M-D and GR / M&D

[alice malice]

>From V. and The Secret Integration to M&D the ideas from Wiener and
Adams haunt Pynchon's writings (fiction and non-fiction). For most of
human history man was a tool maker and user of tools that were
extensions of his own organism and these tools did not have, and as
Mumford emphasizes in his classic, Technics 7 Civilization, "they did
not SEEM to have and independent existence" (321). The tools, Mumford
argues, forced man to recognize the limits of his capacities. Certain
parts of the environment could neither be intimidated nor controlled
by man, so he must learn the laws of their behavior, and so technics
tended to create a picture of an objective reality...with the machine,
education and the process were integral to the use of tools and the
craft of hands, but with the machine the process was largely done as
preparation by a technician, an engineer, designer, who alone
understood the workings of the independent machine. The mechanistic
production and the depersonalized and dehumanized production is not
yet in place when Mason and Dixon come to America, where, as we
discussed, the economy grows by its natural bounty and by population,
but Pynchon shows how we get to Ahab's floating factory, the search
for oil, the mad and diabolical man on steel rails driving his machine
into the Death, as certain as one by a bomb,  the Rocket with his name
on it.  By M-D we have assimilated the objects and rejected the spirit
that produced them, though there are, in the carpenter, for example,
who makes Ahab's leg, a phantom limb of the machine Mason and Dixon
drive through the woods. Ahab turns to magic and cult, but Nature is
too powerful, too free, independent of all his monomaniacal control.
Our boys are haunted by the Pequad, the African's Beloved, Ahab calls
on these and others to hunt, not for Christ, but for Certitude, for
certain and absolute knowledge and control. This is, of course, he
subject of GR.

On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 6:15 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> One could say, and must make it carry some special meaning, that
> only with intricate devices and techniks are there problems, or
> certain kinds of problems at least.
>
> The possibilities of mechanical error increase as techniks does.
> It is all a Step-Function.
>
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 12:01 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There are three, at least, chapters in M-D that feature problems Ahab
>> has with his measuring devices and techniques.
>>
>> CHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.
>>
>> CHAPTER 124. The Needle.
>>
>> CHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.
>>
>>
>>
>> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm#link2HCH0118
>>
>> also, this may interest some here:
>>
>> Memory Machines: Exploring Moby-Dick and Gravity's Rainbow Through the
>> History of Film Benjamin Paul Spencer
>>
>>
>> http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-03182011-210113/unrestricted/Spencer_BP_T_2011.pdf
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l