From: Allen Barrows (allen_barrows@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Fri Jun 24 2005 - 22:00:47 BST
Allen wrote:
___________________
The beauty a mathematician finds in creative activity is not romantic in the
SOM sense, it is a beauty of participation and being included in the work.
Caring. Art. There is no split here between romantic and classic because
everything works as one flow.
__________________
Allen, what you are describing in all your examples when applied to life in
general as opposed to specific activities is eudaimonia, a 'smooth flow of
life'. Another word I use is 'engagement', which I think came from the
phrase 'being in the moment'. My favorite example is the painter who is
engrossed in the act of painting, not the finished paintings, so much so
that he really doesn't care if the finished works are burned right in front
of him. It is the creative flow, not the product of the creation, that is
valued.
Allen - Hello Steve, i understand what you are saying and enjoy it allot. I am not a clever
dick, but i think Plotinus (the philosopher Robert Pirsig suggests
is close to his own philosophical view) goes a step further, and suggests that the artist
can create in his head without actually doing anything. Maybe so! I
find that hard to get to grips with myself, until i think about Zen arts where the finnished
painting is drawn before the hand moves, or the mathematician who
does it all in his head. Maths, art - what is the difference? For my part i like to feel the
material in my hand when i create - and in my case that is the
frettboard of a guitar. (I am not good!) Having said that! I read about Dave Brubeck who
told Miriam McPartland that he wrote a tune for her on the flight to
meet her for a radio interview. 'What does it sound like' she asked. 'I don't know, i have
not played it yet' he responded. Wrote it in his head on the plane.
We all experience this, maybe more so as children. As adults I think it
mostly occurs when we are pursuing a favorite hobby or sport without any
obligatory constraint by others. If we can grasp this idea it follows that
we can enjoy whatever we choose, for it is the engagement in the activity,
not which activity we are engaged in, that results in eudaimonia. The
pre-Socratic person of excellence was excellent in every aspect of life,
which is evidence that selecting the correct activity is not the key.
What I was after when asking you to expand on harmony was why choose this
particular word as opposed to Quality or nothingness or the Tao, etc.
Allen - In my last response i did equate harmony with Quality and nothingness (because
ZMM does) but i chose not to use those terms because what i am really
driving at as a description of the intellectual level is Coherence. Besides, Quality and
nothingness are not open to static definitions. I apologise Steve. I
have made a bit of a cock up here. I should have used the term coherence rather than
harmony with regard to the intellect, but instead i chose to work up to
coherence via the term harmony.
Myguess: Harmony has connotations of parts working together to contribute to
a healthy wholeness. One label for our perception of this positive
cooperative, this getting a sense of the 'orchestra', is beauty.
Analysiscan't do this for it looks at individual pieces and misses the context.
It is impossible, therefore, for analysis alone to have a grasp of the Whole.
This has been left to 'spirituality' consequently with the harmonic
contribution of the parts to the Whole completely missed and claimed not to
exist by the SOM Church of Reason. So, harmony may be a good term to use,
but I just need it clarified.
Allen - I agree Steve, well put. I love the orchestra metaphor. Signs of emergent
behaviour there! It would appear i am confusing matters rather than clarifying
them. May have another stab? The context issue you highlight is a good one, and this is
also highlighted in Anthony McWatts book too because there he analyses
coherence theories of truth and they appear to demand an infinitely large context. (An
infinitely large orchestra) I am not talking about that even though i
agree with Anthonys analysis and your own comments too.
Poincare argued that a methematician experiences the beauty and elegance of an
equation and knows it must be correct before it is tested to a satisfactory
degree of verification. It may not always be correct, but his description is widely held to
be a good description. Poincare is also talking from an epistemic
approach. If we take this approach into metaphysics then we simply take the argument a
step further and say that reality itself is value - value is real.
Therefore beauty, elegance, value and knowledge must be accomodated by a quality
centred metaphysical description.
So when i talk about coherence i do not talk about coherence theories of truth i talk
about relationships between static patterns of quality (The existing
orchestra and what it is playing)
Pirsig does replace his classic / romantic split in ZMM with the static /
dynamic split in Lila. Although Pirsig does define the romantic aesthetic
in ZMM as the immediate surface appearance of things I don't think he meant
superficiality, which he criticizes later on as the tinsel of the appearance
of quality, like chromed plastic.
Intellect, or reasoning, appears to have two constituents, much like Pirsig'
s duality in either ZMM or Lila. Analytic differentiating reason is what
most of us mean when we use the words rationality / reasoning. The modern
west has come to accept this as the totality of reason it seems, or mostly
so, and it's no wonder that SOM is dominate, for that is the world of
analytic reason (ie, breaking reality into discrete parts).
Synthetic or inductive reason has to make 'leaps of faith' to reach
conclusions. IOW, with this type of reasoning we end up with more than we
start. The only thing that can fill in the gaps is intuition. The premises
that inductive reasoning starts from are not necessarily parsed SOM
concepts. Apparently our greatest breakthroughs originate with intuitive
understandings, and this is the creative aspect of reason.
Allen - I agree Steve. And this is where coherence comes in because coherence is a
patterned state open to Dynamic influence and the creative aspect of symbolic
manipulation. (The orchestra and what is performed by it) The symbols are the static
repertiore (music on the stand) and coherence is the arrangements of the
repertiore (How it is played or changed according to new arrangements) Part to whole
relationship. (Static notation - Dynamic performance)
One may stuff information into the repertiore for years before a critical structure is
reached which becomes coherent and transforms the whole repertiore into a
higher state of organisation. When that happens new things emerge that may never
have been thought before.
So, with language pretty much limited to SOM speak, we talk about reason and
intuition as two separate things. But really both occur together always
(that's my 'belief' anyway ;)). We must be careful, once again, of
realizing the limitation of language in describing experience.
Allen - Well, may i suggest that our cultural environment may insist upon a SOM like
way of categorising experience, but all the while something very different
is being experienced in the lives of every day folks. Always was.
Intuition is the part of intellect that grasps your harmony. It is no
accident that mathematics derived through intuition models very well
SOM parsed experience.
Allen - I agree again Steve. Intuition may be helpfuly thought of as a self organising
principle within the static repertiore which is beyond analytical
division.
If we accept intuition as part of rationality then this frees reason from
SOM. I am not sure how this fits in with Bo's SOL.
Allen - I for one accept your suggestion that intuition is an aspect of the intellectual
process. It always has been, and this may be why Robert Pirsig
describes assembly as a long lost branch of sculpture? Anyway, non of this fits in with
Bos SOL as far as i understand, and what is more, i have asked him about
this for years and years without response. If we begin with SOL premises and follow a
deductive path we end up with no account of Zen teachings for example.
Thanks for your response.
Live well,
Steve
PS Incidentally, my sign off, live well, reflects the end for both Quality
and aretê.
Allen - I thought so. Like it.
Please let us not end this conversation here Steve?
Thank you,
Allen
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