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

[Ian Livingston]

> 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.

Quite. Especially so when one considers that Chaos Theory shows that
chaos isn't really all that chaotic: when the perspective is broad
enough, what once seemed random reappears in repeating patterns.


On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>



-- 
"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