barrington interview

Lee · 08 Oct 2014, 02:19 · from 2014-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee)
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 22:19:13 -0400
Subject: (urth) barrington interview
Message-ID: <BLU175-W40E71F68BAD0DFC9702001CFA30 at phx.gbl>

>Antonio Marques: Lee's example is perhaps not the best, .... he was pointing out that math itself

>even with a shared mind structure (human) has conventions and you're at sea without them. 

>The square root of -1 is something which started as pure convention, no matter the interpretations 

>that were developed later on. Now imagine an alien mind, dividing the same physical world in a 

>different way...

Thanks, Antonio.  I think you explained my thinking better than I could.

 I was going to try responding to Dan'l with possible examples of dark matter or

sub-quarkian physics or pre-Big Bang questions to illustrate items that seem to be at the very limits of

our math-based peripheral vision and then to speculate there is much beyond those things we

cannot see or even conceive of because of our human limitations, among which is math. But your example 

may be even more illustrative.

As you suggest, neither I nor any other human can count to the square root of -1. But I can hypothesize an alien

intelligence which can. Perhaps such a race can "see" gravity and "see" dark matter. Conversely, 

perhaps such a race would be incapable of seeing or counting nine (erm, eight) planets in our solar system or 

even understanding what numbers mean.

I truly think this is what Wolfe is trying to get at with some of his plural, uncountable or otherwise rather

incomprehensible beings in his work.  I find the descriptions he gives us of Shadow Children and The Neighbors

to be frustrating in their lack of ability to inspire a clear mental, visual picture of them and I think that

frustration is deliberately inspired by Wolfe.

>Lee is absolutely right when he points out that everything in communication hinges on shared assumptions.

Thus, I think the frustration we and Severian feel as he converses with Tzadkiel. There is a

desire from both parties to achieve communication and understanding but there is an essential difference in

perspective between pawns and queens on the space-time chessboard, which limits how much understanding

there can be. And I think that's exactly what Wolfe wants us to feel in this literary situation.

I know my view pisses some people off and I apologize for that. But I think math is a primate-brain function

which is awesome in its scope,  but ultimately does not give us the potential to understand all there is to know in 

the universe. I suspect math is actually a limitation we are going to have to leave behind if our understanding and 

awareness of the cosmos is ever to reach true universal levels. In contradiction to the movie Pi, I don't think we'll

find a full understanding of God in mathematics. Whatever God might mean, I suspect it is beyond numbers.

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