"You can't run a war on gusts of emotion." ~P.M.S. Blackett
P.M.S. Blackett was an English experimental physicist who contributed to a variety of scientific fields, including paleomagnetism and particle physics. As the quote above reflects, he is most widely recognized for his work with military strategy and operational research during World War II.
Here one sees yet another lovely example of Pynchon playing with names, as well as a quick look into one of the book's central dichotomies. Although it's conceivable that others might print Patrick Blackett's name as "P.M.S. Blackett" with no thought of premenstrual syndrome, given that the quote attributed to him involves staying calm and unemotional, we know better than to expect Pynchon to ignore this delicious morsel of irony.
The quote, as well as its author, provides an early glimpse into the book's central theme of war as both a sterile, bureaucratic process and a nightmarish, human ordeal. Blackett's main goal as an adviser to the British military was to make strategic decisions based solely on numbers, rather than emotions or gut feelings. Math itself is a leitmotif of Gravity's Rainbow, where the ordered and pristine world it inhabits is in stark contrast to the hell of war, clearly illustrated in the novel's title. "... A million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it..." (p. 17)
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