From: Paul Turner (paulj.turner@ntlworld.com)
Date: Tue Sep 30 2003 - 15:25:03 BST
Hi Mark
[Mark:]
While language and thinking about anything is intellect; and so
developed at an indeterminate point in the course of human evolution,
the Greeks, with their abstract interest in geometry and maths developed
truth as an immortal principle - the intellectual aesthetic of ratio and
proportion for example.
[Paul:]
Yes, a new level of patterns that behave according to new "rules". As I
see it, relationships between symbols [concepts] define intellect. The
MOQ adds to this "definition" that value ultimately creates these
relationships.
We may consider different manifestations of the value that creates these
relationships. A primary manifestation of the relationships between
symbols created and stored in the intellect seems to be the symbolic
ORGANISATION or STRUCTURE of experience. The static patterns of
intellect may be built up by analogy from the very first relationships
created at the beginning of the intellect, particular to a society
making different associations between patterns. This development may be
a continuation of a more practical organisation of experience by means
of social patterns of ritual.
"He could only guess how far back this ritual-cosmos relationship went,
maybe fifty or one hundred thousand years. Cavemen are usually depicted
as hairy, stupid creatures who don't do much, but anthropological
studies of contemporary primitive tribes suggest that stone age people
were probably bound by ritual all day long. There's a ritual for
washing, for putting up a house, for hunting, for eating and so on - so
much so that the division between 'ritual' and 'knowledge' becomes
indistinct. In cultures without books ritual seems to be a public
library for teaching the young and preserving common values and
information." [LILA, p.442/443]
Another manifestation of intellectual relationships may be that of
DERIVING ASSUMPTIONS from the social description of experience. Poems
and stories recalling important events are a form of describing
experience in specific terms. However, such descriptions may express a
common narrative carrying a society's primary assumptions about
experience and the way the world is.
Another manifestation of intellectual relationships may then be the
EXPLANATION of experience. An explanation seeks to elucidate an
underlying relationship between patterns of experience, deduced from the
organising and descriptive relationships described above. The deductions
are therefore based on primary assumptions about the way the world is.
Importantly, the MOQ says that the explanations are "preselected" on
their value from what may be an infinite number of possibilities.
Another manifestation of intellectual relationships may be the
PREDICTION of experience. From explanations, hypothetical predictions
can be made about an experience that hasn't happened yet. These
predictions form the basis of experiments that are imaginatively created
in the mind and are subsequently the basis of all science and
technology.
In an evolutionary context, one can say that when a new symbol or
relationship [in any of the manifestations described above] between
symbols is formed, and it is better than what previously existed, then
that is a Dynamic advance.
Of course, I'm still thinking this through so don't hesitate to put me
right!
[Mark:]
Today, when a builder uses his/her plumb line to check his/her walls'
accord with gravity, he/she says the wall is 'true.' But that makes a
good wall because its not going to be in danger of falling down - the
wall is true to itself and in harmony with its environment.
The Egyptians built the pyramids, and they had the intellect to do that
well using geometric methods. But the Greeks went further and raised
geometry to an art and adopted its methods of discernment into other
areas of enquiry - an intellectual culture - reason.
[Paul:]
Yes, the Greeks seemed to ask "why" a wall should be better if it is
built in a certain way. The ratio and geometry that was abstracted
stands for what was previously "felt" to be good and could then be
manipulated independently of social, biological and inorganic experience
such as building.
[Mark:]
For me, the disturbing problem with that burst of intellectual dynamic
was to establish reason as the primary intellectual stamp of an
intellectual society; but if we see reason as art, then it should be
tempered with the understanding that truth is a species of Quality -
something the East understands better than the West perhaps?
[Paul:]
Yes. It seems the Oriental cultures didn't place what Northrop calls the
"theoretic component" higher than the "aesthetic component" as was done
in the West. They also kept hold of the non-intellectual understanding
which seems to play a huge part in Oriental culture.
Cheers
Paul
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