We are heading for Pynchonland! A strange place, just around a multidimensional corner, which one might cut by means of fancy untested machinery or just good ol' dynamite. Lest you find yourself as overwhelmed by the sheer volume (and, certainly, density - or should I say, information entropy function) of Pynchon's latest novel, as I certainly do, I suggest you start with something other than his latest, Against the Day.
Against the Day is a casket, containing Pynchon's obsession with 1900s physics, anarchism and popular entertainment. It's all about waking up one fine day, tasting a Proustian madeleine thus suddenly recalling not only another time, but an entire other-self that's been separated from you by the means of icelandic spar --- an enigmatic mineral that twists the aether in such a way, that the imaginary part of the time-plane becomes orthogonal to the spatial dimensions (or something pretty close to this anyway) thus splitting the subject into multiple, co-existent entities.
What I love most about AtD is the concept of the Chums of Chance, a "celebrated aeronautics club", which leads a sort of double existence, as both characters within AtD, as well as a group of characters within various dime novels read by various other characters within AtD! At some point they even wonder about their stereotypicalness, truely stranger than fiction.
Businesscard of a typical character in a Against the DayBesides mind-boggling thought-experiments in theoretical physics (was that a 2nd order oxymoron, perhaps?), the novel is a caricature of class warfare. Wage-slaving Prolterians fight the wealthy, vile Vibe family ("the bad vibes", d'uh). Of course, this being America, this is not a fight for communism, but rather anarchism. Still, it's miners versus owners, featuring the miner's iconic weapon of choice, several sticks of dynamite!
Anarchism is a topic of deserved curiosity. Owing to the late hour, I will simply cut to the chase: Although anarchism has this very romantic, liberal air, would not a great many of the proposed "anarchisms" (such as anarcho-syndicatism et cetera) either result in a liberal welfare micro-state, or simply turn a blind eye on social injustice? - Just a gut feeling, not an expert's opinion, mind you.
Post Postum: Post Euphoria in English! This was a first! See you next week in French (going to be a one-liner I bet) --- Oh, one year anniversary as well :3
2 Kommentare:
2nd order oxymoron, perhaps - guess not. the first alleged oxymoron you're referring to is most probably "thought-experiment". by wikipedia's definition an experiment is "a method of investigating causal relationships among variables" [source]. and i totally agree with that. so why shouldn't it be possible that an experiment only takes place in your mind?
i suppose the second oxymoron in "mind-boggling" - i hope you weren't referring to mind-boggling as an attribute to a thought-experiment (otherwise i felt heavily obliged to change your opinion about that) - well, i leave that to people who are more competent on these two things. however, i believe the problem is mainly posed my an incomplete definition of both mind and boggle.
Well, let me explain why I was inclined to call "thought-experiments in theoretical physics" a oxymornon:
"Thought Experiments" (TEs) are based solely upon logic, the act of performing a thought experiment is essentially the same as the act of solving an equation.
Thus they are inherently tautological. The simplest TE would be of the form "If A is true, !A would be false". The goal of a TE is usally to show that the proposition cannot be the case along with other propositions we already assume to be true (e.g. If Schroedinger's cat is neither dead nor alive until we perform a measurment, we might have to conclude that nature contradicts our law of the excluded middle --- I am not sure tough, quite a tricky example).
TEs thus do not truely increase our knowledge about the world, rather they are a tool to check a systen if propositions for inconstiencies, because they _cannot_ show anything else than that.
Experiments are something entirly different, because they are empirical (instead of tautological).
Now, theoretical physics would be the "second" oxymoron, but I guess this is not an oxymoron after all, but merely "half of the story". To be perfectly honest, I can no longer recall what prompted me to call it an oxymoron of the second order, lol!
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