Pynchon & Math (Aristotle vs. Plato)

[alice wellintown]

In once of his essays, maybe the Luddite Essay, Pynchon speaks of C.P.
Snow, the Two Cultures, and of the forces of specialization (we might
attribute these to Adam Smith & Co.).

One of the great things about Aristotle, at least for me, is that his
mode allows me to embrace Pluralism, my natural bent, without falling
into the Sophistic mode, where all is arbitrary, relative, and without
reducing things to tiny particles or atoms and the void, and without
getting all caught up in some other worldly transcendentalisms
(Plato).

As a girl raised at home much like our hero in The Recognitions, I was
trained in Western Meataphysics, Onto-Theology, but the Jesuits taught
me that knowing is not the rejection of doubt, and more importantly,
we know things by how we use them, how we are related to them, and
these are multiple, and these are essential, and can take form from
the multiple ways we form them, use them, as knowledge, make them, or
better, actualize them. From this, my love of the Academic, of the
traditions, of the Theoretical, the Poetic, and the Pragmatic.