Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Wed, 29 Oct 1997 19:05:42 +0100
Martin, I have wanted to reply to your first mail on the beginning of
existence, as it concerns something I have thought a lot about, and now I
have to write.
First a point of disagreement on the levels:
>As we continue backwards in time along our trans-temporal road, we'll
>reach a time when people just started to band together. A time when
>they were shifting from nomadic lifestyles to settlements, plantations,
>and eventually cities. When governments became necessary for the first
>time to establish order, and religions became prominent to answer their
>questions about the world. This was perhaps ten to fifteen thousand
>years ago (although people may have existed in clans for 100,000 years,
>they certainly didn't have any 'social' values per se), and we can say
>with some certainty that social static Quality evolved around this time.
I disagree with this (I am not sure where exactly Pirsig stands on this
issue). I consider the social level and social values much, much older.
Sociality is part of most everything of the life we see and enjoy around us.
Your view of the levels might be much more common, though. In Denmark a guy
named Simo Koeppe (da: Køppe) wrote an interesting book called 'The levels
of reality', in 1990; it is a very thorough analysis of the new 'wholistic'
or systemic sciences where the he uses the same major levels as Pirsig. He
actually puts the social and intellectual (I think he calls it the
psychological level) in parallel - next to each other on top of the
biological level, on top of the physical level. I belive this is wrong, and
that it comes from trying to preserve the mind (or soul) as something
specifically human, when moving towards an evolutionary and hierarchic
view. I myself follow Gregory Bateson (see his Mind and Nature for
instance) on this issue; Bateson argues that mind is something which we
share with the rest of the living, - 'the big step' is not from animal to
man, but from non-life to life. I have argued before on LS on this, saying
that if we bend Bateson into a Pirsigian shape, we get a mind-less level
and three levels of mind, the first step being a mind (a subject)
reflecting its environment (or better: 'umwelt' - the environment as it
sees it), the second step being minds mutually reflecting other minds, and
the third step being a mind reflecting itself. (And I do see this as a
definition of the levels, even though some say that can't be done.)
If we are to place the revolutions of stepping onto a new level in our
evolutionary history, I would point to the becoming of life, the cambrian
revolution, that is - the becoming of multicellular (social ;-) life (at
least this is the earliest significant trace we have of the social step in
the history of life - see Stephen Jay Goulds 'Wonderful life'). And we are
of course in the midst of the third revolution.
The last part of your mail was most intriguing and goes right to the heart
of what I have to say in reply to your mail on the beginning of existence.
I will go ahead an mail that reply, but first some specific comments.
Martin:
> 1) In MOQ terms, all the theories look the same so MOQ
>terms don't shed any light on the beginnings, and 2) it seems Dynamic
>Quality can't exist before static values!
>
>1) In MOQ terms, at some point in time Dynamic Quality produced the
>first values. As soon as they became present and continuous in time,
>they became static.
Yes, this is in accordance with Charles Sanders Peirce's metaphysics, where
he distinguishes three modes of being: The Potential, the Actual and the
Habitual (or Necessary) being. The first two, the most important
distinction between potentiality and actuality, was an original idea of
Aristotle as far as we know.
Martin:
> In scientific terms, everything was a singularity
>(a dimensionless point, having no physical existence, only a position,
>and containing within itself both all of matter and all of space) until
>a moment (Dynamic Quality) in time when it exploded (the values were
>produced).
The question being how an dimensionless point can contain anything, and how
there can be a point, a position, before the becoming of space :-)
> In religious terms, at some point in time a Creator God
>(Dynamic Quality) created the universe (produced the first values). We
>intuitively think Dynamic Quality existed before static values did, so
>we are led to say it caused the first ones. But this statement is so
>vague it sheds no light on what actually happened. A scientific or
>religious theory looks the same depending on if we treat DQ as a god or
>that mysterious force that triggered the Big Bang. I'm at a loss here.
I am very reluctant towards calling this mysterious force God, at least
without qualifying it, because our (the christian that is) idea of God
seems to imply a present force, a god that has a say in our present life,
and this is NOT implied by this mysterious force of the beginning.
>2) Upon further reflection, I noticed that time is dependent on matter.
>A singularity can exist for an infinite amount of time, but time is
>meaningless without something to notice time by. If two objects move
>past each other, you can notice that it happens over an interval of
>time, but if you're staring at black space (and there wasn't any space
>before the Bang, either!), you might as well be staring at a photograph
>taken instantaneously.
Exactly! And this means that we have to find a new concept of time, or at
least that we have to dismiss the Einsteinian concept of time as a (fourth)
dimension. Time is a derivative of motion, hence we cannot speak of
something moving in a preexisting dimension of time. This has a great many
important implications which I would love to discuss - maybe later?
Martin:
> And since Dynamic Quality is the 'now,' this
>moment in time, it seems that DQ is dependent on time. Whatever is in
>the past and whatever we hope in the future is part of SQ, but only a
>continually progressing 'nowness' gives any meaning to Dynamic Quality.
>Where was Dynamic Quality and what was it doing before the Bang?? In
>creationary terms, the question is practically the same. What was God,
>our DQ, doing for all the 'time' before existence?? For all practical
>purposes, there was no time, and consequently there was no 'now,' and
>the concept of a singularity, or god, or DQ, is meaningless.
I have to try to convey my thoughts on this, though I find it immensely
difficult to put it into words. Please see my reply on your first mail,
which I will post shortly, and please forgive the inadequacy of this
attempt at an answer.
Martin:
>(This can also be compared to the 'train' of existence. The leading
>edge is DQ, but start taking away the sections of the train, one by one,
>until you take away the last section. Now there is no train left, so
>there is no leading edge and no place for DQ.)
>
>It's quite a conundrum. Your thoughts?
Thanks for your mail!
Hugo
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