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

[Richard Ryan]

Carl Becker held a named chair at Cornell, incidentally - indeed, he is
among the most highly regarded of the many distinguished intellectual
historians Cornell has produced over the years.  Although he retired (1941)
when Pynchon was only 4, OBA would surely have been exposed to Becker's
considerable reputation, which was in the air even when I was in Ithaca (mid
80s)...

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 6:56 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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
> >>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
                                --Robert Frost
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