The meaing of mathematics in Against the Day.....

[Joseph Tracy]

Engelhardt's quote from ATD seems pretty strong Does someone have a  
page reference?
I don't know about a crisis" being discussed", but a foundational  
crisis in science and math is clearly and intentionally reflected in  
ATD, albeit perhaps more implicit than explicit.  The scene with the  
sci-mathers on the Vormance Expedition has different metaphoric  
implications. But one strong interpretation has to be  to see this  
expedition as a picture of digging into the secrets of  light and  
energy, and  of subatomic energy bound in the forbidding frozen  
wastes of the world-transforming realm of math and physics. We are  
looking at the science that pointed toward nuclear weapons, but also  
toward relativism in physics  with that relativism implicitly mapping  
onto ethics, politics etc.  Also  the scientific bickering in the  
Vormance  reflects  debate and the reactionary defense of turf that  
has to do with questions about the foundations of the scientific  
enterprise.  Maybe the phrase "foundational crisis" means something  
more than I am understanding, but I found Egelhardt's essay well  
argued and compatible with my own reading.

What Engelhardt overlooks  as a key component of his argument is the  
both the alignment and  the disagreement  between the  sci-mathers  
and imperial predilections. Though we are on the cusp of the end of  
monarchy and a war of trenches, machine guns, and mustard gas, we are  
also considering the science that pointed toward nuclear weapons,  
cell phones  and string theory.   We have to remember that the  
scientists here are financed by those "investors" who foresee a a  
competition for various "rays", and that this question of the  
interests of capitalists vs. the interests of scientists  mixed in  
with the interests of  those less powerful is a major theme of ATD 
( Tesla, Baku, Gottingen, the proper use of dynamite)

The point is that the intellectual turf wars go deep and unearth  
powerful forces and question the old order. To say there is no  
relation between math/tech/science issues to political battles and  
resource wars may reflect our own need for comfortable divisions. I  
certainly don't like the idea that honest scientific debate, or any  
debate, will play into wars, or eco-disasters but it seems obvious to  
me that it does. But Engelhardt is careful to point out that  "While  
contributing to the end of the world as traditionally conceived, the  
multiple mathematical worlds also point towards a new concept of  
mathematics, allowing for plurality, imaginative freedom and  
creativeness-... "

Unfortunately from my more cynical political perspective, we have to  
be very wary that that plurality and imaginative freedom don't  in  
practical translation become the  castles of an ever more feudal  
capitalism for the chosen elect defended by drones, bribery, secret  
prisons and downsizing against the rest of a preterite humanity  
living on the available light and dark given by the day.

Anyway, that's my 2 bits.


On Mar 17, 2010, at 11:02 AM, Ray Easton wrote:

>
>> http://amstud-lublin.edu.pl/pynchon/?page_id=449
>>
>
> This writer is confused.  Quite surprisingly (to me), the  
> "foundational crisis" in mathematics is not discussed in AtD.
>
> Ray
>

On Mar 17, 2010, at 12:05 PM, David Morris wrote:

> Pynchon needed mention the phrase "foundational crisis" for it to
> figure prominently in AtD.  Are you saying he's quoted the following
> incorrectly?:
>
> “The political crisis in Europe maps into the crisis in mathematics.
> […] The connections lie there […] – hidden and poisonous. Those of us
> who must creep among them do so at our peril.
>
> My take on all this is that it's all pretty trite, no deep reflections
> there.  So mathematics took off in abstract directions back then, some
> in ways contradictory to observable science.  So what!  It's a pretty
> shallow metaphor for the existential crisis of modernity, if you ask
> me.