From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Fri Oct 03 2003 - 17:04:41 BST
Steve,
> > Platt said to Scott:
> > Here's where our major difference lies. I go along with Pirsig's idea
> > that the
> > cutting edge of DQ is pure experience prior to disintegration into
> > patterns, symbols, thoughts and ideas. You say the cutting edge is
> > patterns, symbols, thoughts and ideas, as if that once you become an
> > adult you'll never experience anything again for the first that isn't
> > an intellectual pattern of one sort or another. Is that an accurate
> > summary of your belief?.
> Steve
> Sorry to butt in again.
>
> Our major difference is that I think experiences in the form of thoughts
> have a dynamic cutting edge as do experiences of hot stoves. We aren't
> any closer to reality when getting burned on a stove as we are when we
> have an idea. When we think we dynamically hypothesize rationales and
> select relevent symbols and concepts on the basis of undefined Quality.
> Of course we also follow established rules of logic (static patterns) so
> thinking like all experiences has both dynamic and static components.
I wouldn't put it that way because of Pirsig's clear and repeated
description of the dynamic cutting edge as "pre-intellectual." However,
perhaps the following quote from his SODV paper is something we can
agree on:
"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."
Anyway, feel free to butt in any time. We learn from one another even
if we don't always agree.
Thanks,
Platt
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