M&D - Chapter 19-21 - The Father

Sat Apr 4 09:00:25 CDT 2015

A famous passage from Galileo.

13     I have now only to fulfill my promise of declaring my opinions on
the proposition that motion is the cause of heat, and to explain in what
manner it appears to me that it may be true. But I must first make some
remarks on that which we call heat, since I strongly suspect that a notion
of it prevails which is very remote from the truth; for it is believed that
there is a true accident, affection, or quality, really inherent in the
substance by which we feel ourselves heated. This much I have to say, that
as soon as I form a conception of a material or corporeal substance, I
simultaneously feel the necessity of conceiving that it has its boundaries,
and is of some shape or other; that, relatively to others, it is great or
small; that it is in this or that place, in this or that time; that it is
in motion, or at rest; that it touches, or does not touch another body;
that it is unique, rare, or common. I can not, by any act of the
imagination, disconnect it from these qualities; but I do not find myself
absolutely compelled to apprehend it as necessarily accompanied by such
conditions as that it must be white or red, bitter or sweet, sonorous or
silent, smelling sweetly or disagreeably. And if the senses had not pointed
out these qualities, it is probable that language and imagination alone
could never have arrived at them.

    Therefore, I am inclined to think that these tastes, smells, colors,
etc., with regard to the object in which they appear to reside, are nothing
more than mere names, and exist only in the sensitive body; insomuch that
when the living creature is removed all these qualities are carried off and
annihilated; although we have imposed particular names upon them (different
from those other and real accidents), and would happily persuade ourselves
that they truly and in fact exist. But I do not believe that there exists
anything in external bodies for exciting tastes, smells, and sounds, but
size, shape, quantity, and motion, swift or slow; and if ears, tongues, and
noses were removed, I am of opinion that shape, quantity, and motion would
remain, but there would be an end of smells, tastes, and sounds, which,
abstractedly from the living creature, I take to be mere words.

http://www.humanistictexts.org/galileo.htm

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 9:25 AM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Why cast Mason's dreams in the language of money? His Investment in
> Precious Sleep yielded not a "Farthing's Dividend"The syntax is rather odd
> and puzzling. But putting that aside for the moment, the idea that an
> investment in Sleep had the potential to produce a dividend implies that
> Mason's Precious Sleep does not belong to him, but to some company that
> pays dividends, to a contract. So in working for whomever or whatever he
> works for, Mason has invested not only his time, but his sleep and his
> dreams. That money, in the paradoxical operations outlined by Georg
> Simmel, liberates Mason from his Father's Bread, though not from his
> Father's leather to the bone, here now figuratively applied to his figuring
> and calculating the lost days,"it minimizes exceptional, incommensurable
> achievements in art and love." The global currency (Scientific Time and
> Financial Derivatives), as the Landlord suggests (192), is based on
> a purported direct, immediate apprehension or vision of truth (The Book of
> Revelations"), one that resists critical reflection because it is the
> special gift of a spiritual and cognitive elite. These gods of Science and
> Finance conspire with the "Walpole-Gang[s]" to rob the People of their
> Time.
>
> Mason takes the melancholic humorist's position, Swiftian in its
> misanthropic analysis of Language, Love, and Death in the Western World.
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 8:59 AM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Veblen and Weber, Marx, are on the books that Pynchon may have read and
>> been influenced by, What about Georg Simmel? _The Philosophy of Money_,
>> maybe?
>>
>> Here, from that Online Encyclopedia we all love is a bit worth
>> considering:
>>
>> Simmel believed people created value by making objects, then separating
>> themselves from those objects and then trying to overcome that distance. He
>> found that objects that were too close were not considered valuable and
>> objects that were too far away for people to obtain were also not
>> considered valuable. What was also considered in determining value was the
>> scarcity, time, sacrifice, and difficulties involved in getting objects. In
>> the pre-modern era, beginning with bartering, different systems of exchange
>> for goods and services allowed for the existence of incomparable systems of
>> value (land, food, honor, love, etc.). With the advent of a universal
>> currency as an intermediary, these systems became reconcilable, as
>> everything tended to become expressible in a single quantifiable metric:
>> its monetary cost.
>>
>> Simmel's outlook, while gloomy, is not wholly negative. As money and
>> transactions increase, the independence of an individual decreases as he or
>> she is drawn into a holistic network of exchange governed by quantifiable
>> monetary value. Paradoxically, this results in greater potential freedom of
>> choice for the individual, as money can be deployed toward any possible
>> goal, even if most people's sheer lack of money renders that potential
>> quite low much of the time. Money's homogenizing nature encourages greater
>> liberty and equality, even as it minimizes exceptional, incommensurable
>> achievements in art and love.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_Money
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 8:36 PM, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Why that turn in the common phrase? So Pynchon writes that Mason
>>> "invested Precious Sleep" and don't we expect that Mason *Lost* or *Wasted*
>>> or *Spent* Precious *Time* and not that he Invested Precious Sleep. Mason
>>> did not invest Time or Money. Time is money and money time. But Sleep is
>>> Precious and is invested when one loses it, wastes it, spends it by not
>>> sleeping. Hamlet would like this riddle. Had he, when a child who posed
>>> questions about the World wasted his father's time/money? What good the
>>> education the Father spent his time/money on if the Son can't explain the
>>> the theft of days to the boys in the Pub?
>>>
>>> The Theory of the Leisure Class
>>>
>>> AND
>>>
>>> What Money Wants.
>>>
>>> http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=21847
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There is a bit of role reversal at the bottom of page 191, betwixt
>>>> Mason and his father.
>>>> «He now began to quiz himself insomniac with this, wond’ring if his
>>>> father had struggled thus with Mason’s own earlier questions about the
>>>> World. He invested Precious Sleep in the Question, and saw not a Farthing’s
>>>> Dividend"»
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> > 30. mar. 2015 kl. 20.48 skrev Elisabeth Romberg <eromberg at mac.com>:
>>>> >
>>>> > This chapter is a real close up on Mason. From the shoe-buckle to
>>>> internal dialogue and memories of his father.
>>>> > On page 191 there are two hints that lead us to think Mason
>>>> (regularly?) took a beating from his father, right?
>>>> >
>>>> > But Leather and Bone? Should it not’ve said Leather and Flesh?
>>>> >
>>>> > -
>>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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