atdtda: 31 - pg 881--math

Fri May 2 08:58:43 CDT 2008

Jem Bluestein:

http://www.sunmt.org/martianjem.html

. . . .told me on Beltane that what he found 

in "Against the Day" is String Theory.

If we wanna focus on Maths, that's where I'd look.

But I did a Maypole dance yesterday, so's I mighten 

be baised, if you catch muh drift. . . 
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "grladams at teleport.com" <grladams at teleport.com>
> 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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