From: Valuemetaphysics@aol.com
Date: Fri Nov 28 2003 - 20:06:05 GMT
Hi Mark
Mark said:
I think we can have it both ways if we think in terms of phase
transition:
Water and ice are different states of H2O at 0'C Standard temp and
pressure. That fine line of Dynamic push away from the static repertoire
and towards a condensing of new coherence can look like the same thing
but in two different states at the 'sweet spot' of new creativity.
Paul:
Interesting analogy Mark - a slow build up but with a rapid Dynamic leap
to a new static state?
Mark 28-11-03: Yes. Of course, we are thinking about static patterns of value
rather than water molecules. The new static coherence (Mythos - state) is an
artistic creation of the intellect, and one which evolves to accommodate
Dynamic advance.
The old Mythos/state/coherence was invented by the evolving intellect also,
but dominated by social patterns to an increasingly tenuous degree, until WHAM!
Phase shift.
I feel this fits well with the passage in ZMM where Pirsig suggests the new
Mythos shares a relationship with the old Mythos in the way a Tree shares its
development with a Sapling - they are no different in type or kind.
Mark said:
This is why i was going on about the Welsh language and by inference
Welsh culture as a whole; the capacity for what we in the West accept as
a standard for intellectual creativity was there in the Welsh before the
delayed phase transition came along and suddenly, POW - they are just as
clever, maybe even more clever, than anyone else.
See what i am getting at?
ZMM indicates that the phase transition in Ancient Greece went a bit off
kilter - it could have gone a number of ways, but ended up being rather
too dense in geometrical aesthetic perhaps? It did not have to be that
way, but geometric figure does have that certain beauty; a beauty
suggesting eternal Truth. No wonder the geometric method was used so
often by Western philosophers to prove the existence of God?
Paul:
I see what you are saying and, in an indirect way, it reminds me of
something Pirsig says in Lila's Child:
"Since at the most primary level the observed and the observer are both
intellectual assumptions, the paradoxes of quantum theory have to be
conflicts of intellectual assumption, not just conflicts of what is
observed. Except in the case of Dynamic Quality, what is observed always
involves an interaction with ideas that have been previously assumed. So
the problem is not, “How can observed nature be so screwy?” but can also
be, “What is wrong with our most primitive assumptions that our set of
ideas called ‘nature’ are turning out to be this screwy?” [Lila's Child
p.571]
The relevance is that the intellectual patterns dominating the west in
the 21st Century go back to the early assumptions of the Greeks but are
not the only way it could have gone - which is your point - I think?
Mark 28-11-03: Yes. I am merely repeating what Pirsig says, but wishing to
emphasise the roll of artistic creation, as usual! ;)
Mark said:
As Jan Gullberg (1997). Mathematics: from the Birth of Numbers. W.W.
Norton. feels, “Genuine mathematics, then, its methods and its concepts,
by contrast with soulless calculations, constitutes one of the finest
expressions of the Human spirit…”
That expression is a creative response to DQ, but it is not the be all
and end all of Human Intelligence? (I certainly hope not, because i am
lousy at maths!)
Paul:
Me too! As I see it, the western mind has developed one analogy as far
as it can go and Pirsig has cleared some space around another primary
analogy - rta, arête, dharma, quality - and has tried to redescribe
western terminology in its light. As Pirsig has said somewhere (I can't
remember where), what he wrote about was not taken from thin air but was
lying dormant in our culture. This is something I think DMB makes
repeated references too. The trick is not to throw the baby out with the
bathwater, and that is why I think the MOQ is potentially more valuable
than mysticism and eastern philosophy per se as it rejects neither as
intellectual patterns. It is in this sense that Northrop's influence on
Pirsig is evident as well.
Cheers
Paul
Mark 28-11-03: I think some interesting things have come out of this
conversation. I like it when that happens.
All the best,
Mark
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