CoL49 - Scurvhamites

[Joseph Tracy]

The Scurvhamite ideas are in some ways not all that unusual in their extreme division of spirit and flesh and could easily be extrapolated from  the apostle Paul’s teaching just as Calvinism was.  It doesn’t seem to emphasize the idea of punishment or Hell but has the majority of  a predestined universe simply moving in machinelike inevitability toward dissolution as the final result of entropy. It is not so different from certain modern scientific understanding. The hard part for the sect would inevitably be to discern any sign they were in the blessed part of the divine will. 

> On Jul 27, 2024, at 7:44 AM, J K Van Nort via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps it is just a weak thread, but I can't help but dissect Scurvhamite. My first thought was scurvy, the disease/condition that results from a lack of vitamin C, which to play with the analogy with the Protestant sect would be their lack of compromise, which as Michael pointed out with Goedel's theory of incompleteness/completeness, leads to a stress on their structure of truth that can't be maintained. Then there is the 'ham', which is usually an ending in England for towns/cities. Robert Scurvham leads a diseased hamlet that literally loses its teeth/members because of its inflexiblity.
> 
> Riffing that may mean nothing, but the Scurvhamites definitely represent the ad absurdum extreme of the Protestant/Puritan belief system.
> 
> In solidarity,
> James
> 
> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
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