MD- Deep Duck - Chapter 10 (sermon)

[Joseph Tracy]

 OK- thoughts. 
The truth/truths/ (most accurate verbal and mathematical descriptions/best working theories) about the universe keep shifting both from a religious/spiritual and from a scientific POV.  These shifts have made more people  feel like the limits of what is truly understood by humans should keep us humble enough to treat different approaches with respect.  The Chinese have a system of thought and medicine that has been around for ages with a very different basis from western medicine or philosophy , but it is very comparably effective on a pragmatic level, and if you read books like the Body Electric it becomes evident that both systems may be pointing toward common ground both scientifically and philosophically.  What connects everything, what keeps everything and particularly us  from being connected in a happier way? Open questions 

I have argued that Pynchon creates a 3 level literary universe which teats mythos and magic, or traditional fictional  realism with the same openness and satire as history or science.   He warns us about our own power for destruction as a species. He points to many ways of knowing and acting  in his books ,  he does it without telling us what to think.  I am fairly sure this invitation to think is why we come here.
On Feb 15, 2015, at 10:09 AM, Becky Lindroos wrote:

> Chapter 10 - p. 94 
> 
> Overview:   (from Wiki):  
> The opening of the episode returns to Philadelphia where the Reverend, using an orrery, lectures on the Transit of Venus and the solar parallax. In Cape Town, the skies clear long enough for Mason and Dixon to take their observations. A strange lassitude descends on the colony for several weeks after the event but normal routines are soon restored, even as the Vroom daughters find new objects for their attentions. After several months, Mason and Dixon depart Cape Town aboard the Mercury. The Reverend closes the episode by musing whether something other than philosophical or scientific desire drives astronomers worldwide to their observations.”
> 
> ****
>> From an unpublished Sermon: 
> 
> *  "As Planets do the Sun, we orbit ’round God according to Laws as elegant as Kepler’s.  God is as sensible to us, as a Sun to a Planet.  Tho’ we do not see Him, yet we know where in our Orbits we run, — when we are closer, when more distant, — when in His light and when in shadow of our own making. . . . We feel as components of Gravity His Love,  His Need,  whatever it be that keeps us circling. Surely if a Planet be a living Creature, then it knows, by something even more wondrous than Human Sight, where its Sun shines, however far it lie.  We feel as components of Gravity,  His Love"*
> Gravity’s Rainbow?  Or not? 
> 
> I think this chunk of unpublished sermon is included to acknowledge that science and religion had NOT gone their separate ways at that point.  (I think in the US that was in the 1920s with the Scopes Trial.)  In fact,  discovering the universal laws of nature, especially in astronomy,  worked quite well with the religion of some scientific men.  Later this developed into what was called the “Watchmaker analogy.”  Meanwhile,  the idea that history was the search for Christ was covered in Chapter 7 (p. 75).   
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy
> 
> ** The scientific revolution "nurtured a growing awareness" that "there were universal laws of nature at work that ordered the movement of the world and its parts." James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong write that in "astronomy, the Copernican revolution regarding the heliocentrism of the solar system, Johannes Kepler's (1571–1630) three laws of planetary motion, and Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) law of universal gravitation—laws of gravitation and of motion, and notions of absolute space and time—all combined to establish the regularities of heavenly and earthly bodies.” 
> 
> For Sir Isaac Newton, "the regular motion of the planets made it reasonable to believe in the continued existence of God."[4] Newton also upheld the idea that "like a watchmaker, God was forced to intervene in the universe and tinker with the mechanism from time to time to ensure that it continued operating in good working order."[5] Like Newton, René Descartes viewed "the cosmos as a great time machine operating according to fixed laws, a watch created and wound up by the great watchmaker."[6]  **
> 
> So for Cherrycoke to be preaching a positive comparison between astronomy and religion/God is interesting in that it shows the two entities were not separate at the time- in Cherrycoke’s age the Natural World was God’s World.  So it follows that Mason and Dixon could be both men of cutting edge science and look to a God of the cosmos including Jesus Christ.   
> 
> Thoughts?  
> ***********
> 
> Bek
> 
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