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Re: THOUGHTS: Time and Relativity
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Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS: Time and Relativity
S. K-Bootle: Science (capital S) addresses the properties/relations of those objects that can be observed/measured using the Scientific method!
JM: No room for "psychic reality", no human sciences, linguistics, semiotics apply in this case. No Goedel, no Meinong... just Bertrand Russel and his elimination of any B-type unicorns and angel "consistencies"?
S K-B:Your term "verbal objects" requires caution because we apply useful, often overlapping, names to both type-As and Bs. For example, compare the type-B "stiff vane" formerly on Shade's roof with the type-A "stiff vane" on my neighbour's roof [...] We particularly admire VN's Type-B descriptions because he has carefully observed the corresponding Type-As and reports properties/relationships we may have overlooked. But the more interesting Type-Bs include (i) Unicorns and gods! (ii) Square-triangles; members of the empty set (iii) Hilbert spaces (iv) thoughts, beauty, love ...
JM: You placed, under Type-B "realities", unicorns, members of the empty set, beauty, love and even "thoughts". Your former experimenter, R.L.Gregory, if I remember it correctly, concluded one of his articles by prophesizing a world in which computer machines and mathematical systems would converse with one another whereas we, poor humans, shall be left out, unable to understand a thing ( thing, or whatever). I already feel that way most of the time and we are simply discussing time and relativity in literary spacetime, enriched by emotion, humour, sensoriality and metaphor! (I suppose the use of metaphors is not encouraged in capital Science for this realm cannot be observed and measured?)
Victor Fet (The Nabokovian, 60,2008) on "Zoological Label as Literary Form" illustrates your point about VN's "Type-B description in correspondence to carefully observed Type-As". He mentions "biogeography" and offers the VN example of a boy walking into the picture from a Russian to a US spruce forest while noting that, in Russia, the spruce forest is latitudinal but in America it is altitudinal: "the movement is not just east to west as any Russian emigrant's; it is also clearly directed quite literally upward - from the Russian lowlands to the American highlands."; three-dimensional labels and their "pre-Babel condition". There are many other works, I'm certain, dealing with this particular talent uniting VN as a scientist and a writer. VN's "method" justifies explorations, such as Jerry Friedman's tour into a lepidoptera crossing in New Wye.
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S. K-Bootle: Science (capital S) addresses the properties/relations of those objects that can be observed/measured using the Scientific method!
JM: No room for "psychic reality", no human sciences, linguistics, semiotics apply in this case. No Goedel, no Meinong... just Bertrand Russel and his elimination of any B-type unicorns and angel "consistencies"?
S K-B:Your term "verbal objects" requires caution because we apply useful, often overlapping, names to both type-As and Bs. For example, compare the type-B "stiff vane" formerly on Shade's roof with the type-A "stiff vane" on my neighbour's roof [...] We particularly admire VN's Type-B descriptions because he has carefully observed the corresponding Type-As and reports properties/relationships we may have overlooked. But the more interesting Type-Bs include (i) Unicorns and gods! (ii) Square-triangles; members of the empty set (iii) Hilbert spaces (iv) thoughts, beauty, love ...
JM: You placed, under Type-B "realities", unicorns, members of the empty set, beauty, love and even "thoughts". Your former experimenter, R.L.Gregory, if I remember it correctly, concluded one of his articles by prophesizing a world in which computer machines and mathematical systems would converse with one another whereas we, poor humans, shall be left out, unable to understand a thing ( thing, or whatever). I already feel that way most of the time and we are simply discussing time and relativity in literary spacetime, enriched by emotion, humour, sensoriality and metaphor! (I suppose the use of metaphors is not encouraged in capital Science for this realm cannot be observed and measured?)
Victor Fet (The Nabokovian, 60,2008) on "Zoological Label as Literary Form" illustrates your point about VN's "Type-B description in correspondence to carefully observed Type-As". He mentions "biogeography" and offers the VN example of a boy walking into the picture from a Russian to a US spruce forest while noting that, in Russia, the spruce forest is latitudinal but in America it is altitudinal: "the movement is not just east to west as any Russian emigrant's; it is also clearly directed quite literally upward - from the Russian lowlands to the American highlands."; three-dimensional labels and their "pre-Babel condition". There are many other works, I'm certain, dealing with this particular talent uniting VN as a scientist and a writer. VN's "method" justifies explorations, such as Jerry Friedman's tour into a lepidoptera crossing in New Wye.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/