RE: MD And now for something not very different at all

From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Jul 19 2003 - 21:51:56 BST

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    Scott, Squonk, Rick and all:

    Squink said:
    Rationality is an art in my view. It is primarily aesthetic and requires no
    objects.

    Scott said:
    "In your view". This is not a common view. It has its point, but Pirsig
    never subsumed rationality to art.

    Rick said:
    Umm, Scott... did you happen to catch the title of Pirsig's first book?
    "Zen and the ART of Motorcycle Maintenance". In the first two pages of
    pt.2, ch.8 of that book, Pirsig explains that he is using "motorcycle
    maintenance" as a down-to-Earth example of 'rationality'. That is, for all
    intents and purposes, the title of the book could have been "Zen and the Art
    of Rationality". So (rare as the occasion may be), I'm going to have to
    agree with Squonk on this point.

    dmb says:
    I think Scott and Rick both make good points here and I'd like to split the
    difference, or something like that. Sure, even motorcycle repair can be an
    art, but it is also true that there are very precise tolerances within that
    rational design and they deserve a respect that can't rightly be accomodated
    by our sense of beauty or peace of mind all by itself. We also need to
    understand the machine and the tools we're using. In fact, the artfulness of
    rationality can only be attained after some kind of mastery has been
    achieved. Let me put it another way. In order to recognize the artfulness
    and beauty of E=mc2 one has to first understand what those symbols mean. And
    surely the more one knows about physics and mathematics, the more one can
    appreciate its beauty. ... So, with a few major qualifiers and modifiers, I
    might be tempted to go along with Squonk, But then we also read notions like
    these...

    squonk said:
    The logos is a new mythos. There is no difference in kind or type, only
    size.
    squonk said:
    I feel the creations of the intellect can be taken to be the mythos.
    Squonk said:
    I feel the intellect is primarily an aesthetic sense of Quality."

    dmb says:
    Logos is mythos? The intellect's creations are the mythos? The intellect is
    an aesthetic sense? If all this were true, I don't know why we should even
    bother to have definitions, dictionaries or language, much less philosophy.
    The attempt here seems to be to erase the most important distinctions by
    making all the key terms equivalent and interchangable. Ironically, this
    attempt to flatter art and beauty has an extremely negative aesthetic
    quality. Its an ugly mess. Those precise surfaces have been hammered beyond
    recognition and that bike "ain't going nowhere".

    Tanks.

    And guns.

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