ATDTDA (5.2) - Constance Penhallow

[Monte Davis]

robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

>In between we are given 
>demonstrations of the alchemy of silver, as explosives (base 
>matter into light) as photography (from light back into base 
>matter) and eventually as moving pictures---Movies beginning 
>the technological cycles that evolves (devolves?) into TV. The 
>book ends with the first glimmers of TV.
>
Light into matter <-> matter into light ramifies into science as well as 
technology:

To spectroscopy and quantum theory (the latter coming into being during 
the last 3/4 of the book's time span, but -- like relativity --kept 
mostly in the wings)

And to information theory, which sets the fundamental "rates of 
exchange"  for transmission (as light or other radiant energy) and for 
storage (as modified matter, say silver halide crystals.) We know that's 
a Pynchon interest...

The "glimmer of  TV" we'll see is, specifically, the "integroscope." 
Aside from its... interesting feature of generating whole timelines 
(some of them even real) from a snapshot, its name speaks of 
"integration" -- the opposite of that scary old differentiation, of 
analysis, and another Pynchon interest since he broke into the Saturday 
Evening Post.

(This is another of those very rich, very slippery Pynchonian science 
metaphors. To a mathematician, differentiation and integration are two 
sides of the same coin, each implied by/in the other -- but Pynchon 
loads the distinction with a whole culture's worth of feelings about 
"things fall apart" vs. "wholeness.")