ATDDTA (3) Aether Dreams, 57-58

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2007-02-18 at 16:06 +0200, Ya Sam wrote:
> Great posts, Tore and Monte!
> 
> Of course the conspicuous absences are the hallmark of Pynchon's poetics. He 
> makes very much present what few of his readers knew about (I knew zilch 
> about the Herrero genocide and Remedious Varo before I read V and Lot 49) at 
> the same time thwarting our expectations by not focusing on the things we 
> feel SHOULD be there. There is just a passing reference to Hilbert and Sofia 
> Kovalevskaya, and how many of us rushed to read about these mathematicians 
> after the German culture minister's interview? Einstein, of course, is 
> another case in hand. We don't get much on what we perceive to be the 
> contemporary 'mainstream' science, whereas many pages are dedicated to 
> aether and quaternions, the marginal and the underdog from today's 
> viewpoint.


There may be two senses of NOT being "mainstream."

In the real world, quaternions were once considered an oddity, having to
do with their not displaying the commutative property. However they are
real mathematics and quite useful.

In the case of Pynchon's "Hamiltonians," their being outside the
mainstream is of an order of magnitude several times greater. 

Fun however.

What Pynchon does with quaternions can be appreciated without a whole
lot of math under one's belt. Good high schools teach complex numbers
and a little imagination can extend that concept to a reasonably
satisfactory feeling for what quaternions are. 

At least it seemed that way  to me.

P.