Hi Platt, Adam, Lawrence, Maggie, and all,
Platt, I hope you don't minde me taking my time to answer your question "Is
Pirsig a creationist?".
That much is easy - Pirsig is most assuredly NOT a creationist, as Adam's
quote from Ch. 11 of Lila.
Pirsig comes down firmly on the side of evolution claiming that the MoQ can
accomodate both Darwinism and teleological theories of evolution "without
contradiction". I'll get on to that later in this post.
BTW, your attacks on the science community are attacks on a strawman. I know
you are going to agree with many of the things I have to say below. I hope
this post will also convince you that I am "true believer" rather than a
"scientific infidel".
George doesn't seem to have stayed around long enough for my response. He
implied that my qualifications as a biologist somehow undermine my position.
He also seemed to hint that his observance of the Sabbath gave him some sort
of authority on the subject. Ironically, had George stayed around, he would
have discovered that he is not the only Sabbath observer here - I observe it
strictly, probably more strictly than George can imagine. (Lawrence, I hope
that's okay with you, for me to be both pro-evolution and pro-Shabbat!).
The even bigger irony was George's (wife's) counterargument regarding
bacterial antibiotic resistance.
George's wife got it right:
"Resistance to antibiotics and pesticides is evolution? I was taught in
my clinical microbiology classes that the resistance was already there,
latent, in the population and that the adverse stress of the inimical
agent causes it ti come to the fore. And that the resistant bacteria
"teach" the other survivors to do the trick by "gene swapping". They
aren't evolving something entirely new, it already existed in the
population."
This is not a refutation of Darwin's idea but a reaffirmation - George's
wife obviously learned the theory under some sort of misapprehension.
Mutation is not a response to selective pressure - that would be teleogical
(Lemarckism). Mutation is a dierctionless pattern breaker that precedes
selection. Evolutionary theory says that given enough time, every possible
genetic combination will make its appearance in the population. Evolution
works by the selection of certain subgroups, causing a shift in the profile
of the overall population. The antibiotic resistance example is a superb
illustration. A small subpopulation of resistant bugs goes unnoticed - until
you add antibiotic, and then they suddenly become the dominant form.
The point about "gene swapping" shows that even at the molecular level there
is a selective advantage to "learning".
If a certain gene is proliferating wildly in the popuation, that is a sign
that it is something worth having. Bacterial sex is even better than animal
sex - it isn't just the offspring that benefit (as in animals), but the
mating cells can put their newly-acquired genes to immediate use.
The third irony is from Pirsig himself (Lila, Ch. 11):
"It seems clear that no mechanistic pattern exists toward which life is
heading, but has the question been taken up whether life is heading away
from mechanistic patterns?"
Darwinism is essentially based on a belief that life is always heading AWAY
from its current state (by mutation), and the population then drifts in
whichever direction the selective pressure dictates. Pirsig's question thus
appears to be directly opposed to teleological evolution, but he fails to
recognise that it is pro-Darwinism. Thus, Pirsig himself isn't much help at
accomodating "teleological evolution" within the MoQ. IMO, there is no place
for the classical version of teleogical evolution as espoused by Lemarck.
However, I do have an answer to the question "does life have a
cause/purpose":
Life's purpose is to seek out and test all options for survival.
Existance is all a great exploratory adventure, and biological evolution is
but one expression of this.
Maggie, do you remember asking about "curiosity" back in August 1998? My
answer at the time was that curiosity is a pattern breaker - a prerequisite
for seeking out new patterns. I now see that the evolutionary exploration is
driven by "molecular" curiosity. Mutation - the biological pattern breaker
is the first "dynamic" component of evolution.
The second component is selection - evaluation itself. We can ask 'Is it
organisms that "like" their environment of the environment that "likes" its
inhabitants?'. But the question doesn't even need asking once we put Quality
first. It all boils down to Organism likes Environment and Environment likes
Organism - they do well together - it is their cause.
Together, the dynamic pattern breaker and the selective process are a
terrifically powerful combination, as illustrated by the "genetic
algorithm", a mathematical tool to solve complex, multiparameter problems.
This nature-aping trial-and-error approach has been shown to find solutions
where other more directed "intelligent" approaches fail.
After spending years thinking about it, I find myself teary-eyed and amazed
at the extreme beauty of Darwin's idea. It is so amazingly simple at its
core, yet leads to apparently infinite sophistication. I find it to more
sublime and more divine than any "supernatural" philosophy. One might even
say that evolution is the ultimate expression of God's omnipotence!!
Jonathan
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