Pynchon & Math (Aristotle vs. Plato)

[alice wellintown]

Pynchon can't resist a joke, an inside joke, like all inside all the
theads of the seats we are  sitting on that is suddenly yanked out
from under our comfee postures, if we still have them, type-joak, so
he tickles us with the ancient battle that boyz and girlz who play at
this game are game to. But to what end? Shit if I know. I'm not gunna
go read  The Republic_ one more time becuae I've reading this Pynchon,
Cohen, and the Crisis of Victorian Mathematics

Thomas Dechand

And, I mybe neer get the joak, exactly, but I got it the first time
close enough.

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 5:23 PM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is Yashmeen, right? who gives up math? #notanaccident
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jan 25, 2013, at 4:06 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/2013 2:07 AM, Prashant Kumar wrote:
>
> The interesting thing about this dichotomy (in the proper approach to
> Ethics) you mention is that it presupposes a  Platonic conception of
> mathematics; mathematics as a menagerie of axiomatically true pieces of
> abstraction.
>
> A fallibilistic conception of mathematics (the mathematical empiricism of
> Quine and Putnam), itself descended from the american pragmatists, which
> conceives of mathematical theorems as contingent truths, will result in a
> more nebulous notion of precision.
>
> I would argue this sort of naturalism, nature as a series of convenient but
> contingent truths, is a staple of american fiction more generally. For
> example, look at how Pynchon handles the feud between the Quaternionists and
> the Vectorists in AtD.
>
>
>
> "Mathematics once seemed the way--the internal life of numbers came as a
> revelation to me, perhaps as it might have to a Pythagorean apprentice long
> ago in Crotona--a reflection of some less accessible reality, through close
> study of which one might learn to pass on beyond the difficult given world."
>
> AtD. p. 749.
>
> P
>
>
>
> P.
>
> On 24 January 2013 22:57, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Several critical studies examine Pynchon and the American Pragmatists.
>>
>> I think a good place to turn is to Aristotle. Here in an Introduction
>> we see a basic difference in Aristotle from Plato and Socrates, and
>> specifically, on Ethics. The wisdom of Aristotle is that he accepts
>> the idea that it is wise to examine or explore a topic only so far as
>> the topic permits, that there is an exhaustion point, and that in
>> Ethics, and in Politics, the topic does not allow for examination as
>> it does in other sciences.
>>
>> Is the application of math to Ethics and Politics Fascist? Maybe.
>> Maybe something in that GR....
>>
>> Is Plato a Fascist?
>>
>> No, but the math....
>>
>> The main difference between Plato and Aristotle is this: Plato thought
>> ethics was an exact (theoretical) science; Aristotle thought precision
>> was extremely difficult in a science such as ethics. Please note that
>> "science" is being used in its ancient sense of knowledge in general.
>>
>> THE PROPER METHOD FOR ETHICS (Bk. I, Sec. 3)
>>
>> >From ethics one can expect only as much precision as the subject
>> matter allows. This is opposite to Plato's belief, because it does not
>> allow for any mathematical exactness. Does this mean, then, that moral
>> rules are "conventions," made up or created by humans? No, they are
>> natural, but they are not like Plato's immutable forms. Aristotle
>> avoids ethical relativism because of his confidence in human reason
>> and experience to decide on general courses of action.
>>
>> Plato approached ethical questions with a formal, abstract approach,
>> analyzing each just as he would analyze a math problem. Aristotle,
>> though, believed that because of all the human variables found in
>> ethics (but not found in the formal sciences), mathematical precision
>> was impossible.
>>
>> http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/103/aristotle.htm
>
>
>