ATDTDA (1): Professor Gibbs (p. 29: 31)

[rich]

I always liked the Gibbs character in JR

rich

On 1/30/07, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>  Keep Gibbs in mind when we get to Merle's discovery of photography.
> Before his "all-night illumination" [is that you, Thelonious?], his view is
>
> "As a mechanic he respected any straightforward chain of
> cause and effect you could see or handle, but chemical reactions like this
>
> went on down in some region too far out of anyone's control, they were
> something you had to stand around and just let happen, which was about as
> interesting as waiting for corn to grow." (p. 64)
>
> This is a good description of a lot of chemistry before Gibbs whose ideas
> did for the discipline very much what the next two pages do for Merle. Gibbs
> transformed large areas that had been cookbookery and rules of thumb  --
> what Rutherford would denigrate in physics as "stamp collecting" -- into a
> genuine mechanics. Mixing stuff together, manipulating heat and pressure,
> and having it turn into other kinds of stuff could now be analyzed to first
> principles and engineered with as much clarity and elegance and
> predictability as any combination of wheels and belts and gears.
>
> That Gibbs remains off-stage was one of the very few let-downs of AtD for
> me. I understand how the overarching metaphor of light pulled Pynchon toward
> electricity and Tesla and all that, and I love all that too. But he showed
> what he could do with 1920s-1930s chemistry in GR -- and trust me, there's
> even more potential for rich chocolatey goodness along those lines in Gibbs'
> heyday.
>
>
>
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