M & D

[alice malice]

What is mathematically a Necessity? From the dialogue my guess is that
Dixon is talking about the VOC. And, his quip about the Deistic God,
by analogy, suggests that Dixon is alluding to the philosophical and
religious, and also mathematical, and logical, arguments for and
against God's / VOC's infinity, omnipresence, and so on. The grim joke
here is that, from Aristotle through to Berkeley, such questions were
of God, but now they are of VOC. That an entity as ubiquitous and as
powerful as VOC exists needs no proof, but the infinity of it,
mathematically, logistically, and with P we know that the anachronism
of such questions often point to Wittgenstein, is a far more complex
question when God is gone and uncertainty remains, necessity,
mathematical or any other kind, is indeterminate.

On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 8:49 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> MK> And why does Dixon say this is  "by Mathematical Necessity?
>
> I think it's a (mostly) anachronistic allusion to a cluster of mathematical
> and physical ideas about dynamical flows and fields: that (except in
> unrealistically ideal circumstances) there are always backwaters, dead
> zones, singularities, eye-of-the-hurricane places where generally prevalent
> influences don't act or cancel out. See also the discussion of the Eleven
> Days as a vortex, 555-556.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_theorem
>
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 6:03 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> p. 69....D; "there do remain, beyond the reach of the V.O.C., routes
>> of escape, pockets of Safety"---Markets that never answer to the
>> Company, gatherings that remain forever unknown, even down in
>> Butter-Bag Castle""....
>>
>> Butter--Bag = Opprobrious epithets for a Dutchman...(maybe because of
>> of the high production of butter)...sez an 1811 Slang Dictionary.....
>>
>> And why does Dixon say this is  "by Mathematical Necessity?
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l