Adam,
While agreeing that Quality is an essential piece to thinking about
evolution, I think that when you say "everything in this universe is
evolving towards Quality" is not a good way to put it.
Unfortunately, Pirsig also says just that at one point, but I think he
too goofed on this way of putting it. What I prefer is his saying (I
don't have a quote, but something like): things evolve to allow more and
more play for DQ, and even this I would prefer to restate as: DQ finds
more and more play for itself, which we call evolution. ("Play" in two
senses.) To say "evolving toward Quality" makes the whole business sound
too much like planning, requires too much futurity, and in general,
makes it all sound too tedious and -- dare I say it -- designed. In any
case I prefer to think that Quality evolves, not that something evolves
in pursuit of Quality.
- Scott
Adam Eurich wrote:
> I know that this Creationism thread is starting to die
> off, but I have been left with a feeling of
> disappointment with how I have relayed my ideas to
> others. So I decided to write this in hopes of
> explaining myself a little better to others in this
> forum, please let me know if you what you think.
>
> I've been trying to look at this whole "does evolution
> has a purpose?" from a completely MOQ perspective.
>>From my understanding of the MOQ, everything in the
> universe has a purpose. If you take Pirsig's
> four-level interpretation of latched reality to be
> true, then you see that everything in this universe is
> evolving towards Quality. That is the whole point in
> establishing a hierarchy of the four levels of static
> quality. That is why the biological level is above
> the inorganic, the social above the biological, the
> intellectual above the social, and the Dynamic above
> the static. The five moral codes that Pirsig
> establishes is to show how static patterns are
> evolving to a state better than the one before.
> This "better" means to have more Quality, and in order
> for that to happen, a maximum amount of Dynamic
> Quality has to be allowed without destroying the
> existing static patterns. So if everything is
> evolving towards Quality, that means (to me) that the
> purpose of everything is Quality. Now, I thought
> that this was a fundamental belief in truly
> understanding the MOQ. I have now questioned this
> idea because others seem to disagree that this is
> necessary in understanding the MOQ. I say this
> because others do not seem to make a connection that I
> believe is necessary if you hold this belief (that
> everything is evolving towards Quality) to be true.
> The connection I made was that if everything is
> evolving towards Quality, than the goal of evolution,
> including biological evolution, is Quality. This is a
> tremendous factor (but not the only factor) in why I
> hold the idea of evolution having a purpose to be
> true. But the purpose is most definitely not a
> conventional one because it is Quality. Quality has
> not existed in the common scientific community so of
> course no one has ever been able to come up with a
> goal for evolution. It makes me wonder why people
> have been quoting various scientific minds in order to
> provide support for the idea that evolution has no
> purpose, because these various scientific minds have
> never had the MOQ as a tool. I can understand how SOM
> thinking cannot derive a purpose from evolution,
> because there is no Quality in SOM. But we privileged
> few do have the MOQ in our tool belts, and I thought
> that with it, everyone here would be able to expand
> their idea of a purpose to include Quality. I
> understand that a person still within the SOM mind
> frame might reject the expansion of the definition of
> purpose to include Quality, so maybe we should do what
> many MOQists have done to other terms, and change it
> to something like "q-purpose" or something. Maybe be
> evolution isn't teleological, but maybe its
> "q-teleological". Or maybe not, I don't think that we
> should have to make up new words, I always thought the
> MOQ taught us to keep things like language fluid and
> dynamic. But back to the point. Basically, I don't
> understand how a MOQist can believe that the goal of
> everything is Quality, yet not believe that the goal
> of biological evolution is Quality. Now, I am fully
> open to the idea that I may have made a mistake in my
> reasoning, but I'm hoping that I haven't. But for
> now, it's late and I have to give this up for the
> moment. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Adam
>
>
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