atdtda: 31 - pg 881--math

Thu May 1 19:17:46 CDT 2008

Mark Kohut's plea to focus on this love triangle, (is it a right triangle?) 
it still comes back to math, wasn't it a right triangle with a prime number
side the thing that was not playing nice with the pythagorean theorem? As a
math neophyte, I 
have had the liberty of reading into math books and only half-ass 
understanding them! Every math geek on here can be mad it's okay, I'm 
taking huge liberties. The continual narrowing of opportunities into the
last little channel of Venice, seems to be a force against which the
fantasy of math in ATD works, a source of mysticism so to speak.

Here's an example or two --totally out of context by 
just posting snippets I realize--which I came across to ponder--comments in
[brackets] are mine. Oh but there is ambivalence on the list about whether
the maths are just there to distract us, and whether it's Pynchon's
intention for us to uncover a "shape" or an arc, and just which character
is any given prime at any time on this plotted shape? Wow I don't know who
could figure that out.
http://tiny.cc/fETis 
http://tiny.cc/uuc0c 

 The Millenium Problems/Keith Devlin: 
Chapter: The Riemann Hypothesis 
p. 41 [Regarding the representation of continuous motion and motion into
the future] When we watch a movie... each picture is on the screen for only
a twenty fourth of a second or so, and the difference between two
successive pictures is very small. So small in fact, ..that we perceive
continuous motion... Calculus works the same way, only mathematically. In
calculus we take some continuous motion and regard it as a sequence of
static situations [but as we noted in ATD there are chasms, doublings,
inverts,]... which we can analyze mathematically using standard arithmetic
and geometry... To make the mathematics work, however, we have to imagine
that the sequence of static situations adnaces much faster than the twenty
four frames per second.. [but much faster]... We have to imagine that each
static situation lasts an infintesimally short time and that the frames
advance at infinite speed. No movie projector could be build capable of an
infinite projection speed, of course. But mathematically, this could be
done. In fact this is what Leibnitz and Newton did ... [[so then, which
maths can let us watch that movie on into the future? Like what directions
will turn of century photography-as a big American speculation
storylines-go] or [turning back the hands of time to undo the big Vormance
dig or pull back the rails of the hurtling railroad thruput machine]] 

[what i get from the next portion, which starts "to calculate the _zeta_
times s for a given s, you have to compute the value of an infinite sum.."
is that.. in order for the sum to become infintesimally smaller and
approach the zero, the denominator has to grow increasingly larger in the
addition of the fractions. The word Denominator, like common denominator,
does it have literary as well as mathematical value?] 

p.44 Despite its rather complicated looking definition as an infinite sum,
the 
zeta function has some nice mathematical properties. In particular, its 
graph is smooth (no gaps or sudden jumps) [chasms--the word pynchon uses by 
the way] so it can be studied using the methods of calculus. 
As a function from real numbers to real numbers, the zeta function is a 
one-dimensional object, and thus, although it is linked to the primes by 
Euler's infinite product, it does not have sufficient geometric structure 
to help you uncover the pattern of the primes. [the pattern of human nature 
into a future unknown?] To do that, you need to move up to two dimensions 
[or in the case of ATD from three to.. more than three]. This is the key 
step that Riemann made. He replaced the real number s by a complex number 
z, which made the values _zeta_ times z complex numbers as well. ... [and 
regarding alternative means of calculating the values] For the zeta 
function itself, the alternative method allows us to calculate _zeta_times 
z for any complex number z, with the single exception of the number z=1 
[how is this pynchonian? not sure! but I'm sure we could wring it out of 
that] 

Jill

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Michael Bailey michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com
Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 10:33:43 -0500
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: atdtda: 31 - pg 881

Mark Kohut wrote:
> I've gotta figure out TRPs overarching perspective on all this.
>

which one?    (-;
If we consider the characters' movements as plot lines,
and then posit the book as a curved space, they could become arcs (or
loxodromes)

The arch that has been calling to me has to do with,
well, Tesla - visionary -- from Velebit
wrote down his discoveries enough to patent them, but
not enough to explain them (US Gov't seized his effects upon his death btw)

Vlado, also from the Mt Velebit area...knowing its caves and
underground rivers and the sounds of its belltowers
...his book of the Masked
(besides representing AtD itself - good call, Bekah!)
might also point to Tesla's work

from which Kit was seduced away and which
Yashmeen doesn't pursue for emotional reasons
(missing Vlado, possessor and exemplar of all the worldly passions that
Tesla
apparently had renounced or was born without)

-- in this arc, the big theme or teaser is how there may be a mathematical
way to express Tesla's vision and it may have to do with
Riemann/zeta/quaternions...

now then - Cyprian - at the Masked (as in Book of the)
Ball - wearing Yashmeen's hair -- attracts the love of Reef
(masked as lust?)

completes their triangle, as he already has completed the
triangle of Vlado and Yashmeen by (I guess...) accepting the
Book of the Masked

which is never mentioned again. Yet one may be fairly sure
it was among the very few accoutrements in Cyprian's monastic cell...

His acceptance of monastic rule resolves the suspended chord
sounded by the trio attending Carnesalve instead of Carnevale?

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