LS Re: To define or not to define revisited


clark (clark@netsites.net)
Tue, 20 Jan 1998 17:44:03 +0100


----------
From: Doug Renselle <renselle@on-net.net>
To: Multiple recipients of <lilasqd@mail.hkg.com>
Subject: LS Re: To define or not to define revisited
Date: Monday, January 19, 1998 2:09 PM

Diana McPartlin wrote:
>
> Hi Doug
>
> Doug Renselle wrote:
>
...
> Doug:
> >Quality is intrinsically uncertain and certain - that's its nature.
>
> Can you quote anything from Lila to support this?
>
Diana,

Here is what I have been able to find in answer to your question --

At the beginning of Chapter 11 of 'Lila' about three+ pages into the
chapter:

"Something else sounded wrong too. It was too contrived, too full of
objective 'observational' stuff. It ignored the whole Dynamic aspect.
There is always this open end of Dynamic indeterminacy. It would be
impossible to predict anything from what she said."

Pirsig has just explained the crucial point that Quality has Lila, not
vice versa. To me he is saying here that uncertainty is the "…open end
of Dynamic indeterminacy."

On the next page he goes on:

"So although modern physics pulled the rug out from under the
deterministic explanation of evolution many decades ago, it has survived
by default because no other more plausible explanation has been
available."

I think here he is punching more holes in SOM's trusted
'cause-and-effect' platypus.

Six pages later:

"What the Dynamic force had to invent in order to move up the molecular
level and stay there was a carbon molecule that would preserve its
limited Dynamic freedom from inorganic laws and at the same time resist
deterioration back to simple compounds of carbon again. A study of
nature shows the Dynamic force was not able to do this but got around
the problem by inventing two molecules: a static molecule able to resist
abrasion, heat, chemical attack and the like; and a Dynamic one, able to
preserve the subatomic indeterminacy at a molecular level and 'try
everything' in the ways of chemical combination."

Also, you will note that Pirsig's third puzzle, the 'free will vs.
Determinism' puzzle is about the implicitness of uncertainty in the MoQ.

Diana on page 156 of the Bantam hardbound edition, find:

"To be sure, it doesn't seem as though people blindly follow the laws of
substance in everything they do, but within a Deterministic explanation
that is just another one of those illusions that science is forever
exposing."

On page 221 see:

"What makes the marketplace work is Dynamic Quality. The market is
always changing and the direction of that change can never be
predetermined."

Diana, and TLS, I stand firmly on my position that we need an MoQ
Uncertainty Principle. However, I am unwilling to impose my personal
view on The Lila Squad. As our fellow TLS-mates have said, Diana, and I
agree that you have the final say, and we shall abide your judgment for
the site.

One more thing. Going back to Lars' key question about wanting to
really know why we must move to MoQ and why we have to reject SOM -- the
MoQUP does exactly that! It provides a big reason why. It dumps the
Church of Reason in spades. It dumps total certainty and it dumps
absolute determinism. It says some things may be defined by finite
intellect and some things may not be defined by finite intellect. Say
good-bye to SOM. This should help you "...to get [it/MoQ further] under
[my/your] skin," to really know the MoQ.

And Lars, thank you. I learned more from your question about 'Why?' and
the subsequent Lila Squad dialogues than I ever imagined possible. And
we are only 2/3 through January, 1998! Thank you, Lars.

Diana, if you need more research, let me know.

Mtty, Diana,

Doug Renselle.

-- 
"At the center, generating the waves, was Quality."

By Robert M. Pirsig, in 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' p. 188, Bantam (paperback), 28th edition, 1982.

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---------- Doug, I haven't thought this through but could it be that the ability to solve nonlinear differential equations shows us a way to marry the "Church of Reason" with Dynamic Quality? If this thought has any merit it would explain your MOQUP in spades. On another post a short way up the line Hugo and I talked about Deterministic Disorder, or Chaos theory as it is popularly called. It is a way to penetrate nonlinear dynamical systems which up until about 1976 (after ZMM) were not solvable except by trial and error on the systems themselves. According to the book Chaos, linear differential equations, which are solvable, represent about as much of the universe as you could put in your eye. Chaos theory opens a whole range of deterministically disordered systems to penetration. Systems which are locally unpredictable but globally (whole system) stable. Like a marble in a bowl. Not the same as truly random systems. Feigenbaum discovered the universal number 4.6692016090. To obfuscate and oversimplify, deterministically disordered systems all produce this number when treated with different mathematical functions. Universality. Self similarity and recursion. Strange attractors. A description of what happens when things work on themselves again and again. Can produce the human brain and lungs with enough alveoli to cover a tennis court, etc. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Are we talking Dynamic Quality and local uncertainty here? Could we be talking about the system that produced the human brain having a bearing on the operation of Dynamic Quality? Could this be the source of your uncertainty principle? Am I nuts? Can we allow for indeterminism in a deterministic system? My Quote (from Pogo)

How misty grows the hazy yon. How myrtle petaled thou. For spring has sprung the cyclotron. How high browse thou, Brown Cow.

Ken

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