Deflating Hyperspace

Paul Mackin paul.mackin at verizon.net
Mon Apr 2 08:38:58 CDT 2007


On Apr 2, 2007, at 8:35 AM, Ray Easton wrote:
>   Y. seems to hope that she will achieve a transcendence of some  
> sort if she can penetrate into the mysteries of the zeta function.   
> That belief is utter nonsense  -- which is, I think, largely the  
> point.

>  [elision]
>
> I agree with Monte that the evidence is that P. understands the  
> math.  But the characters do not always understand it as well as he.

My comment on this  could conceivably be a S P O I L E R for some,   
but (skip down if applicable)









P covers himself by having young Miss Halfcourt come to an eventual  
realization that her infatuation with math was misguided.

"Mathematics once seemed the way--the internal life  of numbers came  
as a revelation to me, perhaps as it might have  to a Pythagorean  
apprentice long ago in Crotona--a reflection of some less-accessible  
reality through close study of which one might perhaps learn to pass  
beyond the difficult given world." (p. 749)

Does not Pynchon take care at  some point in the story to call our  
attention to the (at least initial) mental immaturity of some of his  
main characters, even though they might be genius level  
mathematicians, one of which Y seems to be?  Same probably goes for  
Kit, as relates to the example below, though I don't recall at the  
moment the place in the book Pynchon pounces.




> The most striking example occurs near the end, when Kit reflects on  
> the Banach-Tarski paradox, and contemplates its possible physical  
> significance.  No one who truly understands the math of the B-T  
> paradox could even for a moment imagine that it has the slightest  
> physical significance.  Again, as Monte has pointed out, it is the  
> uses to which the math is put in the characters dreams/lives that  
> is important, not the actual content of the math itself.
>
> Ray
>




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