TRP and Science 3 (was: Science Plays God)

[alice wellintown]

You seem angry, Monte. Check out Bacon on Revenge. Have a nice day.




On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 6:46 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> [part 3 of 3] ****
>
> ** **
>
> DING! Mr. Tolstoy has left the building.****
>
> ** **
>
> AW> You’re the expert who has esoteric knowledge the rest of [us] don't
> and can never have. A member of the elect. That's you, Monte. So fucking
> rocket science…****
>
> ** **
>
> No, Alice, anyone who cares to know what I know about Tesla can read his
> autobiography and one biography, as I did some years ago. S/he can spend an
> hour Googling and looking up a few things in Vol. 1 of Vaclav Smil’s _*Transforming
> the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations and Their Consequences*_,
> the best book I know about late-19thC electrical technology and industry.
> That’s what I did while posting to Joseph. Nothing esoteric or “elect”
> about that. Why the straw-man exaggeration? Why the anger? ****
>
> ** **
>
> If in discussing _*Mason & Dixon*_  I were to post here: “Pynchon invents
> this crazy pair of surveyors who are hired to straighten out a baroquely
> imagined boundary dispute in the American colonies,” someone would surely
> point out to me that there was, in fact, a real historical pair and a real
> historical boundary dispute. Would you have a problem with that?  ****
>
> ** **
>
> In my exchange with Joseph Tracy, in the context of Big Technology, Big
> Money and Bad Shit, Joseph wrote as if Pynchon’s Tesla were (or were close
> to) the historical Tesla; I offered evidence to the contrary. What’s your
> problem with that? ****
>
> ** **
>
> If I’m wrong – if, say, Tesla was a stone philanthropist whose
> world-changing free power source **was** suppressed by Big Energy – I’d
> welcome your evidence. If you think it’s immaterial to distinguish where
> Pynchon is using historical facts, where he’s pointing to alternate but
> plausible historical sequences, and where he’s quite deliberately playing
> to conspiracy theories, I’d welcome your rationale for that… unusual
> approach.****
>
> ** **
>
> If neither, how about a big steaming cup of shut the fuck up?****
>
> ** **
>
> [What follows is highly optional for anyone not curious if Papa Alice can
> actually go a round]****
>
> ** **
>
> Before you “kick my ass in the science ring,” I’d better weigh in, scrawny
> as I am. I’m 63 years old. I did some amateur chemistry and model rocketry
> in my early teens, and entered Princeton as a sophomore at 16 for two years
> of a major in physical chemistry: concentration in reaction rates, cyclical
> and chaotic reactions, and thermodynamics. (I think they may have mentioned
> entropy somewhere in there.) My lab work and junior-thesis project were the
> only hands-on science I’ve ever done. I changed majors and then schools
> (see below, and received no science degree. I taught one year of math and
> one of biology at private secondary schools. ****
>
> ** **
>
> From 1973 to 1985 I was a freelance science and medical writer, with short
> stretches on  staff at OMNI and then Discover magazine. I wrote many
> articles for those, Smithsonian, NY Times Magazine, etc., and some NOVA
> video scripts. I wrote a book on catastrophe theory (algebraic geometry)
> and much of another on 20th-century history. Along the way I interviewed
> and consulted a great many scientists and technologists, forming many
> relationships that have lasted ever since.****
>
> ** **
>
> Since 1985 I’ve been a freelance business writer -- primarily speeches,
> white papers, and marketing communications – for Fortune 500 companies,
> mostly in IT, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals and other high-tech
> fields. I have continued reading widely in science and technology, both
> related and unrelated to that work. Sometimes I stop at the popular-science
> level, sometimes I follow a trail deep into the journals, sometimes I
> contact a scientist friend for help. ****
>
> ** **
>
> That’s it. My knowledge of the natural sciences and of technology is a
> mile wide and mostly an inch deep, with more in scattered areas that I’ve
> written about or have caught my interest. ****
>
>
> AW>  Reading Pynchon is tough. Hey, that's one of the reasons I've been
> doing it all these years, one of the reasons I read all that stuff other
> readers write about P's works… you had trouble reading Pynchon's prose. His
> irony fooled you into thinking you were equipped. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Alice, I make even less claim to expertise in literature. I’ve been a
> voracious reader (of fiction and of non-fiction outside science and
> technology) all along – I hope an alert and curious one. I’ve quite
> unsystematically read perhaps 20 critical books and a couple of hundred
> articles on Pynchon since the mid-1970s. I am well aware of what a tiny
> fraction that is of the critical canon by now.****
>
> ** **
>
> Outside TRP:  in another year as an English major at Princeton I had the
> great good luck to study Dante with Bob Hollander, Ariosto and Spenser with
> Thomas Roche, and French medieval literature with John Fleming. I cite them
> not because I learned more about those writers than any other bright
> undergraduate in their classes, but because all three are scholars and
> critical readers of the highest order – i.e., I have had my misreadings
> corrected by the best, as well as by you.****
>
> ** **
>
> Then I transferred to Sarah Lawrence and did two years of mostly
> independent study with Joseph Campbell for a BA in comparative literature.
> I taught three years of English literature and composition courses at
> private secondary schools, and three years of PR/marcomm writing to
> undergraduates as an adjunct at Temple.****
>
> ** **
>
> That’s it. I’m certain my knowledge of Pynchon studies pales next to
> yours. My acumen as a reader and my critical equipment… well, they are what
> they are, and would be hard to spin here because nearly everything I’ve
> written about modern fiction since 1994 has been in posts right here. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Reading Pynchon is indeed tough. But as one who had a good liberal-arts
> education, has made a living as a writer for 40 years now, and has done
> some teaching of literature and composition… may I be spared your
> ever-so-gracious concern that I “have trouble interpreting prose” and am
> “fooled by Pynchon’s irony”?****
>
> ** **
>
> Or if I’m to get the maximum benefit, would you care to put your own cards
> on the table? We wouldn’t want to be esoteric, after all. How about your
> real name, CV, publications, academic honors and so on? Or, if you prefer,
> those of your online sock puppets who visit us from time to time?****
>
> ** **
>
> AsB4,****
>
> Monte Davis****
>
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