Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 15:27:15 -0600
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: RAHUL: CLUTCHING YOUR PEARLS


Well, Ralph, I definitely respect your desire to end this back and forth. I
want to also, but another besetting flaw of those of us who live in the
cyberworld is a pathetic need to have the last word.


>Rahul, dearest, I regret that we never completed our little
>seminar on physics.  Whatever happened to it?  Did Juan come
>between us?  Well, I am so overwhelmed I'll just leave the topic
>lay down until the intellectual group sex in which I am now
>engaged wears itself out.


I know what you mean. The pseudoerotic stimulation offered by the
artificial and perverted intimacy of the Marxism list has occasioned a
number of cold showers on my part. I'm always happy to talk about physics,
but I would like at least a tenuous connection to the social issues that
are the meat of this list. I didn't particularly want to debate Juan on the
matter for the same reason I don't go down to argue about Marx with frat
boys. But, Juan, if you're out there and still want to start your
cyberseminar on gravity, I'll be there with bells on.

On the subject of the social relevance of physics, I have to say that
nothing annoys me more than the typical journalistic attempts at this. It
hits my last nerve when I see yet another invocation of the "Heisenberg
uncertainty principle" to explain or justify some very banal observation of
how media coverage of an event has affected it. It shows not only a lack of
understanding of the principle, but actually an inverted understanding.
Furthermore, I don't know whether the point is to appropriate the authority
of science to deal with something beyond its purview, or simply to depict
the scientific enterprise as a playground for idiots. I'll explain in the
article I've been threatening to write. I'm getting to feel like Uncle Lou
here, except that he makes more promises than any human being could keep
and actually delivers the goods sometimes.


>Rahul, your anti-artistic bias is now naked and spread wide before
>us.  However tempted I may be to play in your box, I just don't
>have the time for a thorough explanation of Blake, let alone the
>role of Jesus as Universal Humanity the only God in his cosmology.
>

Ralph, you're not "playing nice" in my little sandbox. The import of my
words was hardly that. Is there no room in your cosmology for nuance? On
this subject, I leave you with two thoughts:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in
your philosophy.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.

(Note to all plagiarism police: I only wish that I could take credit for
saying these things. I do, however, take credit for belonging to the same
species as the authors.)

Rahul




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