From: Yale Landsberg (yale_landsberg@yalelands.com)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 11:42:15 BST
Guys, for what it's worth, "evolutions from level to level" is what much of
my paper on Fractal Philosophy is about. You will find the paper at
http://yalelands.com/frph.pdf . BTW, Patrick van Den Berg on this list has
read it and has made some very insightful comments per MoQ aspects of it.
Some of you might as well. YL
----- Original Message -----
From: <skutvik@online.no>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2003 1:05 AM
Subject: Re: MD Evolution of levels
> Hi Matthew, Paul and All Apostles ;-)
> (PS for Sam)
>
> 9 Sep. Matt wrote (to Paul) about this statement from me:
>
> Bo:
> >>>According to the MOQ all levels start(ed) as a pattern of the
> parent level.
>
> Paul:
> >> Is this what Pirsig said? Does he really mean that a pattern of
> values in one level "moves up" to a new level?
>
> > Matt:
> > I think I agree with you when you bring up point (c), "It doesn't fit
> > with the statement that levels are not continuous." Pirsig says
> > explicitly that the levels are discrete and I would take that to mean
> > that the leap ec is just that: a leap, not a muddled
> > shuffle.
>
> A child is an autonomous individual even if it is from a set of parents?
> But will - even if living to be a hundred - remain their child. Also, it
> may enter a career that is different from - even damaging to - the
> family tradition? Isn't this a valid analogue?
>
> > Side note: that was me doing biography. As explicit as Pirsig is, I
> > have also been pretty explicit in criticizing Pirsig's idea of the
> > levels as being discrete. Its probably pretty safe to say that
> > pragmatists think everything is a muddled shuffle.
>
> This about the levels having their origin as a pattern of the parent I
> took for granted, but it must be noted that "at home" it is a true family
> member, it's only that the upper level has usurped it's qualities for a
> higher purpose. Thus any point of departure will never be determined.
>
> (First this quote from Lila chapter 12):
> "This classification of patterns is not very original, but the
> Metaphysics of Quality allows an assertion about them that is
> unusual. It says they are not continuous. They are discrete. They
> have very little to do with one another. Although each higher level is
> built on a lower one it is not an extension of that lower level. Quite
the
> contrary. The higher level can often be seen to be in opposition to the
> lower level, dominating it, controlling it where possible for its own
> purposes".
>
> This may at first glance seem to contradict the "origin with the parent"
> but the discreteness is as indicated in the child example above.
>
> (Lila Chapter 12)
> "Similarly the biological patterns of life and the molecular patterns of
> organic chemistry have a "machine language" interface called DNA
> but that does not mean that the carbon or hydrogen or oxygen atoms
> possess or guide life. A primary occupation of every level of evolution
> seems to be offering freedom to lower levels of evolution. But as the
> higher level gets more sophisticated it goes off on purposes of its
> own".
>
> I am lay here, but believe that DNA has something to do with sexual
> reproduction and that there was a time of a simpler mechanism (still is
> on the germ level). Anyway, there must have been an immense time
> span when no-one could tell a complex chemical molecule from an
> organism, and carbon is described as the inorganic pattern that DQ
> used for its ride to biology. How it ..."offered freedom to the lower
> levels of evolution" ...? A certain mobility perhaps.
>
> (Lila Chapter 12)
> "Our intellectual description of nature is always culturally derived. The
> intellectual level of patterns, in the historic process of freeing itself
> from its parent social level, namely the church, has tended to invent a
> myth of independence from the social level for its own benefit.
> Science and reason, this myth goes, come only from the objective
> world, never from the social world. The world of objects imposes itself
> upon the mind with no social mediation whatsoever. It is easy to see
> the historic reasons for this myth of independence. Science might
> never have survived without it. But a close examination shows it isn't
> so."
>
> Here Pirsig does not suggest what could have been the social pattern
> that DQ used for its ride to intellect, but I believe that language is
> widely accepted.
>
> Sincerely
> Bo
>
> PS for Sam
>
> You had found the very same quote as I
>
> > "Similarly the biological patterns of life and the molecular patterns
> > of organic chemistry have a "machine language" interface called DNA
> > but that does not mean that the carbon or hydrogen or oxygen atoms
> > possess or guide life. A primary occupation of every level of
> > evolution seems to be offering freedom to lower levels of evolution.
> > But as the higher level gets more sophisticated it goes off on
> > purposes of its own."
>
> > But I'll continue thinking about this.
>
> In my comment I said I couldn't tell whether DNA is the life formula, or
> if there were/are still simpler forms of proliferating ... there must be
if
> plants are "living", but this is not the issue. The inorganic pattern that
> "went off on a purpose of its own" is the carbon atom. At the inorganic
> level it is a chemical substance, but at the biological level it is
> essential for life.
>
> PPS for Paul:
> I think that the idea of progress within each level being complication
> rather than improvement (improvement is between the levels) has
> some bearing on this issue.
>
>
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