Like much in mathematics, Fixed-Point theorems seem intuitively wacky. But they're seminal concepts with proofs (of L. E. J. Brouwer) dating back to the 1920's. Their predictions have even been physically validated in our own times (in such places as the contour of the floor of the sea). It's not inconceivable that one day they'll open new ways of thinking about life and mind -- and perhaps even reality as a whole. They belong in the knowledge repertoire of every genuinely informed person.
Fixed Point is also a pivotal theme in a story of Asa Zook: philosopher (inexorably), scientist (reluctantly), lover (eventually), nerd (unavoidably), who spends his often wretched, occasionally sweet, periodically thrilling but never dull existence in (as he sees it) the soul-redeeming pursuit of the most fundamental of fundamental mind-brain principles, which he believes abides in the logic that memory shares with organ regeneration. These two recurrent physiological processes, his investigations tell him, embody Brouwer's fixed point.
Structurally, Fixed Point is a conventional novel: it has a beginning (Asa's nurtured yet tragic childhood); middle (his maturation and the entrance of Joyce Page); and end.
But, in content, Fixed Point is unconventional (and doubtless controversial). It is genuine philosophy in the making; intellect in action within the chaotic subjective milieu where also abide, side-by-side, the creative as well as the mundane moieties of the human mind; and science as fictionalized but disguised versions of actual investigations.
The period is between the 1930's and 1960's. Why then? For conflict: during that era, paucity of knowledge would have let only a genius, like Asa Zook, think what he thought, see what he saw and do what he did (as only a Pasteur could have dealt with rabies before the science of virology existed; or an Einstein with relativity within the flat-world of the physics of his day).
The story itself issues from the development of Asa's and Joyce's characters; from the union -- the Hegelian synthesis -- of two polar opposite persons. Asa brings content to the story - stuff! But Joyce's love allows that stuff to take form and live.
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copyright 1996, 2001, 2002, 2003 by Paul Pietsch
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