Cof L49 More stuff before the sorting

[Mark Kohut]

Lotsa stuff has been written on M's Demon and entropy in P's fiction,  of course. See Pynchon wiki. The Companion to L49;  lotsa essays. 

Soon we will all weigh in, I hope, layering that lasagna. I have more 'readings' to try out but before that: 

 Not so much has used THIS, from a known Pynchon fave: Henry Adams. "Historian Henry Brooks Adams in his manuscript "The Rule of Phase Applied to History" attempted to use Maxwell's demon as a historical metaphor, though he misunderstood and misapplied the original principle.[5] Adams interpreted history as a process moving towards "equilibrium", but he saw militaristic nations (he felt Germany pre-eminent in this class) as tending to reverse this process, a Maxwell's Demon of history. Adams made many attempts to respond to the criticism of his formulation from his scientific colleagues, but the work remained incomplete at Adams' death in 1918. It was only published posthumously.[6]

 It was published and reissued by a major publishing house as late as the late 60s. IT is almost unreadably dated, ALTHOUGH two essays in this book are very readable--- just a kind of historical artifact now.   It is one of the essays in "The Degradation of the Democratic Ideal", http://www.amazon.com/reader/1417915986?%5Fencoding=UTF8&query=267#reader Adams' pessimism applied to the working out of America's 'glorious experiment'...This essay, "The Rule of Phase Applied to History" is fascinating for Pynchon lovers. It starts by alluding to Willard Gibbs [who is in AtD, yes?] contains lots on Pynchon tropes like electricity and magnetism, the ETHER, in which they exist!! Ah, AtD invoked here--- anyone, anyone? It propounds the notion that electricity could be "frozen" and argues that mind is a solvent that can--in higher mathematics--which becomes metphysics(!)--dissolve the above.  More AtD?