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

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}}