Wolfe and Materialism

Gerry Quinn · 13 Feb 2011, 15:53 · from 2011-February.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2011 15:53:38 -0000
Subject: (urth) Wolfe and Materialism
References: <SNT123-W58854CAEACE6DBA0BF137CCFD10 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <BF77A3F06A884EDE9B553AEA71BFEC0C@jill>

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>Gerry QUinn:

>>Certainly in such cases we can use allusive hints to determine *which*
>>'nuts and bolts' explanation best fits the story.  But it does not alter 
>>the fact
>>that we can never validly use them as substitutes for such explanations. 
>>At
>>least in books that can usefully be analysed, which is what I meant by
>>"written to be understood".  I did not mean by it that every last detail 
>>is
>>explained.
>
> Gerry who told you that all works of art must have a "nuts and bolts" 
> meaning which
> supersedes all allegorical meanings? Seriously, I am having trouble 
> understanding where
> this idea is coming from. I actually think Ireland has produced some of 
> the most notable
> authors for whom one must essentially ignore the nuts and bolts meaning of 
> the text to be
> able to discern the true meaning.

Well, now you see the source of my ill-humour. I am surrounded by fey folks 
dancing around talking about their conversations with fairies, and all I can 
do it sit in a corner scowling over a pint of Guinness and muttering that 
the gods of materialism will soon come to sweep all this nonsense away ;-)

Did I say all works of art?  I think I confined by theory to "books that can 
usefully be analysed"!  Whether you want to include Finnegans Wake in this 
category isn't of great moment to me.  What Wolfe writes isn't Finnegans 
Wake.  Also, I most emphatically did *not* say "supersedes".  Once again you 
are putting words in my mouth.  I said that allusions, allegorical means 
etc. are not *substitutes* for the functions performed by nuts and bolts 
meanings. Allusive interpretations are important but they have their own 
function to perform; to put them in the place of  physical interpretations 
is simply a category error.  Particularly in science fiction / science 
fantasy novels.

Imagine we find a passage in BotLS in which Silk dreams that the Whorl is a 
walnut.  I don't know of such a passage, but it's not a particularly 
implausible concept.  Perhaps we see signs that this motif is important; for 
example it is repeated elsewhere.  We can easily find "meanings" for this - 
the Whorl is a small shell floating in infinite space (something Wolfe has 
in fact conveyed by some other means).  We might or might not find our 
reading experienced enhanced by some reference to Hamlet.  But they are 
still allusions, not nuts and bolts explanations of anything.

Now suppose somebody starts reading too much into the walnut allegory - 
starts making that category error I was talking about.  Suddenly there's a 
long thread in which people are insisting that the Whorl really is a walnut. 
Somebody finds a mention of a walnut tree in BotNS, and suddenly there's no 
stopping it.  If the walnut tree belongs to Father Inire it's a slam dunk, 
but if not - hey, it could be Father Inire in disguisel.  People chime in on 
all sides - the walnut, or some nut, was special to Dionysus or some other 
Greek god.  Some woman in Viron is named after a plant related to the 
walnut.  Silk is really half man, half walnut tree.  It's all rubbish, 
because the Whorl is an asteroid, not a walnut.  The physical asteroid 
explanation dominates the walnut explanation.  The walnut explanation simply 
cannot validly substitute for the asteroid explanation.  That's what I mean 
by saying that allusions cannot substitute for nuts and bolts explanations. 
When they are made to do so, it leads to nonsense.

>>That could be valid in a universe in which the Outsider for some reason
>>chooses always to send visions by way of minor neurological catastrophes.
>>However I don't think we have any evidence to suppose this is the case in
>>BotLS.  If it isn't, Crane is wrong about both cause and event.
>
> You are missing the point. What you (and Dr. Crane) call a "minor 
> neurological
> catastrophe" might be a major re-routing which leads to exponential new
> awareness and insight. Why do you feel compelled to choose one result or 
> another
> when it can be both, simultaneously?

The point you're not getting is that Crane has not examined Silk's brain. 
He is pointing out that mini-strokes in a certain area of the brain can 
cause religious experiences.  He is postulating a cause for Silk's 
experience, and he is (at least by my reading)  incorrect.  And unless the 
Outsider always chooses to enlighten by way of such means (which is possible 
but not demonstrated) he is wrong in his implicit prediction that if he were 
to examine Silk's brain he would find evidence of a burst artery in the 
correct location.

> (FWIW, I'm sure you are aware that the brain capacity for Neanderthals was 
> greater than it is for
> modern H. sapiens. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes turning portions of 
> the brain off can produce
> greater clarity than leaving them all on ;- ))

This is speculation on my part, but it may be that the influx of Neanderthal 
genes is in part responsible for the variations in average brain size 
between modern human populations, which correlate to some extent with 
measures of intelligence.

There's no reason to believe that the larger brain size of Neanderthals was 
a disadvantage to them; some factors must have brought about their 
extinction, but large brains on the face of it are not the most probable. 
Conversely, it may be that Homo sapiens found some way to improve the 
efficiency of smaller brains, so we don't know which species was more 
intelligent - even by Homo sapiens standards, which may be biased.

- Gerry Quinn

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