C of L49, that ending...is the "As If" a notional cousin of the excluded middle?

[markekohut at yahoo.com]

Given that TRP ended "C of L49" very purposefully; Given the working literary 'principle' that THAT--Oedipa waiting: paranoid, expectant,uncertain--- not what might theoretically be cried, is the major point of the ending:

I have wondered if OBA came across this minor classic of philosophy in his reading. It is from a period he loves--late 1800s to 1911plus.
In America, one often learned of it in my time by reading Nietzsche (and about Nietzsche). (At least one scholar wrote about TRPs indebtedness to
Nietzsche's first book, "The Birth of Tragedy" [this one essays the Apollonian/Dionysian polarity a-and more]---in the Pynchon Notes? or somewhere?)

Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of the "As If"
"This is that "an idea whose theoretical untruth or incorrectness, and therewith its falsity, is admitted is not for that reason practically valueless and useless; for such an idea, in spite of its theoretical nullity, may have great practical importance."

Given that "a religious" meaning is often attributed to a book which also seems to portray a voidfull of "non-religious" meaning.........


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Vaihinger
In Philosophie des Als Ob, he argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result we construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: we behave "as if" the world matches our models. In particular, he used examples from the physical sciences, such as protons, electrons, and electromagnetic waves. None of these phenomena have been observed directly, but science pretends that they exist, and uses observations made on these assumptions to create new and better constructs. Vaihinger admitted that he had several precursors, especially Jeremy Bentham's Theory of Fictions. In the preface to the English edition of his work, Vaihinger expressed his Principle of Fictionalism. This is that "an idea whose theoretical untruth or incorrectness, and therewith its falsity, is admitted is not for that reason practically valueless and useless; for such an idea, in spite of its theoretical nullity,
 may have great practical importance."

The wikipedia article on Vaihinger says that James Hillman, leading contemporary wake-of-Jung psychologist is indebted to him. And didn't someone on the plist point to TRP praising something of Hillman's?