..Not in the least bit Pynchonic -- space

[Mark Kohut]

Thanks and maybe I said too much.
 
Basically, Kant sez, thinking about how we think: we can imagine our bodies, ourselves, our world, others different.....experience
gives us synthetic (contingent) material experience....
 
but, we cannot imagine TIME nor SPACE, these concepts themselves, as contingent......Time and Space are how we think of them....
 
The P.S. on 'synthetic' is we have to have experience of moving thru space--human or cat---to know that it cannot be imagined otherwise.
 

From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: ..Not in the least bit Pynchonic -- space

some p-list emails are not coming through to my p-list mailbox. I started a couple days ago  and I thought there was a problem and looked to the online archives. That is why  my recent emails are weirdly formatted. Prolly preferences , going to call apple.

From: Mark Kohut
My original kutely kryptic post was to communicate what I learned from Kant. 
We cannot think of space, nor time, in any other way but in the way we have to define them. 
We cannot IMAGINE space without a concept of space. A priori he termed them....(although he did say space was also synthetic---known by our experience of it to know it is what it is)they are 
not materialistically contingent

We seem to be formed in and of space on every level of experience: conceptual, touch, travel,  sound, sight, bodies with insides and outsides. We can't separate the self from space, is that what synthetic means?  A cat handles  itself  adroitly in space, but that seems more perceptual than conceptual. Still It isn't hard to see a cat as a concept of space time by which it may languor in the sun and sneak up on mice for a thrill and lunch. I don't know if I want to pick a fight with Kant, but creatures are imaging space by their very existence and imagining space within the parameters of their perceptual facilities.  Maybe this is all saying the same thing in different ways and I need to read Kant. I like that line about space " to know it is what it is."  
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