ABSTRACT

This paper builds upon previous cybernetics scholarship to explore the neuroscience in The Crying of Lot 49, focusing on the neuronal action potential. In 1952, the cybernetics-influenced action potential was elucidated, a process which decreases entropy through feedback loops to transmit information. Lot 49 exemplifies what happens when the action potential stops properly communicating. This communication failure occurs because the clues that the protagonist Oedipa associates with the Tristero organization increase information entropy, which breaks her neuronal feedback loops and subsequently increases the thermodynamic and informatic entropy of her nervous system. Oedipa drinks alcohol in an attempt to combat the Tristero’s entropic effects on herself, but the attempt backfires as the entropy of her nervous system continues to increase and culminates in seizures. Oedipa believes her seizures are divine interventions that provide energy despite the fact that they derive from all the Tristero information saturating her. This misguided belief overtakes Oedipa because the type of epilepsy she suffers from is temporal lobe epilepsy, whose seizures symptomatically impart consciousness loss, amnesia, and religious hallucinations to mask their entropy. Consequently, Lot 49 captures the blossoming of modern neuroscience from cybernetics in the mid-20^th century by intertwining neuroscience with its themes of entropy.

摘要

本文建立在之前的控制论学术基础之上，探索了The Crying of Lot 49中的神经科学，重点关注神经元动作电位。1952 年，受控制论影响的动作电位被阐明，这是一个通过反馈回路降低熵以传递信息的过程。地段 49举例说明当动作电位停止正常交流时会发生什么。之所以出现这种沟通失败，是因为主角奥狄帕与特里斯特罗组织相关联的线索增加了信息熵，这打破了她的神经元反馈回路，随后增加了她神经系统的热力学和信息熵。Oedipa 喝酒以试图对抗 Tristero 对自己的熵效应，但随着她神经系统的熵继续增加并最终导致癫痫发作，这种尝试适得其反。Oedipa 相信她的癫痫发作是神圣的干预，提供能量，尽管它们来自所有让她饱和的 Tristero 信息。这种被误导的信念超越了 Oedipa，因为她所患的癫痫类型是颞叶癫痫，他们的癫痫发作症状会导致意识丧失、健忘和宗教幻觉以掩盖他们的熵。最后，Lot 49通过将神经科学与其熵主题交织在一起，捕捉到了 20 世纪^中期控制论中现代神经科学的蓬勃发展。