Quaternions

[Noah]

I would argue that the wikipedia entry is a poor place to begin learning
about quaternions;  while it is (to the best of my — limited — knowledge)
completely correct, it does little more than state facts which unless one
already has experience in the subject, appear as .  In other words, it
fails to articulate —and therefore fails to engender in the student— the
elegances within the subject which would constitute something I might call
knowledge .  The not-quite-innocent substitution of fact for knowledge
plagues wikipedia.  (Of course, in this case Wikipedia is just the site of
condensation for what I see as a larger cultural fetishization of meaning
over process.)

I would argue that— at his best -- Pynchon manages to rearticulate the
substance of scientific/mathematic discourse in word.  (Of course I
recognize that I have not written nearly enough to defend this hypothesis—
for now its just a feeling you might have to take on faith to follow me …)
 In doing so, he achieves precisely that which the wikipedia article fails:
to lead us to touch the essence — the symmetry, we might imagine him
writing — between ideas, the structure of which constitutes their essential
beauty.  Of course in arguing this I am affirming that the “object” of
Pynchon’s activity is not a substance but an almost physically palpable
experience of relation.  Put another way, I believe that the project of
reading Pynchon is not to understand by reference to a given “truth”
 (let’s say, wikipedia-verified-fact about quaternion) so much as the
generation of the experience of truth.

Of course, I think that knowledge of the material from which Pynchon is
drawing does complicate — I want to avoid the latent pejorative in
“enhance” — our reading of his novels.  In my opinion it performs a
function similar to literary allusion insofar as it recuperates another
experience of the world and uses it to invigorate its own form. (I’m
thinking here loosely of Robert Harrison’s idea of “juvenescence”).
Indeed, I am consistently impressed by the ways that Pynchon appropriates
technical science/math concepts in a way that neither reduces the integrity
of the original —particularly a concern when authors [mis-]use science as
justified deus ex machina — nor requires that we understand the “technical”
in the same rigor as we might if we were studying the subject for itself.

Hopefully some of that made sense — sorry for any derailing of the original
subject ...

Noah

On August 15, 2017 at 3:18:37 PM, L E Bryan (lebryan at sonic.net) wrote:

I suppose anyone interested would delve into the wikipedia entry on
quaternions. If after reading to the bottom of that entry one is still
interested in pursuing them relative to AtD…

It is so easy to give the appearance of bountiful knowledge of any esoteric
subject by dropping a word here and there. I doubt P has more than a
superficial knowledge of quaternions. It does have a nice ring to it.
Quaternion. It rolls off the tongue with such esoteric significance.

However if the P-list wants to learn about them, I’d be willing to help
with what I recall from 50 years ago.

Lawrence

On Aug 15, 2017, at 3:41 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:


Here's a thread worth talking about, maybe? Imaginary numbers in AtD are
bad shit---in TRP's vision. ....

On Tue, Aug 15, 2017 at 6:17 AM, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yes. I was aware of imaginary numbers and the whole notion of a plane of
> numbers (i.e. numbers expressed in 2 dimensions, rather than the 1
> dimension we're used to), but had never encountered the word Quaternion
> until reading Against the Day.
>
> Not that I'm equipped to give the lecture, but it's interesting to note
> that once you grant the notion of a 2D range of numbers, there's no reason
> to stop at 2. It's easy to imagine 3D numbers; after that it's a bit of a
> stretch, at least for this old mind.
>
> Arthur
>
> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 9:40 PM, L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net> wrote:
>
>> An interesting pursuit. Was it just through P that you started learning
>> about them?
>>
>> > On Aug 14, 2017, at 5:34 PM, Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Pursuant to Against the Day, I've been learning about Quaternions. I
>> know a thing or two about complex numbers, certainly not a lot; but I'm
>> learning about both the theory and various applications such as
>> electromagnetism.
>> >
>> > Whether this is going to make me understand P. more deeply remains to
>> be seen, but I do find the whole subject interesting.
>> >
>> > Arthur
>> >
>> > --
>> > Arthur
>> >
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Arthur
>
>
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