"So with this Michelson-Morley result. We've all had a lot of faith invested. Now it looks like the Æther, whether it's moving or standing still, just doesn't exist. What do we do now?"
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"We've all had a lot of faith invested"
With so much discussion of scientists (and science loving nerds) having faith about scientific theories, I should probably give it more thought than I've done (or have I? I don't remember). Pynchon purposefully infuses several discussions about scientists having faith when that's exactly what scientists shouldn't be having about anything scientific. Faith should not be a part of the equation. Sure, I understand that theories in science and mathematical functions can work to explain something that's observed without actually proving how that observed thing actually functions. So there's a certain amount of "faith" that the theory or equation isn't just a tottering piece of shoddy scaffolding holding up the explanation for the end result. But Pynchon's playing a different game by constantly including the word. Roswell references religious thought for a reason in the previous paragraph. He's making a one-for-one comparison between religious faith and scientific faith, and the fallout for those not ready to abandon an idea when the idea proves faulty.
The point I'm failing to get to is this: Pynchon isn't talking about one scientific idea (Æther) failing and how people will move on from the loss. He's explicitly discussing the death of God and religion in our civilization's growth. Every discovery about the way the universe works murders an old belief. Many of those "old beliefs" boil down to one simple answer for the unexplainable: God. But every time some unexplainable thing whose answer was God gets explained, it tilts the balance on the scales that maintain the existence of God. At some point, so many discoveries will be made that destroy yet another unexplainable thing, belief in God becomes nearly impossible. How many times does something whose answer was "God" need to be shown that there's an actual answer before the whole idea that God was ever an answer is just discarded? "Well, we'll never answer X so it must be God!" continues to fall to somebody eventually answering "X".
"just doesn't exist. What do we do now?"
And this is the modern (postmodern?) question. God is dead. What do we do now? Aside from celebrate, I mean!
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