RACY RADICAL REASONS
Jolly gee gosh, I
am dumbfounded. You guys are too
intellectual for me. I don’t know half
these writers and I feel totally dumb. I’m
still trying to get through Mother Goose.
A reader from New Orleans, June 28, 2014
To minimize giving rise to such dumbfoundedness, the
physicist Brian Greene announced in the preface to The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011):
“In writing The
Hidden Reality, I’ve presumed no expertise in physics or mathematics on the
part of the reader. Instead, as in my
previous books, I’ve used metaphor and analogy, interspersed with historical
episodes, to give a broadly accessible account of some of the strangest and
should they prove correct, most revealing insights of modern physics” (ix).
Mother Goose can get the drift.
Greene uses affective/effective prose to explain why “for
braneworlds the distinction between loops and snippets is crucial” (116) and
why “reality…may be akin to a hologram.
Or, really, a holographic movie” (238).
Admired for his work in superstring theory, Greene belongs to the
minority in the general population of American scientists. He is not dependent
on the mediation of writers for newspapers and magazines to ensure that
laypersons might understand his fascinating work. It might be argued that the astrophysicist
Neil deGrasse Tyson and the psychologist Steven Pinker belong to the same
minority. It is often more pleasant to read and to learn from these scientists
than to meander in the prose labyrinths that proliferate in the mindscapes of
humanists, literary theorists, and critics of culture.
Pick at random a sentence from the works of Julia
Kristeva, Stuart Moulthrop, or Homi Bhabha for comparison with one by Lewis
Thomas, Tyson, or Greene. Eureka!
Yes, extraordinarily difficult ideas may require symbolic
representation in equally difficult texts. Readers who put aside Mother Goose
and fairytales when they left puberty may find genuine enlightenment in decoding
convoluted expressions. On the other
hand, some writers who do work in the domains of literature, theory, and
culture have the option of learning from Brian Greene what the bump, the grind,
and the hidden reality of clarity might be. It is possible that clarity can
sponsor empowering critical thought. Dumbfoundedness is not a disease for which
we have yet to discover a cure.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
July 5, 2014
