Math(s) lessons.....Uh...post from the past I "lost" in Drafts foler

[Mark Kohut]

Okay,
To Discuss (especially by real mathematicians on the p-list)....
 
[I am just trying to "get" some
of TRP's themes, japes, metaphors........]
 
/The sources where I got my facile math education yesterday say:
 
The Crisis in Mathematics here in AtD was largely caused by
Cantor--alluded to on p. 625---introducing the notion of infinity
into math.......
 
I want to enfold this into these observations 
1) that Pynchon scored heavily against
the promise of future timelessness a few chapters back......
2) that the Q-bomb 'was compressed time............
3) that Byron the Bulb's
"immortality" is one reason he isn't close to human.....
4) and now the notion of
"infinity" is buried in this very anti-math section............
 
And, just relearned (from p. 111, I think) TRP saying that something
cooking "had an element of time in tis recipe"...
 
I sugggest that TRP is very slyly, like Pynchon, letting us see and feel more of his
vision of being human........That is, we live in time and we die. Playing with any kind
of immortality....alienates us from living..... 
 
FYI:
 
On Russell's Paradox and the famous letter alluded to on page 633...
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/


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