From: ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com
Date: Mon Jul 12 2004 - 14:05:39 BST
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:
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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.’
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