The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Reflections of Time Past: Pattern, Time, and Memory in Norman Mailer: Difference between revisions

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 But ''older'' in Eliot’s lines could refer also to the age of mankind, to what many people see as the evolution and increasing complexity of the human world. In the twentieth century, indeed our world did become strange—the curved space-time of Einstein, the mysterious reality of the quantum, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the Freudian depths, the artistic revolutions of modernism and postmodernism, the strangeness of chaos and complexity theory, and—perhaps above all—the horrific traumas of two world wars. The twenty-first century, shadowed by 9/11, is proving no less strange. What about the search for ''pattern''? Many of us, I think, try to find some kind of pattern to the world: maybe a simple philosophy or a paradigm along the lines of Thomas Kuhn.{{efn|Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996) used the idea of ''paradigm'' and ''paradigm shift'' in his ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions''. Although the term ''paradigm'' has been used for a long time in English, it is Kuhn’s usage that since the 1960s has become influential.}} For some, such a search might include some kind of faith commitment such as Judaism or Christianity.{{efn|I briefly examine religion as a form of patterning in the final paragraph below.}} But in our stranger, Alice-in-Wonderland, postmodern world, the struggle to find personally significant patterns is, for many, increasingly demanding. Unless one is persuaded by the more simplistic forms of Fundamentalism, the patterns are indeed becoming, as Eliot foretold over sixty years ago, “more complicated.”
+The mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) once said, “Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.” {{sfn|Whitehead|2001|p=225}} Could we imagine our world, for instance, without the amazing patterns of Johann Sebastian Bach or of Rembrandt? But this enjoyment of and need for meaningful patterns is not simply an artistic or humanistic perspective: pattern recognition and theory appraisal seem increasingly important in science, technology, and mathematics. {{efn|Since 1978, there has been an International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR), with member bodies in many countries. Lawrence O’Gorman’s article describes some of
+the developments.}} In his book, Mathematics, the Science of Patterns, Keith Devlin begins with these words: “Numbers, that is to say, whole numbers, arise from the recognition of patterns in the world around us: the pattern of ‘oneness’, the pattern of ‘twoness’, the pattern of ‘threeness’, and so on.” {{sfn|Devlin|1997|p=9}} So the human desire to find—or to impose—meaningful patterns amid the chaos of life may be universal. Presumably because of individual temperaments or varying cultures, each person finds meaning in a particular pattern: but the search for pattern itself may be universal.
+In the humanities, music, literature, and art are quite obviously patterning devices. These different art forms take a few basic elements and arrange them—often as transformations in time—in a profusion of ways, all in order to express human meaning. The basic elements are often simple: in Western music a mere eleven notes from A to G# are arranged as a progression in time; in English Literature just twenty six letters and a few other symbols are required, arranged in linear time progression (a text decoded on a page from left to right, a story placed in time) or maybe in non-linear form (hyper- text). In the visual arts, a few primary colors and a set of basic shapes (point, line, square, circle, etc.) and sufficient to generate the diverse beauty of Western art. {{efn|Patterning in time is obviously integral to both music and literature but seems less crucial in the visual arts, like painting. But from the perspective of Physics, a particular color is certain light vibrations per second and hence is a transformation (or pattern) in time. As Einstein saw with startling originality in 1905, a stationary light wave has no meaning. In addition, all forms of art and language are cultural transformations in time. The visual arts qualitatively changed when Masaccio (1401–1428) and others developed perspective: music patterns were different after Stravinsky from before.}} The elements, then, may well be simple: the resulting patterns are very complex. What we know as the artifacts of culture and civilization could be regarded as a vast array of meaningful patterns—from the sculpture of Ancient Greece to the late string quartets of Beethoven, from the poetry of Eliot to the colors and shapes of Picasso. Scientific theories and mathemat- ical models can also be seen as patterning devices, an insight, I would argue, that goes back to William Herbert George and his The Scientist in Action. {{sfn|George|1936}} {{efn|Ahead of many others, W. H. George argued the human activity of patterning was at the heart of science and its theories. In the mid 1970s, I became aware of George’s significant role through a Mr. Frost who taught History & Philosophy of Science in the University of London’s Extra-Mural Department. Back in the 1930s, George had written: “To remove the human element is to remove science. When Newton formulated his law of universal gravitation he did not reduce by one the number of absolute truths too be dis- covered, he created a new pattern into which facts could be fitted. Einstein created still another pattern into which these same facts, together with others, could be fitted." {{sfn|George|1936|p=19}}
 ===Notes===