots! (or: new novel, good old Adams)

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Thanks Kai, excellent pick-up. There's more than a hint of the old C.P. 
Snow "Two Cultures" notion in Adams's reflections on the Exposition 
too:

"One lingered long among the dynamos, for they were new, and they gave 
to history a new phase. Men of science could never understand the 
ignorance and naïveté of the historian, who, when he came suddenly on a 
new power, asked naturally what it was; did it pull or did it push? Was 
it a screw or thrust? Did it flow or vibrate? Was it a wire or a 
mathematical line? And a score of such questions to which he expected 
answers and was astonished to get none."

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

best

On 18/07/2006:

> The twentysecond (!) chapter of "The Education of Henry Adams"
> is
> titled:
>
> "Chicago (1893)".
>
> In there it says: "Chicago asked in 1893 for the first time the
> question whether the American people knew where they were
> driving. Adams answered, for one, that he did not know, but
> would try to find out" ....
>
> k°
>
> T?h?o?m?a?s P?y?n?c?h?o?n wrote:
>> ".. an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears"
>