From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Sun Nov 06 2005 - 22:20:32 GMT
David H. asked:
> Platt,
>
> How do you persue beauty through art?
I attempt to engage in the human purpose described by Pirsig in his SODV
paper, although without pretense of being on the same artistic or
intellectual level as the individuals he talks about. One just does his
best. If you have ever painted, you are familiar with the experience in
the beginning of "plunging into the unknown" and of "trying to bring
something out of that unknown into a static form that would be of value to
everyone." In so doing, one strives to connect with beauty, the center of
existence. Of course, art is not restricted to painting. As Pirsig points
out, it's any "high quality endeavor."
Here is the significant excerpt:
"In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance art was defined as high
quality endeavor. I have never found a need to add anything to that
definition. But one of the reasons I have spent so much time in this paper
describing the personal relationship of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr
in the development of quantum theory is that although the world views
science as a sort of plodding, logical methodical advancement of
knowledge, what I saw here were two artists in the throes of creative
discovery. They were at the cutting edge of knowledge plunging into the
unknown trying to bring something out of that unknown into a static form
that would be of value to everyone. As Bohr might have loved to observe,
science and art are just two different complementary ways of looking at
the same thing. In the largest sense it is really unnecessary to create a
meeting of the arts and sciences because in actual practice, at the most
immediate level they have never really been separated. They have always
been different aspects of the same human purpose."
Best,
Platt
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