Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.

[Rev'd Seventy-Six]

Part of the pragmatism--  and part of the problem, because free will is a
problem when the will in question isn't considering the bill for earth's
hospitality  --in re: science is merely *going where the research is green*.
It might not seem On The Point to be furthering endless speculation about
our quantum underpinnings or stargazing neighborhoods none living will ever
visit, but it steam engines when it comes steam engine time.  (Or piss
engine time:
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680877/four-african-teenagers-create-power-from-pee#1)
 As above, so below:
*quod est inferius est sicut quod est superius, et quod est superius est
sicut quod est inferius, ad perpetranda miracula rei unius.*  There is only
one Point to any of it:  pursuit of these researches will either bear fruit
& potentially benefit, or they won't and we will abandon them.  Science
does not exist in a vacuum of dead inquiry.

Though invoking the vacuum makes me squirm...  A tangent I'll save for the
postscript, methinks.

I do not invoke 'fruit of research' glibly.  The whole of agriculture is
science, and one which only evolved through innumerable dead-ends and
fool's quests.  If there is hardline villainy, it rests with business
interests that have abused science to produce shoddy and/or harmful
results, and sold those results (often at a markup) to people who simply
don't give a damn (or are too poor to give a damn) for the potential
damage.  Humans kill other humans all the time, so we have just come to
assume it is part of the natural order and invent all sorts of retroactive
justifications for dealing with the daily horror: that ninety percent of
the time we're doing it to ourselves for money and half that time don't
consciously realize it.

We know how to purify water, affordably, globally, yet we insist on not
doing so because They insist on commodifying necessity.  The aforementioned
piss engine, brilliant though it is, will in all likelihood be capitalized
upon by those who need it least.  The problem is not, I insist, with
science being misdirected of its own volition as though it were a free,
diabolical agent, but with what the unit of currency itself represents to
us, in how it brings out human avarice.  *We would be better scientists if
our morality were not being determined by dollars,* yet we insist on Not
Talking About It in favor of demonizing whole fields of scientific &
philosophical inquiry.  We would prefer to keep ourselves in the dark, same
as when I get agitated about the inarguably actual practice of torture by
U.S. military forces: people I consider my friends look away, shrug, say
"I'd rather not think about it."  We know lust for money destroys or at
least erodes the moral sense, yet we insist in accepting it, in permitting
it to rule, on saying X slice of land or fabric or flesh or genome costs $,
even if that symbol certainly seems like the cause of the majority of
injustice and hazard in our world today; even if that symbol & our
acceptance of it makes us all complicit in far, far worse crimes than those
committed out of religious or investigative hubris.

This is obviously less directed at you, Joseph, and more at man's tendency
in these debates to move the goalposts to where its coziest.  Life is
difficult.  Math is hard.  Facts are arduous.  We shouldn't have to abandon
our armchairs to sling a homer.  The fields of politics and finance--  bent
on maintaining social control by maintaining trends at odds with the public
interest, fixing the game in Their favor in perpetuity or at least until
resources run out  --persist in pointing fingers at science as holding them
back when science has repeatedly stated with utmost clarity, "Resources are
limited.  The dollar is not any more real than the planet you're standing
on.  Get your values straight."

To which the CEO of Exxon rebuts, "What good is it to save the planet if
humanity suffers?"

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/exxonmobil-ceo-what-good-is-it-to-save-the-planet-if-humanity-suffers/article12258350/

The They in all of this is, I suspect, our species' collective id.  The
Other is us, we just don't want to admit it, so we resort to infighting.
It's all very barmy, blaming science while we persist in aiding & abetting
the criminals in our own skulls...  But beats watching reruns, I guess.  :/

* * * * *

Apologies for the rant.  Feel free to block me.  I'm simply weary of
hearing over, over & over again how science overreaches and dabbles in
godly territory when the real question is WHO let all these ethically dodgy
scientists get away with their Nazi human experimentation and Tuskegee
syphilis trials.  WHO finances these freaks?  Because that's what they are,
you know: the exceptions to the rule.  WHO gives the devil his due?  We
do.  Every time we pay taxes.  We pay some 'higher-up' in our backassward
social order to figure out how to more effectively firebomb the starving
citizens of Dresden, or fry humans and leave buildings standing, u.s.w.
Nazi pressure chamber experiments led to our advancement of the manned
space program.  My dad got a scholarship from NASA.  He wanted me to become
an astronaut.  Me, not so much.

Personally, I imagine Pynchon tastes the same ashes we all do when thinking
about this perpetual mess.  Mankind is sick.  It's not the sciences,
glutted from their night's blood of funding, birthing monsters like Lilith,
it is Unreason Itself, a whole system of indoctrination which originates
with the first quarter under the pillow for that first scabby tooth.
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