Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.

[Joseph Tracy]

There is no "one and the same Big Bad Thing" in what I am saying.    That is your highly colored interpretation. There certainly are and have been villainous agents in history, if there is any meaning in that word at all. Mostly they are something along the lines of  sociopathic individuals  with too much power, including scientists. But often villainy is either a group activity or a result of bad ideas catching on as though they were good ideas and "science" often plays a role there. I think the article that Alice quotes is quite relevant here and the fact that the social sciences used by the Nazis were lousy science does not exonerate the trained scientists and doctors who espoused them based on their scientific authority, or the dubious presumptions of authority that science has often claimed. To assume that there is no similarly flawed science currently able to win political approval is absurd.

On a more philosophical  and literary note, I am convinced that Pynchon sees  parallels between the colonial mindset and the "scientific" mindset proceeding from the enlightenment era which coincides with the age of European colonialism.. In ATD this is spoofed in the gathering  of scientists in Iceland who are out to colonize new rays. Blicero too connects these urges to claim the available materials of the world for the elite scientific and cultural masters  . And Blicero embodies the aesthetic attraction of pure forms of death and power.Science in this mode embraces the ability to obliterate old gods and fuel the flight of the soul with pure burnt offerings doused with rocket fuel. Pointsman also colonizes children and seeks to exploit Slothrop to advance his scientific career. Science for him is a colonial enterprise in which he seeks to stake out his territory. Jamf appears to have used Slothrop for scientific experiments related to behavior and guidance systems. The science of rocket guidance becomes a metaphor for the  colonial science of domination and targeted destruction. Carbon technology and carbon supply is revealed as a driving force of history, a force that is more inlined to incinerate the past than to learn from it. 
 
You are not being particularly more analytical than I am. I just think you are making it more complicated than it is in the real world where systems interact holistically all the time. It's impossible to isolate science from actual scientists who work on all manner of projects and for all manner of governments and businesses, individuals and institutions. It is  impossible to isolate science from the technologies and materials  which are part of its experiments,  its supplies and  its procedures. Separating the real-world technologies which beget science from the science which shapes technology seems futile. Science needs a record of discourse (from Indo European to algebraic) and these languages have limits and biases. Without  a powerful connection to all these things( technology, business, militarism, politics, language, energy systems...) there is no scientific method and no science. It simply does not exist in some pure state of isolation. So if it takes any credit for enhancing life ( and I do think it can)it must take some responsibility for screw ups and crimes. If science can be seen as an agent of change it can act wrongly.  
     
    the pronoun you

For clarity's sake, when I say " I do advocate taking responsibility for both the good stuff and bad stuff you do ", The "you" is referring to all persons including scientists and even amorphous collective beings with which people like to identify like science, God, the people, business, political parties etc. 

When I say,  "You want to say these things are entirely political, but politicians do not make dioxins or .... " I am directly responding to a personal statement to me by David Morris. : "But your beef is entirely political."  I'm addressing David Morris 
I thought the context made the statements reasonably clear, but the pronoun 'you' can be tricky.
  
Technology is not, IMO, much older than science, and virtually always means a practical/technical application made possible by imagination and knowledge or insight, usually involving tools or constructions. Knowledge is the root meaning of science and apart from some very interesting accidents  knowledge  and hypothesis mostly come before their application as technology.   

ORIGIN Middle English (denoting knowledge): from Old French, from Latin scientia, from scire ‘know.’






On Jun 2, 2013, at 10:18 AM, Monte Davis wrote:

> "taking responsibility for both the good stuff and bad stuff you do" -- I'm
> down with that.
> 
> It's what you mean from moment to moment by "you" that I can't get my head
> around. Sometimes the villainous agent or agency is science, sometimes it's
> technology (not the same, and much older than science), sometimes it's
> industrialization per se, sometimes it's industrial capitalism, sometimes
> it's the global scaling-up with population of our species' ecological
> footprint.
> 
> Are there many connections -- both causal and corollary -- among all these?
> Yes.  Are they one and the same Big Bad Thing? No. I'm well aware that I'm
> doing that analytical/dissective approach you reject... but if yours is as
> coherent as holism gets, I think I'll pass.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
> Of Joseph Tracy
> Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2013 2:20 PM
> To: P-list List
> Subject: Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.
> 
> Bullshit. I don't support, believe in or advocate Luddism though I don't
> particularly despise those with  true and sincere distrust of technology or
> tribal peoples who don't want to adopt the technologies and science of the
> modern world. I do advocate taking responsibility for both the good stuff
> and bad stuff you do.  I advocate technologies  and science that don't
> require theft and destruction. I advocate methods that are bio-spherically
> respectful and sustainable. 
> On Jun 1, 2013, at 12:16 AM, David Morris wrote:
> 
>> You essentially advocate Luddism.  I think Tea Party, stupid party,
> fearful and reactionary.  I really hope TRP isn't that dumb.
>> 
>> Dr. Mengele looks a lot like TRP:
>> http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
>> 
>> Maybe he feels the Dr's guilt.
>> 
>> David Morris
>> 
>> On Friday, May 31, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>> But scientists and technologists are not merely adjuncts to bad political
> pressures, they sometimes lead the way into ethically abusive terrain, atom
> & then hydrogen bombs, nuclear power plants sited on unstable terrain(
> Fukushima) with approval of scientists, medical scientists came up with the
> things like the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments, US military experiments
> exposing people to radioactive materials, MK Ultra's experiments using
> drugs, sensory deprivation and torture on unwitting Canadians. The Nazi
> "medical" experiments were often as "scientific" as current experiments on
> rats.  The  pragmatic, for some more than others, philosophy  of "Scientific
> advancement " demands that materials be mined and provided cheaply no matter
> the human and eco costs. Science and the products generated by science
> demand access to the materials and cannot ask for a free pass.
>> 
>> Sometimes scientists provide the disease and then the cure as in DDT, 
>> HFCs ,phthalates, and Thalidimide. With global warming there may be no 
>> cure
>> 
>> You want to say these things are entirely political, but politicians do
> not make dioxins or PCBs, do not figure out how to mine with mercury, are
> not the inventors of fossil fuel technologies or new plastics and other
> products  and techniques that poison the waters and soils.. The presumption
> that all the questions and difficulties we face are neatly divisible in such
> a way as to absolve  scientists and the  scientific method is not an idea to
> which I will be genuflecting.  The science we inherit  has relied heavily on
> analysis through dissection, dissolution, explosion and the reduction of all
> things to the observable component parts. This has been a mindset with some
> very dark consequences because life, and the only reality humans can
> actually experience is interactive, conscious, interdependent and more than
> the sum of parts or rules. There is no rule by which things desire to live,
> and no methodology of science has ever produced a living reproductive
> organism. Once again as in the original article there is a large gap between
> what  science claims  to know and what can be demonstrated by experiment.
> Scientific practice is not  able to be isolated as some pure and benign
> pursuit. It has been heavily fueled throughout history by war and greed and
> has itself fueled war, injustice and avarice.  Some of this comes out with
> heart-rending intensity in Mason and Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against
> the Day.. Equally so in The Metaphysical Club, Frankenstein, A Brave New
> World.
>> 
>> 
>> On May 30, 2013, at 10:44 PM, David Morris wrote:
>> 
>>> Good point.
>>> But your beef is entirely political.  It has nothing to do with science
> or philosophy, except beyond their application in politics.
>>> In the US 3rd parties are almost lays losers.  You seem to be advocating
> a allegiance of scientist as a political voice.  And Amen!
>>> But that goal isn't about science or philosophy.  It's about pragmatics.
>>> 
>>> David Morris
>>> 
>>> On Thursday, May 30, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>> No.  I respect and love and admire the creative and inventive
> possibilities released by scientific inquiry. But science and scientists do
> also get used for, and sometimes actively participate in some real bad shit.
> What I was meaning to say and I can see how easily I could be misunderstood
> was that we have many global problems that seem to require the immediate
> attention and investment of modern science: global warming, toxic materials
> in food air and water, rampant hunger and disease, deforestation, etc. but
> instead of applying the  powers of science to those issues we are spending
> money on hadron colliders and giant space  telescopes looking for the
> beginning of the universe.   The thing is there is really no need to rush
> these extremely expensive  and/or theoretical projects and every reason to
> rush to find better solutions for some of the major issues of immediate
> planetary concern.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On May 30, 2013, at 5:46 PM, MalignD at aol.com wrote:
>>> 
>>>> So Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, et al are to be held
> responsible for AIDS, ebola virus, Lyme disease, etc.  I admit, I hadn't
> considered that.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>>>> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>> Sent: Wed, May 29, 2013 11:45 pm
>>>> Subject: Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.
>>>> 
>>>> I think part of the point though is that there is growing evidence 
>>>> that science is up against the limits of empiricism and has moved 
>>>> it's brightest physicists toward spewing out untestable 
>>>> multidimensional string theory and spending billions to collide 
>>>> beams in  search of Higgs's God particle. Is this not some kind of 
>>>> pseudo scientific holy grail that is as much philosophy as 
>>>> physics? Will a unified interpretation follow? How real is the 
>>>> thing they may or may not have found and what exactly is the 
>>>> question being answered? Cuz it's getting mighty hot around here, 
>>>> lots of people with malaria, aids, Lymes, Ebola Lots of children 
>>>> starving, species disappearing,  fibers in the web of life 
>>>> breaking, lot's of carbon and methane in the wind, toxic shit floating
> down the river,arsenic in the rice, radioactive towns, a great deal of it
> thanks to the scientific revolution.
>>>> On May 29, 2013, at 6:31 PM,
>>>> MalignD at aol.com
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Must disagree.  Shallow, strawman arguments that seem ignorant 
>>>>> of the fact
>>>> that disagreement, challenge, sometimes piecemeal answers are part 
>>>> of science and a large part of what makes it powerful.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The questions he mentions are tough, and certainly there are no easy
> answers.
>>>> But to suggest we're going to philosophize our way to them is ... 
>>>> well:  good luck.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Keith Davis <
>>>> kbob42 at gmail.com
>>>>> 
>>>>> To: Joseph Tracy <
>>>> brook7 at sover.net
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cc: P-list List <
>>>> pynchon-l at waste.org
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sent: Wed, May 29, 2013 3:24 pm
>>>>> Subject: Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Amen
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Joseph Tracy <
>>>> 
>