From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Jan 09 2005 - 00:44:29 GMT
msh, Rich, Paul, Ian, Platt and all MOQers:
Mark Steven Heyman's "..point is that the correlation between math and
physical reality appears to be more than just measuring things, then
tweaking equations, then measuring, then tweaking until the equations
become useful. Sometimes, as in this case, the equations come before
any measuring is even possible: Einstein predicting the warp of light
as it passes through gravitational fields, for example.
But this apparent symmetry between math and physical reality may just
be a result of the fact that we, i.e. our minds, are an inseparable
part of the phenomena we are trying to describe. I don't know...
rich reminded msh:
let me remind you that math is as much a creation of our intellect as
the physical world is, and since the original purpose for math was to
count objects in a subject-object world of our making, it shouldn't
come as any surprize that the relationship comes full circle and
applies the other way round.
dmb says:
I think Rich is right. He's says "full circle" where I said "a snake eating
its own tail". Same idea. Or think of it this way; math and the physical
world are just slightly more specific terms for subjective and objective
realities. This is the West's notion of sanity, that our mental models match
or mirror nature, accurately correspond to nature. So the idea that physical
reality AND our mental models are BOTH part of our interpretation, are both
products of the way we interpret the world, - that seems quite crazy and
illogical to educated Westerners. It doesn't compute as long as we try to
imagine this in terms of subjective minds in a physical world. That's the
very premise that causes the blind spot. We believe it so utterly,
instinctively and thoroughly that anything else is nearly unimaginable. But
try to imagine it in terms of the pre-intellectual reality, the reality we
know before experience is interpreted in terms of subjects and objects.
This immediate and direct reality is described as nothingness because it is
prior to the creation of things, prior to the intellectual divisions we use
so habitually. We can't even rightly talk about this in terms of liner time,
in terms of before and after because even time and space are among these
mental divisions. In that sense, Nothingness is not an empty vaccum, it is
no-thing-ness. In the same way, the immediate reality is not what's
happening at the current moment, but is the eternal reality that is prior to
and beyond all time. The same with the infinite, which the Western mind will
imagine as somthing like boundless space, endless space. But that's not it.
We are talking about a reality that is beyond any concepts of location. SOM
says that reality is basically a bunch of things existing in time and space.
And some of those things can think about the rest of those things. But this
is our CONCEPT of experience, not reality itself, see? We have to LEARN to
go through a chain of deductions to arrive at an interpretation of
experience that gives us subjects and objects, mathematics and the physical
world, but we learned it so long ago and do it so automatically, that we
literally take the conclusion for granted. We then take our conclusions and
think of them as reality's most basic premise, as if we had nothing to do
with it.
I think the myth of Narcissus speaks to this problem. (Forget about it as a
warning against vanity, that's kid stuff.) The nature of myths and
archetypes is such that they can be read on many levels, but one reading in
particular depicts this problem. We all know the basic idea of the young
Narcissus who, learning over a still body of water, sees his own reflection
for the first time and, not realizing that he was looking at his own image,
fell in love with the face in the water. And so, in the same tragically
comic way, we find it marvelous when our own creations reflect our own
creations. And it IS amazing in a way, just not quite in the way we may have
thought. I certainly don't it helps to posit a divine creator with a pocket
protector and a slide rule.
rich continued:
As a consequence math, excepting its creative aspects, has nothing to
do with Quality, as it exists solely in a closed world of impersonel
objectivism, and our cultures' worship of math, instagated I think by
those who are in awe of something they incompletely understand, right
down to the philosophic level, is sympomatic of it's failure to be
awed instead by the primary reality of quality and value.
I don't know..it could be that maybe I'm the insane one or it's just
the w! hiskey talking.
dmb adds:
I'm pretty much with Rich here too, but I also have to say that this idea
goes way back and is found in every civilization. Our secular version of it
tends to give us a kind of reverence for science and the physical universe,
but the same basic idea appears in more religious overtly religious forms in
just about all of the first cities. In Babylon, Eqypt, the Yucatan and lots
of other places we see monumental architecture that reflects the same
cosmology, that reflects the idea of an ordered universe. The cosmic order
of things, says Pirsig, is the oldest idea known to man. And I was equally
amazed by the number mysticism of the Pythogoreans, the golden ratio and
other such things that are not so different from what msh is saying. I'm
sympathetic as a result, but I've come to realize mirrors cast reflections
and there's not really anything magical about them. (Unless it prom night
and you have a piece of spinach in your teeth.)
Paul said:
........., I think that there is symmetry, equilibrium and order evident
in inorganic and biological patterns and also in social and intellectual
patterns. I see these things as a common characteristic of static
quality which may begin to explain the perceived correlation. The sense
of quality which directs the creation of mathematical truths is related
to the sense of quality which creates the material universe but I think
that it is not identical. It is this that the discrete levels of quality
are supposed to indicate.
dmb adds:
Right. From a static point of view, that is to say from the perspective of
intellectual static patterns, evolution occurs in spacetime so that energy
and matter MUST precede the beginning of life and there can be no human
society or culture until there are complex organisms first. And then we
finally get to abstract mathematics, science and the other intellectual
forms. And from a static point of view, I think this is exactly correct - at
least until there is a better idea. BUT - and this BUT is even bigger than
your momma's BUT - philosophical mysticism says that from a Dynamic point of
view reality is undivided. It is not chopped up into concepts like before
and after, this and that, here and there, in or out, mental and physical. DQ
is none of that or rather all of that and more, but before its chopped up.
Its almost as if the Unified reality MUST be shattered to be percieved. And
this peception is what creates the world as we know it, the world of things.
Its almost as if there's an inconcieveable and incomprehesible unity
underneath all the dualities with which we concieve reality. Its like we
have to break them open and destroy what they really are in order to create
the world of things. To make matters worse, we then forget our vandalism
take those broken pieces to be the real deal. Anyway, if the primary
empirical reality comes before all the concepts we employ to paint this
evolutionary picture, including such basic ideas as events occuring in time,
then the hierarchy of levels doesn't necessarily have to be concieved as a
step by step process, taking billions of years. If there is no there "out
there" and the physical universe is an idea just as much everything else we
normally think of as an idea, then matter and life and society and intellect
can all emerge from the same moment. The static levels can retain there
moral codes and there relationship with each in all those important ways.
And if the pattens can emerge at the same moment, so to speak, and not
unfold in the field of space and time, then it becomes easy to see how
"objects" would obey "mathematical" rules, how inorganic and intellectal
patterns would reflect and support each other.
Remember the image of the spider? He spins an elaborate web out of his own
body and then lives in it. Watch out! Here comes the Spidermaaaaaaan.
I think the famous Zen "one-hand-clapping" koan refers to this. (There are
lots of lame jokes about that one too, but lets not go there.) Ordinarily,
in the state of normal waking consciousness, we depend on a gazillion pairs
of opposites to divide reality. Like the sound of two hands clapping, these
dualities chop up the silence, divide the time and such. And so the Zen
master asks the student, "what is the sound of ONE hand clapping?" See? He's
asking what is beyond these pairs of opposites. He's asking what reality
sounds like without these dualities. He's asking about the undivided,
pre-intellectual reality. Subjects and objects are two hands clapping. So
are math and the physical universe even if its in a much more complex and
elaborate way.
I know. Its hard to believe it and even harder to explain it. One is forced
to explain the central idea, the undivided reality, in terms of what it is
not. And almost everything we Westerns think of as reality, such as the
physical universe and the scientists who study it, is NOT it. And the
connection between our dualistic, static reality and the unified dynamic
reality is just not something I would even pretend to know. The mystics say
that ultimately there is not distinction even between dynamic and static, or
rather that reality is both at the same time in some inconcieveable way. But
Pirsig vague suggestions seems about right. Patterns emerge in the wake of
DQ, they latch, evolve and or become obsolete evolutionary gargage. And I
think Paul's vague suggestion is about right too. Static patterns at the
various levels seem to be in sync with each other in all sorts of ways. This
is not only because they all emerge from a basic sense of value. There is
also the assertion of the mystic. If the ultimate reality is undivided, if
reality is really One and unified, despite our perceptions and concepts,
then it would be really, really wierd if things were out of sync. The very
idea of getting things to match up and harmonize doesn't make sense from a
dynamic point of view. And from a static point of view it seems like
unrelated things are mysteriously connected, but its more like the
underlying unity peaking through. Its almost like the connection between
geometry and the stars serves as a Western Zen koan. If the connection is
between the universe and our ideas of it then it seems like some kind of
magic. But if geometry and the stars are BOTH concepts about a more primary
reality, then we are not so astonished to find that they match.
This is so difficult that it makes my brain hurt.
dmb
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