From: gav (gav_gc@yahoo.com.au)
Date: Tue Jul 13 2004 - 03:03:42 BST
sorry if this has already been mentioned...not enough
time at the moment to check through the emails.
was thinking that the taoist concept 'wu wei' might be
useful re: coherence and sweet spots etc.
action in non-action.
--- ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com wrote: > David Buchanan
stated July 11th 2004:
>
> What I don't get is the meaning beyond the
> dictionary, Mark's supposed
> "philosophical" meaning of the word "coherence".
> It’s pretty clear that
> he thinks the word means something "similar to
> Quality" and that he's
> using the term to "link Pirsig's MOQ" to various
> fields. But as it is
> presented, I think it not only fails to accomplish
> this linking, the
> ideas themselves seems to make no sense. They seem
> contrary
> to the MOQ and logically incoherent.
>
> Paul Turner stated July 12th 2004:
>
> I find value in the way that Mark provides examples
> from sources other than Pirsig, similar to noting
> how Wilber, or Plotinus, or Barfield etc. supports
> the MOQ, only the accounts he uses are not from
> philosophers but from sportsmen, musicians etc.
>
> Ant McWatt comments:
>
> I’m biased here as I helped Mark edit and compile
> his Coherence paper but I think any examples from
> everyday activities such as playing tennis or
> sailing a boat that throws light on the Dynamic
> (from a static point of view) is helpful.
>
> Dr Robert Harris suggested to me in 1998 to read the
> ideas on "flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
> (professor and former chairman of the Department of
> Psychology at the University of Chicago. Also a
> Senior Fulbright Fellow and currently sits on
> several boards, including the Board of Advisors for
> the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Also known to shoot
> hippies and crystal wielding “new agers” on sight…)
> for a similar reason.
>
> Harris thought Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas on flow were
> helpful in understanding Dynamic Quality in everyday
> activities so though Mark’s writings are probably
> not as sophisticated as Csikszentmihalyi’s to
> dismiss them completely out of hand as “new age
> jibberish” is a little unfair (though admittedly I
> do agree with David on basically everything else -
> MOQ orientated). The examples of Dynamic Quality in
> music, sport, motorcycle maintenance and humour that
> Mark has compiled in his paper are useful in their
> own right.
>
> Anyway, for my PhD thesis, I related Mark’s ideas to
> Csikszentmihalyi’s and provide the relevant section
> below which might help clarify (for anyone
> interested) what Mark is actually suggesting by
> coherence:
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 2.8.2. HARMONY & ‘SWEET SPOTS’
>
> The [above example from sport] provides an
> indication of the value of the ‘sweet spot’ as
> personally experienced; such experience is [also]
> noted by Professor of psychology, Mihaly
> Csikszentmihalyi (1990, p.xiii):
>
> ‘If a tennis player is asked how it feels when a
> game is going well, she will describe a state of
> mind that is very similar to the description a chess
> player will give of a good tournament. So will be a
> description of how it feels to be absorbed in
> painting, or playing a difficult piece of music.
> Watching a good play or reading a stimulating book
> also seems to produce the same mental state. I
> called it ‘flow,’ because this was a metaphor
> several respondents gave for how it felt when their
> experience was most enjoyable - it was like being
> carried away by a current, everything moving
> smoothly without effort.’
>
> As noted above in Section 2.3.4., such personal
> experience is evident in mathematics. The aesthetic
> feeling noted by mathematicians (such as Poincaré
> and Dirac) may be described as an intense coherence
> between their repertoire of intuitions and
> postulations. Thus, intellectual creativity and
> insight emerge at the ‘sweet spot’ of coherence
> while, conversely, are reduced by too much reliance
> on static methods. ‘Genuine mathematics, then, its
> methods and its concepts, by contrast with soulless
> calculations, constitutes one of the finest
> expressions of the Human spirit.’ (Gullberg, 1997,
> p. xxi) Indeed, it would appear that mathematics,
> at its best, is a form of art.
>
> In the Arts, the ‘sweet spot’ is much evident and
> music is well known as a display of ratio,
> proportion and harmony. I have observed in my own
> experience (when visiting Liverpool’s Philharmonic
> Hall with a philosophy class to hear various
> extracts of British Classical music) that Vaughan
> Williams’ piece The Lark Arising produced an
> involuntary emotional response in a substantial
> number of the class. In other words, the Quality of
> the music was simply not down to just subjective
> opinion. I would suggest, therefore, that Williams’
> The Lark Arising reflects the harmony (when
> performed properly) as experienced in the Japanese
> arts and is why it produces such noticeable effects.
> I would further speculate that these effects are
> present to a lesser extent in everything we
> encounter (most experiences being less harmonic than
> a performance of Quality music) whether it’s people,
> buildings, natural scenery, poems or other works of
> art.
>
> ‘To an experienced Zen Buddhist, asking if one
> believes in Zen or one believes in the Buddha,
> sounds a little ludicrous, like asking if one
> believes in air or water. Similarly Quality is not
> something you believe in, Quality is something you
> experience.’ (Pirsig, 2000a)
>
> Comedy and tragedy may also form a ‘sweet spot’. A
> specific example of the interplay between these
> appears in the work of Laurel & Hardy. The ‘sweet
> spot’ is maintained in their films with such
> consummate ease that the audience resonates in a
> tension between sympathetic response (tragedy) and
> laughter (comedy). Time and self disappear as a
> ‘sweet spot’ is discovered and maintained in the
> ritual of play and theatre. The tensions in Laurel
> & Hardy’s work provided by the subtle contrasts
> between the two principals also balance expectation
> and incongruity; Hardy being an irritable Southern
> gentleman while Laurel is a sensitive simpleton.
> (Maxwell, 2003)
>
> An indication that a ‘sweet spot’ is occurring is
> that it involves a degree of dissolution between the
> static patterns, as notions of self are reduced or
> even forgotten. The static patterns may be said to
> resonate in a particular way with Dynamic Quality in
> which our patterns are included in the coherence.
> This is supported by Csikszentmihalyi (1990, p.xiv)
> who observes:
>
> ‘We feel involved, concentrated, absorbed. We know
> what must be done, and we get immediate feedback as
> to how well we are doing. The tennis player knows
> after each shot whether the ball actually went where
> she wanted it to go; the pianist knows after each
> stroke of the keyboard whether the notes sound like
> they should… We forget ourselves and become lost in
> the activity.’
>
>
>
> Csikszentmihalyi (1990, p.xiv) further notes that:
> ‘this state of consciousness... comes as close as
> anything can to what we call happiness’ where we may
> experience high intensity wonder and joy. An
> intense coherence of static patterns may indicate
> the beautiful or may even approach a mystic
> experience. Such may be enlightenment - an
> exceptional ‘sweet spot’ between static quality
> patterns.
>
> 'We feel a sense of transcendence, as if the
> boundaries of the self had been expanded. The
> sailor feels at one with the wind, the boat, and the
> sea; the singer feels a mysterious sense of
> universal harmony. In those moments the awareness
> of time disappears, and hours seem to flash by
> without our noticing.' (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990,
> p.xiv)
>
> As evolution tends towards Dynamic Quality in the
> MOQ, ‘sweet spots’ may be viewed as the immediate
> cutting pressure in the evolutionary process and are
> apparent within the relationships in all the four
> static levels and the relationships between them.
>
> ‘Contrary to expectation, ‘flow’ usually happens not
> during relaxing moments of leisure and
> entertainment, but rather when we are actively
> involved in a difficult enterprise, in a task that
> stretches our mental and physical abilities. Any
> activity can do it. Working on a challenging job,
> riding the crest of a tremendous wave, and teaching
> one’s child the letters of the alphabet are the
> kinds of [Dynamic] experiences that focus our whole
> being in a harmonious rush of energy, and lift us
> out of the [static] anxieties and boredom that
> characterize so much of everyday life.’
>
>
>
=== message truncated ===
Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
http://au.movies.yahoo.com
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jul 13 2004 - 03:51:42 BST