vector of desire M&D random

[Monte Davis]

"In the Principia, Newton dealt extensively with what are now considered
vectorial entities (e.g., velocity, force), but never the concept of a
vector. The systematic study and use of vectors were a 19th and early 20th
century phenomenon."

http://www.math.mcgill.ca/labute/courses/133f03/VectorHistory.html

"vector" here strikes me as one of P's deliberate anachronisms.
Mathematicians didn't formally define it until the mid-19th century.
Although the idea of a directed quantity would have made sense to
mathematicians and astronomers after Descartes and Newton, it's unlikely
that in the 1780s DePugh -- even as a Cambridge student with "an early
aptitude with Figures" -- would have come up with that word so readily in
this context, or been understood so readily by the Rev'd Cherrycoke. Does
anyone have the OED handy for earliest citations in astronomy?

That said, note the "as if" simile of *projection* here: Cherrycoke
suggests that the telescope transports us "to the Object we wish to
examine." Maybe even a hint of the very old idea -- abandoned in science by
M&D's time -- that vision entails something emitted from the eye?

On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 12:19 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> random
>  pg 96 Vector of desire. An astronomy term? Lacan? Other reader's
> thoughts, insights.
>
> CH 10 CherryCoke is much more interesting to me this time around. His
> quote fom his unpublished Sermons is rather lovely, comparing our sense of
> the Divine to the earth’s sense of relation to the sun. Very Gaia
> hypothesis kind of thing.
>  We see that the adult component of the listeners coming to hear Ccoke is
> growing. He is getting a bit of flak from them. Is P describing a process
> where he, in a satiric mode, champions the marginal, the colonized, and the
> youn upstarts of his generation like Richard Farina who have questioned the
> wars and the demonization of Cuba , drawing them and the literary avant
> garde first as an audience, and then attracts those who want to modify the
> radical aspects of his satire? Because Ccoke is also a satirist, an
> irreverent reverend feeding salacious stories of real life to the young,
> but also critiquing Clairol culture, and Calvinism and connecting it to
> racial abuse among many other humorous cultural obs.
>
> Not many people joining in the M&D  discussion. Everyone is busy and it is
> a big, cumbersome book. Let’s make sure this is a safe place for newbies,
> and disagreement.  The structure is loose but  just join in and see what
> happens.
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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