The ugly truth of science

[Christopher Simon]

I also wanted to add that the sciences have been the single most powerful enabling forces the arts have ever seen. The printing press, the Internet, the phonograph, all manners of recorded media, the screens on our e-readers, the internal combustion engines that bring new Pynchon novels to your neighborhood Barnes and Noble, email on our smartphones, the list goes on and on. The arts would be stuck in tribal word of mouth if it weren't for an irrepressible spirit of scientific adventure and inventiveness. Many ideas would be grounds for burning at the stake if the sciences hadn't pushed back religious retardation over the centuries. This very conversation would be impossible if it weren't for decades of scientific inquiry.

-----Original Message-----
From: "alice wellintown" <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
Sent: ‎6/‎16/‎2013 10:58 AM
To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: Re: The ugly truth of science

True. MalignD at his best, is the best. Love him. 

On Sunday, June 16, 2013, Paul Mackin wrote:

On 6/16/2013 10:00 AM, alice wellintown wrote:

Monte, the stick up your ass is taller than the Empire State and you're too fixated on me and what gives me the authority to post what I'm posting. Take it easy, dude. You read more like MalignD everyday. 

I kinda like the way malignd reads.  He doesn't suffer fools gladly and slaps down the obnoxious ones when necessary.

P


 
Happy Father's Day 
 
May all our children at war return to their fathers and may all our fathers at war return to their children, healthy, and as soon as possible. 
 
And God Bless Our Terrific Scientific Nation. 



On Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 8:51 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

No, Joseph. When Alice wrote here two weeks ago (the entire post): "Science
is the project of little men who are easily enslaved and who crave
authority, though it is, at the same time, and necessarily so, rebellious."

It was, as she explained ten days later,  a "playful allusion to Reich's
_The Mass Psychology of Fascism_." Maybe to Reich's _Listen, Little Man_ as
well; Alice is very well read. It's not a quotation, paraphrase, or summary:
in fact, Reich's "little men" were average citizens of mass society,
insecure and ignorant and seeking certainties in the fascist leadership of
Great Men. Fortunately, they could find freedom and autonomy in the genius
and mail-order apparatus of a scientist -- psychoanalyst-turned-"orgone
biophysicist" Reich -- and what could be farther from whacked-out, messianic
pseudo-science than that?

... But I digress. The sentence and the thought are Alice's very own, and
they're PLAYFUL. Trust me on this.

When Alice tells us that scientists "take comfort.. in mouse/clicking a
village to dust..."

Or that science "hides its brain surgery butchery behind its rocket science
superciliousness..."

Or that "the scientists took over and they don't believe in anything except
hubris and machines..."

These aren't attacks, as you think. They aren't unfounded stereotypes, as
you think. They don't cast blame, as you think. They're the free play and
penetrating insight of a cultured mind. Trust me on this.

How could they be attacks? Alice is "a science person" herself -- one who
will surely "kick [my] ass in the science ring," and no doubt yours and JZ's
too, as soon as she gets around to it. She won't specify a scientific
discipline specified, won't offer any of her experience or attainments, and
has *never* written here of science and scientists except in contexts of
condescension and contempt -- but she's a "science person." Trust me on
this.

She's "married to a famous scientist" -- and trust me, what a marriage of
true minds that is!

She loves her science (whatever it is -- don't ask because we've been over
all this, and the whole subject is boring, and why are we so angry anyway?)
as much as her poetry. Trust me on this.

She's also a world-class ballerina, a Formula One winner, a nominee for
multiple Nobel prizes, founder/patroness of an orphanage near Antofagasta,
and life chair of the Department of Omnicultural Studies and Plasma Physics
at Miskatonic University. Only a little man like you could mistake her for a
sad, strange online poseur and troll. Trust me on this.
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