8/16/2017 The Joyce of Science - Conclusion

The Joyce of Science: New Physics in Finnegans Wake

Index Introduction Background Physics Philosophy Relativity Quanta Conclusion

Conclusion: New Physics and Finnegans Wake

James Joyce meant Finnegans Wake to become a
universal book. His universe was primarily
Dublin, but Joyce believed that the universal can
be found in the particular. "I always write about
Dublin," he said to Arthur Power, "because if I
can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the
heart of all the cities of the world" (Ellmann
505). He achieved that goal in Ulysses by making
Bloom a universal wanderer, the everyman trying
to find his way in the labyrinth of the world. In
his last book Joyce went farther still, literally
getting to the heart of all the cities of the world
by making his hero the universal master builder. Crossing the boundaries of time and space,
HCE is a "myther rector and maximost bridgesmaker," (126.10) piling "buildung supra
buildung pon the banks for the livers by the Soangso," (4.27-28) somewhere else erecting "a
waalworth of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly" (4.35-36). Finnegans Wake is
an "imaginable itinerary through the particular universal" (260.R3). Here the characters are
few but their faces are many. Metamorphosing into one another, persons, objects and
incidents form a self-contained continuum of mutually interdependent elements in constant
motion. This flux of the book's content, combined with its circular, endless form, parallels
the relativistic concept of the fabric of the universe. The fourdimensional timespace of new
physics can be envisioned as an intricate, circular web of world lines of all the events that
constitute reality. Like the events in Joyce's book, the world lines are in constant flux:

The world line of a large body . . . is formed of innumerable smaller world

lines. . . . Here and there these fine threads enter and leave the tapestry whose
threads are the world lines of atoms. . . . As we move timeward along the
tapestry, its various threads forever shift about in space and so change their
places relative to one another. . . . (Jeans, Mysterious Universe 125-26)

There is as much movement in any page of Joyce's book. In Finnegans Wake also images
and verbal motifs are in constant motion, shifting around, transforming into one another,
disappearing only to reappear in a new form. Joyce devoted much of his time to expanding
the scope of his book by searching for supporting elements in a variety of sources and
incorporating them into the text. These sources were not only extremely varied, but, for
Joyce, they also enjoyed equal status: a nursery rhyme was as good as the Bible and a joke
as good as a fact. By blending diverse elements, Joyce tried to recreate reality in all its
infinite richness and complexity. He was not interested in any one view of reality; instead he
tried to show how a multi-level reality constitutes itself in the mind to form our individual
perception of the world. In the mind a variety of impulses constituting intuitive and rational
processes are in constant interaction, through which they create a singular, unique
experience of reality.

In its reliance on the reader's participation to create the meaning of the text, Finnegans
Wake resembles the concept of the probability wave in quantum physics. According to wave
mechanics, a scientific description of reality at its most basic level does not consist of
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8/16/2017 The Joyce of Science - Conclusion

certain knowledge about events but rather of probabilities of their occurrence. These
probabilities, suspended half way between being and not being, express only a "tendency to
exist." To give the reality a definite form, the scientist must actively participate in his
experiment, unavoidably influencing the outcome by his choice of the experimental
procedures. The transformation of the probability wave into certainty in the course of a
subatomic experiment parallels and resembles the very act of reading Finnegans Wake. Here
the complexity, richness and indefinite character of the text itself preclude a definite
interpretation of its meaning. The book does, however, achieve a definite status as the text is
read and its elements, fused with the reader's own mental images and processes, form a
dynamic continuum of its own.

Finnegans Wake thus supports Bohr's principle of complementarity. Quantum physics

explains that the notion of undulatory and corpuscular properties of light is not disturbing
once we realize that physics does not study the universe but rather our knowledge about the
universe. The two properties express not the nature of light itself but rather that of our
interaction with light. Similarly, Finnegans Wake describes not so much the world itself as
our ideas about it and the expression of those ideas in language. The recurrent motif of the
letter represents not only the world's literature and, in the broadest sense of the word, human
knowledge, but also Finnegans Wake itself. The book comments extensively on the
difficulties involved in attempts to interpret univocally the meaning of the text and, by
extension, of the universe which it attempts to describe.

These characteristics of Finnegans Wake do not mean that Joyce's purpose was to recreate
in his book the concept of the universe introduced by relativity and quantum physics. They
do, however, point to a multiplicity of similarities between new physics and the universe of
Finnegans Wake. Joyce's willingness to incorporate the elements of relativity and quanta
into his work reflects the convergence of his world view and the new scientific concept of
the world. New physics redefined the meaning of science and of the scientific method of
pursuing our knowledge of reality. It replaced classical objectivity, with modern
subjectivity, probability and doubt. It also showed that science is intimately connected with
philosophy and cannot progress without recourse to its methods. In the light of these
changes Joyce can be called not only a philosopher but a scientific writer as well.

Index Introduction Background Physics Philosophy Relativity Quanta Conclusion

Copyright 1997 Andrzej Duszenko

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