Back to AtD. "utopian dreams' p.942

[Ian Livingston]

And music? Is music a way of expressing the affection for a mathematical
sort of transcendence? Keith?


On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 6:58 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
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>   *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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-- 
"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
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