Date: Fri, 07 Jun 1996 15:10:40 -0600
Subject:  dromology



Subject: Re: DROMOLOGY QUESTION

Rahul to Jon:
The point is, why does this
egregious sentence fragment appear in his work:

"the dromospheric space, space-speed, is physically described by what
is called the 'logistic equation,' the result of the product of the
mass displaced by the speed of its displacement, MxV."

Lisa:  I apologize for not paying more attention, if I was going to
say anything at all.  To tell another piece of the truth, when I saw
some part of this earlier, I thought you were doing a Sokal or
something, Rahul, it is really an amazing bit of not-sense, complete
gobbledy-gook, as if one forgot the words to a song and just started
making up syllables.  As long as you're using a language that your
audience doesn't understand to begin with, they may never catch on. 
[It's a pity that basic science is so little known.]

I don't know why it's there, but I do find it rather shocking.

I'm not particularly unfriendly to ideas about the social aspects or
human use of "space and time", and it is clear to me that it has
nothing to do with understanding the physical/physics nature of space
and time.  Of course dromology has nothing to offer to physics, and I
hope they are not trying to do so.  But when they talk like that
about logistic momentum or similar gibberish, going beyond even
"creative appropriation" or the "method" of analogy, I do find it
terribly off-putting, and I am dis-inclined to try to find out what
Virilio _is_ trying to do.

BTW, since at least one of our resident so-called pomos [Leo] started
off by "denouncing" what he saw as nonsense in the first "dromology"
post, it hardly seems appropriate to hold him responsible for it. 

Not that we can all just get along, of course, I'd just rather not
beat dead straw horses, when there is livelier game available.

lisa


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