"Pointsman’s team plots Slothrop’s conquests on a map…" — Thomas Pynchon (#c714)

Card #c714IR // #c714Synthesis

Pointsman’s team plots Slothrop’s conquests on a map of London — and the stars fall where the rockets fall. His desire is an instrument: where Slothrop has been, the V-2s land.

— In our words · Source: Gravity's Rainbow (Thomas Pynchon)

[Use when]

Treating an uncanny correlation as an instrument before you understand it — map first, theory later.

[Why it matters]

The book’s central device — a man’s libido as a dowsing rod for death from the sky. Roger Mexico’s Poisson statistics say the strikes are random; Pointsman’s map says Slothrop’s body knows otherwise. Evidence: Pointsman’s investigation, Mexico’s Poisson equation (“The rockets are distributing about London just as Poisson’s equation predicts”), the response-before-stimulus exchange.

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