Trevor - despite my own suspicions in that direction, it's a totally
seductive analogy. In any case, I think it a duty for poets to take
science and use it how they like - "science is too slow", as one
especially irreponsible Frenchman had it -
Best
Alison
>Alison: Though I'm extremely suspicious of attempts to transplant
>analogies from the sciences into the field of poetics (especially when done
>by somebody so inexpert as myself), I'll chance my arm here. I was reminded
>by this discussion of the following:
>
>"The theory of computation is replete with deep theorems. Among the most
>beautiful are those showing that, in most cases by far, there exists no
>shorter means to predict what an algorithm will do than to simply execute
>it, observing the succession of actions and states as they unfold. The
>algorithm itself is its own shortest description. It is, in the jargon of
>the field, incompressible." [Stuart Kauffman, "At Home in the Universe",
>p.22]
>
>The notion of poetry as equivalent (in its own medium) to an algorithm
>which is its own shortest description really pleases me. I know, I should
>get a life . . .
|