For those who are interested, here is the article https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/
As you say, Cormac's relationship with science is a bit hard to get from his novels. But I also think he really did love science, you might enjoy one of the most memorable days during the short time I was at the Santa Fe Institute https://dabacon.org/babel/2023/06/13/cormac/
But also yeah totally agree on the “fuck yeah science!!!” Personally that also scares the crap out of me, but maybe that is a bit too much heresy in tech land.
The gist is that he liked smart people. He was good friends with Murray Gell-Mann and others at The Santa Fe Institute. I absolutely think he "liked science," I don't think he was cynical about it, though I do see where you could pick that up in his writing.
According to Gell-Mann, McCarthy knew a lot about 20th century physics...not in terms of math but in a "history of ideas" sense, i.e. where major physicists stood on various questions.
This really came across in The Passenger and Stella Maris.
Judge Holden is, after all, the main villain of Blood Meridian, and yet he says in a speech:
> Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent. [...] The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
I'm sure many people here would, without understanding the context of the quote and his character, identify with that quote nonetheless precisely because of what it offers --- control and mastery.
>Cantor, Gauss, Riemann, Euler. Hilbert. Poincaré. Noether. Hypatia. Klein, Minkowski, Turing, von Neumann. Hardly even a partial list. Cauchy, Lie, Dedekind, Brouwer. Boole. Peano. Church is still alive. Hamilton, Laplace, Lagrange. The ancients of course. You look at these names and the work they represent and you realize that the annals of latterday literature and philosophy by comparison are barren beyond description.
If anything, I would say the book suggests he was cynical about literature rather than science!
> You will never know what the world is made of. The only thing that’s certain is that it’s not made of the world. As you close upon some mathematical description of reality you cant help but lose what is being described. Every inquiry displaces what is addressed. A moment in time is a fact, not a possibility. The world will take your life. But above all and lastly the world does not know that you are here. You think that you understand this. But you don't. Not in your heart you don't. If you did you would be terrified. And you’re not. Not yet.
Almost Lovecraftian to me. I don't think he is drawing a distinction between literature and science either, they are similar in this view of the world. It's more like pre-modern vs. modern, not art vs. science.
> "I’m here because I like science, and this is a fun place to spend time"
I would not have drawn that conclusion from reading his novels, or from his essay about The Kekulé Problem. I took The Passenger and Stella Maris to be something like a summary of where he, personally, stood at the end of his life, and they both seemed to take a more complicated stance on scientific progress. Blood Meridian did too. There are plenty of other examples; it's a theme. I don't believe you can fairly draw conclusions about what an author believes based on what they put in their books, but when a consistent trend emerges over time, it's hard to ignore it. I'm not implying that he secretly hated science, I just wonder if he didn't appreciate it in a different way than you might assume given the quote above. Maybe it's the "progress" part of scientific he was cynical about?