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Re: THOUGHTS: Time and Relativity]
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SB:I should add that, while yours truly is biased towards admitting these kinds of discussions, if they stray from engaging specific Nabokov texts or contexts, they will become too abstract for most of our subscribers and our editorial policy.
Sergei Soloviev:.. this second law of thermodynamics ...the problem with it is not the (quite convincing) justification that in a closed macroscopic system the enthropy is not decreasing, but in the fundamental question what systems are closed. (Are there any?)...we consider some particles as indivisible,but in fact they have inner structure...as far as I know nobody yet verified the effect on classical calculations of enthropy of the recent discoveries like long-distance quantum coupling (a particle depends on its "twin" at any distance - Bell'stheorem, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox and related experiments etc.) This is also a major blow to the notion of closed system...
JM: Practically all compendia on Physics and Math are totally incomprehensible to me. This is why S K-B's paragraph came as a comfort: Do we need to analyze the above statements, two teasing "narrative levels" removed from VN qua VN, as VN's own deeply-held world-view as a _scientist_? We can _invent_ all kinds of theories/speculations about the structure (or lack of) of space and time, but there _is_ something uninvented to which these terms seriously (adultly!) apply and amidst which we "move and have our being.".
Even if words cannot eff everything related to chaos and cosmos because there is an externality that evades their definition, I still harbored the impressions that mathematicians assumed that Maths and number would provide the ultimate answer, one exempt of any link-and-bobolink or boomerangs of nonsense.
S K-B's words opened a closed box for me...not Pandora's, I hope.
VN's quote he brought up ("The hardest knot is but a meandering string; tough to the finger nails,but really a matter of lazy and graceful loopings. The eye undoes it,while clumsy fingers bleed. He (the dying man) was that knot, and he would be untied at once, if he could manage to see and follow the thread." ) made me remember William Golding in "Visible Darkness" ( I don't think VN ever mentioned his name), connected to unravelling mortal coils and enthropy, but Golding was not as optimistic as VN's "he would be untied at once".
Curiosuly, untied is an anagram of united. As the Sphynx and Oedipous in Cocteau's "La Machine Infernale", perhaps, where coils and folds are part of the fabric that was pierced by a pin only once but which, being opened, revealed time and even-spaced holes along its extension.Instead of holes in a tapestry, Nabokov's metaphors suggest overlapping patterns ( Ada, PF).
...................................................
(The paper-cut sent yesterday comes from the Hirshorn Modern Art Gallery)
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Sergei Soloviev:.. this second law of thermodynamics ...the problem with it is not the (quite convincing) justification that in a closed macroscopic system the enthropy is not decreasing, but in the fundamental question what systems are closed. (Are there any?)...we consider some particles as indivisible,but in fact they have inner structure...as far as I know nobody yet verified the effect on classical calculations of enthropy of the recent discoveries like long-distance quantum coupling (a particle depends on its "twin" at any distance - Bell'stheorem, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox and related experiments etc.) This is also a major blow to the notion of closed system...
JM: Practically all compendia on Physics and Math are totally incomprehensible to me. This is why S K-B's paragraph came as a comfort: Do we need to analyze the above statements, two teasing "narrative levels" removed from VN qua VN, as VN's own deeply-held world-view as a _scientist_? We can _invent_ all kinds of theories/speculations about the structure (or lack of) of space and time, but there _is_ something uninvented to which these terms seriously (adultly!) apply and amidst which we "move and have our being.".
Even if words cannot eff everything related to chaos and cosmos because there is an externality that evades their definition, I still harbored the impressions that mathematicians assumed that Maths and number would provide the ultimate answer, one exempt of any link-and-bobolink or boomerangs of nonsense.
S K-B's words opened a closed box for me...not Pandora's, I hope.
VN's quote he brought up ("The hardest knot is but a meandering string; tough to the finger nails,but really a matter of lazy and graceful loopings. The eye undoes it,while clumsy fingers bleed. He (the dying man) was that knot, and he would be untied at once, if he could manage to see and follow the thread." ) made me remember William Golding in "Visible Darkness" ( I don't think VN ever mentioned his name), connected to unravelling mortal coils and enthropy, but Golding was not as optimistic as VN's "he would be untied at once".
Curiosuly, untied is an anagram of united. As the Sphynx and Oedipous in Cocteau's "La Machine Infernale", perhaps, where coils and folds are part of the fabric that was pierced by a pin only once but which, being opened, revealed time and even-spaced holes along its extension.Instead of holes in a tapestry, Nabokov's metaphors suggest overlapping patterns ( Ada, PF).
...................................................
(The paper-cut sent yesterday comes from the Hirshorn Modern Art Gallery)
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/