[da-bacon]

I'm surprised you find the Kekulé Problem not supporting that he liked science. I think of it more as pointing out that the unconsciousness has been ignored scientifically, but he certainly frames it as a question of science: "The unconscious is a biological system before it is anything else. To put it as pithily as possibly—and as accurately—the unconscious is a machine for operating an animal." "To repeat. The unconscious is a biological operative and language is not."

For those who are interested, here is the article https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/

As you say, Cormac's relationship with science is a bit hard to get from his novels. But I also think he really did love science, you might enjoy one of the most memorable days during the short time I was at the Santa Fe Institute https://dabacon.org/babel/2023/06/13/cormac/

[karaterobot]

I took that essay to be at least in part about how much of what we think of as a world governed by symbolic logic is really governed by a powerful unconscious world that is resistant to the scientific way of thinking. Not to say it is magical, but that underneath our modern brain is an older brain that works differently. I first read that essay after reading The Passenger, and wanted to connect it to what I took to be one of the themes of that book, which is that humans fundamentally aren't prepared to wield the tools of symbolic thinking, math and language. That they tend toward destruction (atomic warfare in the book) and, beyond that, a kind of insanity. That leads me to think he is fascinated by science, but not in the uncomplicated "fuck yeah science!!!" way.

[da-bacon]

One distinction is maybe between the way the world works and way we humans work, with our language and our unconscious. My read is that Cormac is deeply skeptical of the rational story our language tells us, and that we overlook and ignore the role of the unconscious, but that this is a statement about our own internal universe, and not the universe at large. Whether the universe is organized and symbolic, I don’t get a read, but he certainly seems skeptical that we can cross this divide, especially only with language. I can see how this feels a bit against science, but I guess this feels very much at philosophy of science level (so maybe more tame but also more interesting)

But also yeah totally agree on the “fuck yeah science!!!” Personally that also scares the crap out of me, but maybe that is a bit too much heresy in tech land.