Back to AtD : Yashmeen

[Paul Mackin]

On 4/29/2012 7:47 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Paul M. writes (convincingly to me):
> Just guessing of course, but Yashmeen's putdown of Boltzmann and entropy as merely statistical (producing only probabilities) may reflect an earlier age's still somewhat skeptical attitude toward statistics as a serious scientific tool. Yashmeen wants the exact answers of pure mathematics.
>
> We do know of course that Yashmeen puts too much faith in the efficacy of pure math to solve world problems. And she also apparently didn't fully appreciate how statistics and probability WERE changing the world.
> This is not to minimize the big part eventually played by math as well.
>
> Anyway, the final sentence of section seems to foreshadow Yashmeem's later full blown susceptibility to male allure, despite intellectual differences.
>
>
> P
>
> One source, for Entropy as an influential metaphor came from Gibbs, the guy Henry Adams borrowed the idea from to overuniverslaize, think most these
> days. In Adams' Degradation of the Democratic Idea he devotes two virtually unreadable essays now to trying to spread the concept
> of entropy to human action, to societies, to the universe, etc....
>
> That is before Yashmeen's AtD time, of course, so she does dismiss entropy (maybe) but I do think Paul was insightful when he spoke of her
> moving the terms to 'the exact answers of pure math", which TRP ain't gonna sign off on in his vision.
>
> And, still to come, is how the statistics and probabiliity that Paul focusses on is changing the world by changing Reef's karmic casino terms.....
>


Does the social entropy you refer to in some way explain Yashmeen's and 
Cyrian's trajectory through the book?

Their paths have similarities.  Both start off favorably placed in 
society (once Yashmeen has been rescued and adopted, which occurs well 
before we meet her). Both are Cambridge formed, both brilliant in their 
fields, leading Romantic lives, sexual outlaws. She, in addition to her 
brilliance, is decoratively beautiful. He is a daring spy. But these 
lives ultimately do not satisfy and disintegrate.  Is this entropic? Maybe?

I don't know exactly how you would characterize where they finally end 
up. Cyprian certainly achieves a kind of spirituality that seems to suit 
him. Yashmeen finds marital and maternal fulfillment. There is nothing 
wrong with that, but her social and professional positions do suffer 
semi seismically.

It's a definite winding down.

P