Back to AtD. "utopian dreams' p.942

[Mark Kohut]

In the Gifford Lecture, "The Play of Ideas", Dewey speaks of transcendence, mankind's reaching for it
often with math and logic, very reminiscent of P on Yashmeen. Absolute Truth let's call it.He links such with Euclid's Geometry, which
he links with Plato's Ideas, down to Descartes and beyond. ideational means ideas; ideological too. 
This tradition historically embeds pre-emptive notions compared to the empiricist & pragmatic traditions, he says. 
 
(I am by no means suggesting a direct influence here. Dewey is just rambling out--this is American pragmatism, let it unfurl--
some notions of knowledge and truth throughout the history of philosophy and science
from the pragmatist fountainhead that started with Pierce. He might be said to be annotating
Pragmatism, so to speak. I think TRP unfurls aspects of similar possibilities from his reading and
vision. ...A direct link to Wittgenstein (thru Frank Ramsey, American) bringing key epistemological 
notions is established. Ramsey and his thinking led to Wittgenstein 2, the Philosophical Investigations 
and other works. One can see many similarities.
 
In a terrif compression of the universe according to Newton, "a system of massive solidity and comprehensiveness",
he notes the incredible effect on conceptions (and implications therefrom) when Einstein knew that the Michelson-Morley
experiment now meant that simultaneity in time was no longer an immutable constant. What we have here is 
another analogue of Iceland Spar?
 
Light was. ("The whole history of the world can be seen as the history of light"--Against the Day)
 
Time dissolves conceptually from an a priori understanding, in some sense. Take that if you can, Kant. 
I am reminded of the phrase Marx used about modernity "all that is solid melts into air" which is used
or alluded to in AtD....Vlado at the cinema, dizzy at the motion pictures, solid pre-modernity peasant that
he was.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


________________________________
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Cc: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>; Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:17 AM
Subject: Re: Back to AtD. "utopian dreams' p.942


Can't believe I found this right AFTER posting below.
goes out to Monte (and Prashant) in the tradition of.......echoic counterpoint, at least. 
 
John Dewey, american pragmatist, "Symbols, as has already been noted,
afford the only way to escape from submergence in existence".....[wow]
The liberation afforded by the free symbolism of mathematics is often a means
of ulterior return to existential operations that have a scope and penetrating power
not otherwise attainable. The history of science is full of illustrations of cases in which 
mathematical ideas for which no physical application was known suggested in time
new existential relations.".....from The Play of Ideas in The Quest for Certainty. 
 
25 words or less on this re Yashmeen....(almost a direct gloss, yes?)
 
 


________________________________
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:37 AM
Subject: Back to AtD. "utopian dreams' p.942


reef's politics are the politics of being slighted under class hostility. 

Cyprian is apolitical, politics of the quip. Gotta be inspired be Wilde a little, yes?

Yashmeen, sharing Anarchist beliefs, wishes for transcendance...akin to what she sought
in higher math....

and Jenny wants "planetary oneness"...beyond political forms..an Age of Aquarius kind of person?

Thoughts?
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