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

[Paul Mackin]

On 8/19/2011 1:19 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>> 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.

Interesting post.

The reason I was presumptuous enough to rewrite some of Hume's  
sentences for her was to emphasize the difference between the two quite 
different notions of perceived reality she was referring to and opening 
up for conceivable modification, namely

naturally perceived physical reality--three dimensional and 
causal--which are evolutionary, not learned, and only "unlearned" on a 
super high intellectual level.

those perceptions that ARE learned--value systems--and can be unlearned 
or modified.

Of course she was talking about fiction, so anything can happen any way 
you want it to.

The Scholastic Philosophy mention was just to humorously try to allay 
Keith's fears concerning self-awareness.  Back then people knew they 
were really there  :-)

Putting chaos in juxtaposition with post-modernism was just an 
exaggerated way to indicate the instabilities found in the novel that 
early critics pounced on and associated with post-modernism.  And I 
agree post-modernism is far more than that.

On an unimportant point I would have to question your statement that 
water erupting over a waterfall is not chaotic.  Chaos Theory was 
invented to handle just such phenomena.  A word quibble.

P
>
> 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
>>
>>
>>
>
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