Hi Bo, Denis: (P.S. to Jonathan)
You two gentlemen (and others) have seen fit to take issue with
Pirsig's "Giant," damning it at the least with being "incongruous with
the rest" of the MOQ and at the worst by leading to "fascist
interpretations."
You may be right. But a review of a new book entitled "Emergence: The
Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software" by Steven
Johnson suggests you may be wrong.
I don't pretend to understand the fine points of the author's thesis, but
one of his conclusions stood out as being relevant to the Giant
question. To quote from the book's review:
"It is to finally correct the mental error that has for so long kept us from
understanding why birds flock and liver cells don't turn into spleen
cells. Johnson calls the error the 'pacemaker hypothesis.' The
hypothesis assumes that complex behavior depends on some form of
centralized authority."
What caught my eye besides the reference to "centralized authority"
(facism, communism) was the following:
"You get a feeling for what's to come from the book's first page, a
diagram of the human brain positioned above the map of Hamburg.
The two shapes are strikingly similar, which, as Johnson sets out to
show, is no accident. Nature and society overflow with
correspondence."
Have I piqued your interest? If so you can find the article at:
http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/20/blume-h.html
My impression from reading this article--and that's all it is, an
impression--leads me think the Giant may be a legitimate reflection of
reality after all.
Platt
Jonathan: Not only may the book be of special interest to you, but I'm
sure you can expand on the relevance of its thesis to the "Giant" issue--
if indeed I'm correct in detecting a relevance. (-:
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