Dear Platt,
You quoted 5/2 10:29 -0500:
'Science explains the higher by the lower; religion explains the
lower by the higher.'
That reminds me of John B. suggestion of 15/6 15:33 +1000 to
relate to Pirsig Wilber/Whitehead's approach to "first look to
the higher levels for the general principles of existence, and
then, by subtraction, ... see how far down the hierarchy they
extend".'
I suggest you re-read this full posting from John B. if you want
to take up Marco's request for a top-down description (from the
perspective of aesthetics) of evolution, but I'll give you a
longer quote to help you get started:
'on p167 of Eye to Eye ... Wilber is discussing what he calls an
'analog law', "the idea that every event and principle on a lower
level is merely a reduced version or a reflection downward or a
lesser degree of those events and principles found on higher
levels". He suggests that Whitehead took just this position.
"He [Whitehead] took the notion of junior dimensions being
essentially reduced versions of senior ones, and completely
turned the
typical approach to reality on its head. He said that if you want
to know
the general principles of existence, you must start at the top
and use the
highest occasions to illumine the lowest, not the other way
around, which of
course is the common reductionist reflex. So he said you could
learn more
about the world from biology than you could from physics; and so
he
introduced the organismic viewpoint which has revolutionized
philosophy. And
he said you could learn more from social psychology than from
biology, and
then introduced the notion of things being a society of
occasions - the
notion of compound individuality. Naturally, he held that the
apex of
exemplary pattern was God, and it was in God, the ultimate
compound
individual, that you would ground any laws or patterns found
reflected in
reduced versions in the lower dimensions of psychology, then
biology, then
physics. The idea, which was brilliant in its statement, was that
you first
look to the higher levels for the general principles of
existence, and then,
by subtraction, you see how far down the hierarchy they extend.
You don't
start at the bottom and try to move up by addition of the lower
parts,
because some of the higher parts simply don't show up very well,
or at all,
on the lower rungs. Perhaps his favourite examples were
creativity and
love - God, for Whitehead, was especially love and creativity.
But in the
lower dimensions, the creativity gets reduced, appearing in
humans as a
modicum of free will but being almost entirely lost by the time
you get to
atomic particles... So Whitehead, by looking to illuminate the
lower by the
higher, and not vice versa, could make creativity the general
principle, and
then understand determinism as a partial restriction or reduction
of primary
creativity. If, on the other hand, you start at the bottom, then
you have to
figure out a way to get free will and creativity out of rocks,
and it just
won't work."
... if we were to adopt this approach, then the meaning of
quality is to be found at the highest level, where language is an
inadequate vehicle of communication, and intellect an
inappropriate medium for the search. This ties in with a number
of ... strands of discussion in this forum, including where God
fits in, and if there is an emerging level beyond intellect. And
the experts would not be those most skilled in intellectual
debate, but those who have put in the hard yards in a meditative
practice, and tested their insights against other mystic
authorities. The resulting outcomes would appear paradoxical to
the merely intellectual mind, but would reconcile the deep
divisions of that level, of which the static / dynamic is just
the latest in a long line. If anyone is interested in following
this idea further in relation to Pirsig, I would suspect it could
be fruitful.'
As I wrote 4/2 22:28 +0100 my intuition is that religion
(mysticism) and art (aesthetics) are comparable human endeavours
to find this meaning of quality at a higher level than intellect.
Having little affinity with art I am (like Marco) looking to you
for confirmation (or refutation) of that intuition.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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