V-2nd - Chapter 10, Part II: What is Man?

[Albert Rolls]

Can anyone else find a source for the memory, or a source discussing the 
McEwan/Pynchon connection?
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: "John Bailey" <sundayjb at gmail.com>; "alice wellintown" 
<alicewellintown at gmail.com>
Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2010 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chapter 10, Part II: What is Man?


> This is simple product description of a book called
> The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers,
> a book which I distinctly remember learning that Pynchon
> borrowed from Ian McEwan, which would have been much
> later than V.'s time, of course, unless he was rereading it;
> it was on the curriculum of good many universities in Pynchon's
> school time.
>
> OR, since I can not find any source for my memory and I've
> tried, this is the book description of a fake memory linking me to a book
> I wanted TRP to have read................
>
> Here a distinguished American historian challenges the belief that the
> eighteenth century was essentially modern in its temper. In crystalline 
> prose
> Carl Becker demonstrates that the period commonly described as the Age of 
> Reason
> was, in fact, very far from that; that Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, and Locke 
> were
> living in a medieval world, and that these philosophers "demolished the 
> Heavenly
> City of St. Augustine only to rebuild it with more up-to-date materials." 
> In a
> new foreword, Johnson Kent Wright looks at the book's continuing relevance
> within the context of current discussion about the Enlightenment.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> To: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thu, November 4, 2010 6:34:42 PM
> Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chapter 10, Part II: What is Man?
>
> I think it's also true that these comparisons involve things which at
> the time are both understood and still mysterious - automata were
> regarded with suspicion and wonder in 18th century, with plenty of
> tales of clockwork people coming to life or endowed with agency;
> similar stories about engines and rays linked with ghosts and the
> divine; and now, while we all use computers etc there's still a sense
> that most of us don't actually know how they do what they do. Of
> course all are knowable, and we know that, but we also suppress an
> idea of their strangeness. The 'inanimate' in V. is not just the dead
> or inert but the mute and recalcitrant thing that stymies our desires,
> perhaps deliberately so.
>
> On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:28 AM, alice wellintown
> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Monroe did a big show on this theme. That monster in the Machine book
>> became, for me, the makings of a course I used to teach and I plan to
>> teach again next year. Learned a lot from Monroe;s postings on this
>> subject over the years. Not that that means I still don't dislike
>> Monroe or nothing like that.
>>
>> from Zakiya Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic,
>> Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific revolution
>> (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000), Chapter Three, "Monstrous Machines,"
>>
>> From Klaus Benesch, Romantic Cyborgs: Authorship and
>> Technology in the American Renaissance (Amherst: U of
>> Massachusetts P, 2002), "Introduction: Authorship,
>> Technology, and the Cybernetic Body,"
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 12:43 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>> Too lazy (too human) to type this all out, but another wonderful,
>>>thought-provoking Pynchon passage (p. 310):
>>>
>>> "In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a 
>>> clockwork
>>>automaton..."
>>>
>>> 19th century: heat-engine with 40% efficiency
>>>
>>> 20th century: something which absorbs x-rays, gamma rays and neutrons
>>>
>>> Why has Man been so intent on comparing himself (ourselves) to an 
>>> inanimate
>>>object?  Kind of the opposite of positing a religious deity, which gives 
>>>us the
>>>luxury of accepting without understanding.  If we're merely machines, we 
>>>can be
>>>drawn, dissected, predicted and completely known.  Not to mention that 
>>>gives us,
>>>as machine-creators, a godlike status.  A seductive metaphor for anyone 
>>>with a
>>>reasonably large ego who's willing to truncate the nuances of human 
>>>emotion and
>>>experience.
>>>
>>> The 21st century version is undoubtedly "Man is a computer."  Lots of 
>>> sci-fi on
>>>the topic, anyhow.  Questions such as:  can human memories be downloaded?
>>> "Whether we're based on carbon or silicon, we all deserve the same 
>>> respect."
>>>
>>> Laura
>>>
>>
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