Mind-Bending Science In Thomas Pynchon's Mind-Bending Novel Against The Day

[Mark Kohut]

yes. 
"hurt" ,maybe infelicitous, but I only meant to any (mostly non-scientists) who might read Adams' essays and misunderstand Gibbs and his real qualities.
As wikipedia says, those essays using Gibbs were not even published until after both men were dead. 
 
 

From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
To: 'Mark Kohut' <markekohut at yahoo.com>; 'Pynchon- L' <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 5:32 PM
Subject: RE: Mind-Bending Science In Thomas Pynchon's Mind-Bending Novel Against The Day


Adams did nothing to “hurt” Gibbs among his peers: Gibbs is securely among the foremost founding fathers of statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and physical chemistry. Adams’ views in that area are every bit as valuable and noteworthy as, say, Clausius’ views on French medieval cathedrals and American diplomatic history.  
 
 
From:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Mark Kohut
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 4:16 PM
To: Pynchon- L
Subject: Re: Mind-Bending Science In Thomas Pynchon's Mind-Bending Novel Against The Day
 
I highlight this:
"The arguments went back and forth for four years with little apparent progress. Gibbs repeatedly and calmly emphasized that the prime consideration in a system of analysis should be given to the fundamental relationships we wish to describe in the physical world."  
 
There is an essay to be written---Monte, Prashant?---on Pynchon rescuing Gibbs, so to speak, (perhaps, I'm still uncertain) in Against the Day from what his great admirer Henry Adams did to hurt him. Which was take his grounded ideas too, too far by airy extension. In Adams' "Degradation of the Democratic Dogma" there are two now-unreadable essays, stupid as any clever idiot could be, using Gibbs to explain social and political aspects of history and the future-A non-scientist singling up all explanations outside his intellectual remit.   
 Gibbs is cited in another book we know influenced TRP: The Human Use of Human Beings. 
 
Gibbs is a ground, electricity metaphor half-intended in AtD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Willard_Gibbs 
 
 I know now I internalized Monte's terrif insight in the comments back when I first read this---repeated it in our back-and-forth just days ago as my own perspective--- P uses the truths of new scientific discoveries tacitly, as the deep truths to set off the satire and to add to his presentation of the real world, the physical world, all that beautiful earth and land, all the mystery of this pendant world..... 
 
THIS science-math understanding I am not challenging in this ATD reread; I challenge all--most of-- the math(s) (and any 'science' it supposedly buttresses that is said and talked and supposedly believed in in AtD.)
 
 
 

Mind-Bending Science In Thomas Pynchon's Mind-Bending Novel Against
The Day: Part I

http://www.science20.com/adaptive_complexity/mindbending_science_thomas_pynchons_mindbending_novel_against_day_part_i-8804

Mind-Bending Science In Thomas Pynchon's Mind-Bending Novel Against
The Day: Part II - The Quaternion Wars

http://www.science20.com/adaptive_complexity/mind_bending_science_in_thomas_pynchons_mind_bending_novel_against_the_day_part_ii_the_quaternion_wars
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