Oh, Reason give me faith.
Andrea, Clarke:
Andrea, what I think you're thinking of when you say,
>I recall that somewhere in Lila he
>equates evolution and DQ (at the biological level).
is in Ch. 11 when Pirsig says, "All life is a migration of static patterns of
quality towards Dynamic Quality."
But I do think the statement implies (and is vital to the MoQ) that it is
applied to all static patterns, not just biological ones. This does not make
evolution = Dynamic Quality. Evolution is a process that takes place within
the MoQ. Naive evolution (which uses words like "progress" and "scale") pretty
much died out in scientists years ago (though I'm sure it is still kicked
around by a few out-spoken proponents and, unfortunately, still taught in
schools). It was a remenant of 19th-century thinking. When Pirsig speaks of
up-ending evolution, I believe he's talking about contemporary evolutionary
thought, which does not allow words like "progress" and "scale" and "levels of
evolution". His up-ending happens to look like 19th-century-speak, but with a
metaphysical platform to stand on.
Scientific evolution certainly says that "evolution is aimed at 'fitting the
environment'". I think, though, that "fitting the environment" is a spin-off
of biological quality. A biological goal that is good in-and-for itself, but
for biological static patterns. Much as the Victorians viewed the goals of
societal static patterns as the greatest good.
So, everything you say, as far as I can tell, is essentially correct about
evolution. But I think the perspective is from a scientific subjects-objects
point of view. Pirsig changes the perspective and allows for a new
interpretation, one that doesn't change any of the evidence or leave any of it
out (I don't think it does, anyways). It allows a scale, one based on the four
static levels. I don't know how far we can extend the scale, if at all.
Your last question asks if the static levels are all about survival. Well, I
think the static levels, by themselves, are all about survival. Each level is
discretely independent of the others and they each have the maintenance of
their own patterns to think about (so to speak). Survival, in all of its
incarnations, has been a useful pattern. Kinda' like the protein in Pirsig's
protein-DNA pairing (it was the static, tough one). Survival is a static
latch. A latch that should not be taken as the goal in-and-of itself, else
higher and higher levels of Dynamic Quality will be left ureachable. The
beetle proved a very good survival machine. But not a very good Dynamic
machine.
In conclusion, I do think the myth of evolution as "progress towards man" had
an influence on Pirsig. But not really in a bad way. Since man isn't a level
by himself, I don't think we can say "progress towards man", but we can say
"progress towards Dynamic Quality". Man as a collection of static patterns,
however, offers the greatest amount of Dynamic Quality. Or at least a greater
amount of Dynamic Quality. (I think we can say that.)
Likes evolution,
Matt
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