Fwd: Re: Pynchon & Politics( Lacey essay)

[Mark Kohut]

The getting the planets in the cosmos right could be seen as an example of Occam's
Razor leading to scientific discovery. Check out the epicycle-rigged "universe' when
the supposition was that the earth was the center..............
 
Occam's Razor cuts away the abstract, theorizing, bloviated ideas....It is open to empirical verification--or falsification.
 
This Charles Pierce we been talking of, praised, elaborated and refined early notions like it from John Duns Scotus, scholastic logician. 
It became a pragmaticist [sic. Pierce's word; you can also write pragmatist] principle: To see what happens without created phantasms (ideas,
preconceptions, projections, etc.) 
 
 
 
 
Wikipedia sez:The application of the principle often shifts the burden of proof in a discussion.[a] The razor states that one should proceed to simpler theories until simplicity can be traded for greater explanatory power. The simplest available theory need not be most accurate. Philosophers also point out that the exact meaning of simplest may be nuanced.[b]
In science, Occam's razor is used as a heuristic (general guiding rule or an observation) to guide scientists in the development of theoretical models rather than as an arbiter between published models.[7][8] In the scientific method, Occam's razor is not considered an irrefutable principle of logic or a scientific result.[9][10][11]
 

________________________________
 From: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 3:08 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Pynchon & Politics( Lacey essay)
   
 
  -------- Original Message -------- 
Subject:  Re: Pynchon & Politics( Lacey essay)   
Date:  Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:06:19 -0500   
From:  Paul Mackin mailto:mackin.paul at verizon.net   
To:  Joseph Tracy mailto:brook7 at sover.net       
On 1/31/2013 12:43 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> I would like to hear an actual example from the records of science of choosing among equally explanatory hypotheses using Occam's razor. This sounds a little too theoretical and  abstract . Does Mr. Glen provide a fewexamples of this generalization.  Isn't it more about whether a hypothesis holds up to empirical tests, or perhaps what is lucky enough to make it into the academic canon of the day? True, there's no empirical evidence to show that the simple answer is 
always the correct one.  But simplicity is a good thing to keep in your 
sights.  There's the famous example of Einstein's explanation of 
space-time.  Others tried to explain it in terms of a media (ether) but 
Ein bypassed the middle man and won the day.
>
>   Anyway, if this were to be applied to maybe...Pynchon crit.,  wouldn't everybody use Old Occam's shaving tool to reveal their own favored profile?  In the world of letters the final gatekeepers used to be academia, the press, and the publishers. Is that still the case?
>
> This problem of choosing among hypotheses comes up in the dialogue between Pointsman and Mexico  (with further complications from the ghosts of the White visitation and the long term ethical implications of rocket delivered weapons).  Both are partly right , the rockets  go where you Point.. them  but the exact point of impact  and  general distribution  is afunction of probability and randomness.   How and why  they are used gets dicier, and in the novel are  a function of planetary hard-ons, blowback,  religious fantasies, capital investments. These factors, taken together with all the other millions of factors  make predictability, guidance,and probability  seem inadequate to the dangers we talking monkeys are facing with our current array of thermonuclear devices, space based weapons, drones, rockets, and flouridated water.
>   
> Help us Obi Wan
>
> To the degree that Lacey gets P's political sensibilities right, do Pynchon's writings provide a particularly informed and wholistic basis for aworthwhile political conversation? Apart from P's literary creativity Isfriend Tom simply one more humane voice who has seen the darkness at theend of the historic tunnel and who ends up offering a classic group of options: end, resist, expose colonialism in all forms and treat others theway you want to be treated( karmic adjustment), enjoy and explore sex, love, friendship, music, play, and non-violent forms of transcendent spiritual practice as rejuvenating forces of creativity, meaning and pleasure. Don't fill the world with  violence and shit since what goes around comes around.  His biggest break with happy-ever-after Jack tales is  his  implication that  bags of gold are all suspect and  that real freedom involves stepping  away from the system as much as possible and being willingto disappear so that the
 soul is never owne d and  
only one's spirit speaks or acts.
>
> I can hear the argument that P is not prescriptive but descriptive and even subversive of all attempts at meaning, but  I find that argument to be fatally flawed In that the more you accept it the more it becomes the very thing it argues against.  What I am interested in is how the writingchanges the way other people think since I feel it has seriously worked over the way I think.
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> On Jan 31, 2013, at 4:28 AM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>
>> William Glen observes that
>>
>> the success of a hypothesis, or its service to science, lies not
>> simply in its perceived "truth", or power to displace, subsume or
>> reduce a predecessor idea, but perhaps more in its ability to
>> stimulate the research that will illuminate … bald suppositions and
>> areas of vagueness.[56]
>>
>> In general scientists tend to look for theories that are "elegant" or
>> "beautiful". In contrast to the usual English use of these terms, they
>> here refer to a theory in accordance with the known facts, which is
>> nevertheless relatively simple and easy to handle. Occam's Razor
>> serves as a rule of thumb for choosing the most desirable amongst a
>> group of equally explanatory hypotheses.
>
>>>>> Pierce is very logistic. That is the nature of his " analysis". He
>>>> revolutionized Logic.
>>>>
>>>> OK. But I stick to what I wrote. It's a matter of terms. Just because
>>>> a person uses logic, or computation, or even if she works to
>>>> revolutionize logic, does not mean that her method is logistic.
>>>> Descartes' method is logistic. He, like Peirce wrote about his search
>>>> for and use of his method. Peirce, pardon the pun, doubted Descartes
>>>> doubting, and this because he disentangled it, he used his method, not
>>>> computation or logic, but analytic.
>    logistic originates as a military term referring to the pragmatic problems of supplying soldiers with their needs. It has come to refer to the  plans/difficulties/options  of any complex practical venture.         
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