"You're gonna want cause & effect"---GR

[Ian Livingston]

> Kathryn Hume says we "have been taught" to see things as we do, but, when
> she's talking about such things as cause and effect, I believe she really
> means that we have EVOLVED that way.  Which of course took eons.  (if only
> the scholastic had known about evolution they'd have been on firmer ground)
>
> Of course, as Kathryn Hume indicates, the kinds of hard and fast truths that
> had to be UNlearned at the level of quantum physics have only at best a
> metaphorical connection with the supposition that we might evolve (by which
> she means learn) to view all life, not just human life, as valuable.
>
> Hume is one of a group of P critics who tried to see ethical values in GR
> after the initial tendency to see only post-modern chaos.
>

Hume's argument is quite interesting, really. I do not know if she
means "evolved" when she says "taught" or "learn" when she says
"evolve", but the salient point, that change is inevitable and it is
possible to generate impetus toward a desired outcome is more
Nietzschean than Scholastic. Pynchon certainly looks back to Medieval
trends to highlight contemporary entrenchments, but novelty seems
always possible for his characters. Some choose the novel idea, some
stay the course, but there seems to be choice in each case. Slothrop
might have chosen to let Them have Their way with him at any point
along the way, and Roger Mexico might have spoken out to alter his
place in the scheme of things.

It is terribly Nietzschean to say it is possible to influence
evolution by taking novel choices. Hume, it seems, argues that novelty
might also imply responsibility and that choosing to generate impetus
toward a broader perspective is particularly Pynchonian. Well, that
may or may not be. I can't answer that one off the top of my head.
However, I do not see post-modernism as chaotic, really; it seems
rather to follow quite logically from modernist trends. Even though
Jameson and his cadre try very hard to see a sharp turn into p-mism,
that does not seem to carry well, really. We see what we look for.
Look for differences there are certainly some to find, look for
similarities and you can't miss 'em. When water erupts over a great
fall, it is not chaotic, but following an impetus generated by the
flow through a tight channel, now turned by gravity toward another set
of less constrained paths that only seem chaotic on casual
observation. So, too, the post-modernist. The only real difference is
that the human may choose a course, whereas the water just goes where
it is thrust, following the course of least resistance. The question
then resolves into whether or not one adheres to deterministic
principles. I tend to incline toward a limited determinism: history
compels us, but possibility opens infinitely.

On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 8/18/2011 2:20 PM, Keith Davis wrote:
>
> It seems to me that this all ties into the discussion we were having about
> awareness and self awareness. There is something there that we can't
> identify, other than to say that it is "being" or "presence" or "awareness
> of presence". We can say, "I'm like this or that", but when we try to find
> the source of this or that, it evaporates into nothingness.
>
> If you were living in the middle ages your scholastic philosophy would admit
> to self-evident principles, one of which would be that you exist.  Descartes
> was not convinced but turned out not to be too convincing himself.
>
> Kathryn Hume says we "have been taught" to see things as we do, but, when
> she's talking about such things as cause and effect, I believe she really
> means that we have EVOLVED that way.  Which of course took eons.  (if only
> the scholastic had known about evolution they'd have been on firmer ground)
>
> Of course, as Kathryn Hume indicates, the kinds of hard and fast truths that
> had to be UNlearned at the level of quantum physics have only at best a
> metaphorical connection with the supposition that we might evolve (by which
> she means learn) to view all life, not just human life, as valuable.
>
> Hume is one of a group of P critics who tried to see ethical values in GR
> after the initial tendency to see only post-modern chaos.
>
> P
>
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Kathryn Hume says, in Pynchon's Mythography, regarding this particular
>> subject in GR, "Where Pynchon is most serious and most literal is in
>> his insistence on an Other Side, on some kind of irreducible mystery,
>> on there being something beyond the world acknowledged by empirical
>> method.... We know more or less how gravity, magnetism, and
>> electricity work, but not really what they are. We now know there are
>> some things we cannot know--the simultaneous momentum and location of
>> an electron, for instance. We are philosophically aware that the
>> concepts of force and of cause and effect are human projections upon
>> the world.... Pynchon seems at times to be creating a metaphoric
>> extension of subatomic realities into the quotidian level of
>> existence. He knows that the cosmos looks to us as it does because we
>> have been taught to see it that way. If another perspective were to
>> develop--for instance, if we were to evolve an outlook that valued all
>> life, not just human and not just one's self--then the cosmos we would
>> see would differ dramatically from what we see now" (85).
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 18, 2011 at 6:07 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > There are an amazing couple-three sentences in Understanding Media
>> > wherein McLuhan basically riffs on that line, virtually uses it without
>> > the
>> > direct address to the reader....or, changing up the metaphor,
>> > that concept in the West is the bassline way conceptual logical
>> > linearity is
>> > embodied in our [the West's] language, he sez.
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>
>
>
> --
> www.innergroovemusic.com
>
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant