From: Pete Bridge (Peter.Bridge2@btopenworld.com)
Date: Wed Sep 17 2003 - 07:13:25 BST
First thanks to whoever posted the link to the excellent paper
“SUBJECTS, OBJECTS, DATA AND VALUES”
http://www.quantonics.com/Pirsigs_SODV.html , and some of the apparent
contradictions of Quantum physics , and Bohr’s Philosophy of
Complementarity and how it fits together with the Metaphysics of
Quality
There was a TV program screened in the UK called “Soul Searching”
(Channel 4, Sunday 14th September). It suggested that quantum mechanics
might be employed to locate "the essential ingredient to our being
that's not circumscribed by logic or computation but is fundamental to
them".
Some might touch upon it through meditation; others sense it through
what it illuminates; others express it through music, poetry or art. It
went through the limitations of logic and computability. It went
through a range of artists, poets, physicists, mathematicians who seemed
convinced that inspiration and insight came for outside, and they tried
to turn it into words, equations, etc, but never got it quite right and
drew parallels with transcendentalism and ‘absence of self’
It featured Gregory Chaitin and Roger Penrose and there were some
interesting suggestions, that ‘quantum computers’ solve problems in
fewer steps than is logically possible, that you can’t start at one
point in mathematics and use logic to understand mathematics as a whole,
rather mathematics has islands of logic and the only way between them
was inspiration and insight, and arguing that Artificial Intelligence
solely based on logic and computability is doomed to failure.
I’m not really getting it across here, but watching the program set off
all sorts of bells and alarms while I was watching it to how what they
were describing fitted Dynamic Quality and was not subjective or
objective but nevertheless real.
Has anybody read Chaitin or Penrose and would you recommend any books,
is there a real correspondence with some of Pirsig’s ideas or just
superficial (Oh no I used the ‘just’ word :¬) ).
Cheers
Pete
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