4.0312 Borges (2/40)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Mon, 23 Jul 90 18:46:54 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 0312. Monday, 23 Jul 1990.
(1) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 90 16:58:42 MEZ (9 lines)
From: Rudolf WYTEK <Z00WYR01@AWIUNI11>
Subject: Re: 4.0307 Borges and Foucault
(2) Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 11:09 PDT (31 lines)
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0307 Borges and Foucault
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 90 16:58:42 MEZ
From: Rudolf WYTEK <Z00WYR01@AWIUNI11>
Subject: Re: 4.0307 Borges and Foucault
Many thanks for your beautiful and most humane reply, but let me add
one afterthought: I, as the universal librarian of this universal
library, would refuse to accept data in ASCII or EBCDIC introducing
again man-made conventions ... why not use GOEDEL numbers as
representation of all possible information? rwy, Univ. of Vienna.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------36----
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 11:09 PDT
From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject: Re: 4.0307 Borges and Foucault
What has always struck me as the difficulty with the abstrusities of
Leibniz, Descartes, and their parodists, especially the witty parodist,
Borges, is that to speak of generating the infinite numerations
implicit in the concept is to assume, by the impossible leap forward of
the mathematical imagination, that what possibility is present already
present in the abstract. But, to paraphrase and alter TSEliot, What
might[be]remains a perpetual possibility only the world of abstract
speculation. ONLY! Borges himself cancels logic out when he has his
DON QUIXOTE being written again, letter by letter, as if for the first
time, since to say it again as it was said, is superhuman, or
metahuman, perhaps? That is, the element, or factor, or whatever the
devil it is, of TIME is always amited from the calculator, and time
means novelty, time means it has to happen, to come to happen, whatever
we mean by futurity. It happens, and has to be integr ated through the
present into the past. The history of the atom is also a HISTORY.
Viz., the search for the life, or is it halflife, of the proton. The
universe can be described only in mathematics; but if it is not static,
if it is expanding, then it is still coming into being(ness), always.
We do not yet know the history of the first second of the cosmos that we
are cognizant of. It is still a matter of speculation (that word!), or
hypothesis, and easier word. Before we allow ourselves to be swept in
the enthusiasm, the sense of the power of KNOWING, suggested by the
being able to say 0, 01, and say everything, we must realize that we
cannot say or say meaningfully, our own birth, our own death, o ur own
next moment, even before it is known that the next thing I will type will
be a [.] (and perforce, a naming of my name, Kessler at UCLA).