[lit-ideas] Re: Simone Weil (Was: Kataphatic, Negative and Apophatic Theo...

  • From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 14:47:47 -0400

>Mr. Stone, as a hard-headed, no-nonsense scientist, you are obviously=20
>much better suited than an artsy-fartsy pantywaste like Weil to talk=20
>about the *real* wolrd, which is of course only studied by *hard=20
>science*. Would you please be so kind, therefore, as briefly to explain=20=
>
>what gravity really is? I've never been able to grasp the concept, no=20
>doubt because I too am a limp-wristed macram=E9-and-granola-type pinko,=20=
>
>rather than a macho scientist like you.

I'm no macho Scientist, and I did my time as a limp-wristed granola-type 
(never pinko though) artsy. I'm somewhere in between. I'm a middleman. I 
don't like the fact that in the Engineering Building at the local Uni, it 
says "arts degree, pull here" on the toilet paper dispenser AND, at the 
same university, in the arts building, it says the opposite ("Engineering 
Degree, pull here"). Both sections of society are blissfully ignorant, but 
also dismissive of the other. As a member of both, I think I can talk 
somewhat intelligently about both, so...

I anticipated a reply such as yours (this is why I only post about 1 out of 
10 compositions -- it takes too much time and effort to fight 10 battles at 
once)

Here's an attempt:

Nobody knows what actually _causes_ the thing that we call "gravity".

But we all know that when there is "nothing" between an object and the 
earth, the object tends to go to the earth. Let's withhold the artistic 
implications of this momentarily.

Scientifically speaking there is an attractive "force" between two masses 
which is roughly equal to the equation of Newton's Gravitational constant 
(G) times (the two masses  m = mass one, M = mass two) over the square of 
the distance between their centres. Predictable eh?

so we have g = GmM/r^2. If you substitute the numbers for earth and a 
relatively small object (anything less than a few thousand tons) that force 
causes an acceleration that is roughly equal to 32 ft/s/s or 9.8 m/s/s. For 
local purposes (in the Earth's general vicinity -- it's surface 
and  atmosphere) this is good enough to tell us what this thing called 
gravity does. It's an ironclad, predictive capability.

AND, whether they know the "science" behind it (afterall, not even macho 
scientists -- of which there are virtually none, they're mostly geeks -- 
know WHY it happens) everyone knows what gravity is -- intuitively. So I'm 
not really saying anything am I!

But what gravity is NOT is something to be extended to things that don't 
even relate to what gravity IS as we know it. Of course we don't know  WHAT 
gravity is, but we certainly DO know what it has nothing to do with. I 
wouldn't quibble if someone linked their metaphor to at least any 
combination of something that is attractive, or every increasing in 
acceleration at a constant rate, or acting on us invisibly or any of the 
ACTUAL characteristics of what we know as gravity.

But, when you square a number -- raise it to the second power -- you 
multiply it by itself and get a tangible number that represents something. 
Raising a pair of wings to the second power is meaningless. It's dumb. Just 
like equating grace, another inneffable 'thing' to gravity is silly. Just 
looking at how Weil "equates" the two reveals this. Julie is kind by 
calling Weil's comparisons "cryptic". For something to be cryptic, it has 
to be decipherable. There's no message here. It's a case of the emperor's 
old clothes.

I don't know what causes gravity, but I know what it is and so does 
everyone else. "Grace" on the other hand, not so much.

My argument is against Weil's pervasive use of a metaphor (if it wasn't 
meant to be published, then by gum, why are we even talking about it? Maybe 
she knew what she was short-handing and knew that it was not fully 
developed) that doesn't elicit any real meaning for the reader. And this 
happens ALL the time with people grabbing a ripe metaphor and running down 
the field with it, only to see it's rotten by the time they get to the 
end-zone (see, it happens ALL the time).

My objection to the use of "gravity" is that she is not using it to mean 
"seriousness" like "he understood the gravity of the situation" (probably 
should be "graveness" to preclude this tendency to confuse) she is actually 
referring to this thing, whose cause you and I both admit we know very 
little about, and in my humble opinion, it doesn't work, for the reasons 
that I've tried to show.

So... in the end, I admit that I know not what gravity is. I do know what 
it isn't though and Weil seems to be playing loose with its distinction. I 
just don't appreciate it. It has nothing to do with the fact that I'm a 
"macho scientist", because I'm neither macho, nor a scientist.

Now, I hope that I can get those "meaningful" quotes when Julie finds her 
book.

Fuck I can't believe that people think I'm close-minded. That hurts.

paul



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