> In his 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum, Eco had three men feed an unwieldy amount of esoteric trivia—involving Templars, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Illuminati, and a thousand other occult sects—into a computer that synthesizes them at random to generate a master “Plan” explaining the course of European history.
Either the author, or I, really misinterpreted this book. As I recall, it was Bembo's word processor that took a few dozen phrases—some of which were about occult sects, some of which were connectives "If this, then", and some of which were garbage "Mickey Mouse is Minnie's husband". And it didn't synthesize anything; it spat back a random selection of them, and the characters then attempted to synthesize the results. Which seems like a minor hair to split, but it really reflected one of the themes of the book, that humans keep trying to find patterns and order in the natural world, and will create it if it isn't there.
However, a similar remark is in the blurb on the back of the book, which has always annoyed me. So maybe it's me that's misremembering (or maybe the author of this article didn't really read much of Foucault's Pendulum.)
No, you're spot on. I just finished this book. The computer was used to generate nonsense, which they used as a creative prompt when they were at a dead end in the 'Plan'.
Either the author, or I, really misinterpreted this book. As I recall, it was Bembo's word processor that took a few dozen phrases—some of which were about occult sects, some of which were connectives "If this, then", and some of which were garbage "Mickey Mouse is Minnie's husband". And it didn't synthesize anything; it spat back a random selection of them, and the characters then attempted to synthesize the results. Which seems like a minor hair to split, but it really reflected one of the themes of the book, that humans keep trying to find patterns and order in the natural world, and will create it if it isn't there.
However, a similar remark is in the blurb on the back of the book, which has always annoyed me. So maybe it's me that's misremembering (or maybe the author of this article didn't really read much of Foucault's Pendulum.)