Hi Struan, Lithien and LS:
On Jan. 11, Struan wrote:
"To my mind the MoQ should not be oppositional (to science) . . . it is
potentially (an) exciting and valuable contribution to philosophy and the
philosophy of science, which is holistic in nature and which seeks to
unify seemingly disparate disciplines in a coherent way.”
Pirsig agrees that the MoQ should not oppose science. In “Subjects,
Objects, Data & Values," he writes:
"The aesthetic nature of the Conceptually Unknown is a point of
connection between the sciences and the arts. What relates science to
the arts is that science explores the Conceptually Unknown in order to
develop a theory that will cover measurable patterns emerging from the
unknown. The arts explore the Conceptually Unknown in other ways to
create patterns such as music, literature, painting, that reveal the
Dynamic Quality that produced them. This description, I think, is the
rational connection between the science and the arts."
On Jan 12, Lithien writing on another subject asked:
“. . . could dreams, myths and symbols be a way of bypassing the
intellect's alienation from nature and getting in touch with Dynamic
Quality?”
Pirsig equates Dynamic Quality with the Conceptually Unknown and (as
Lithien intimates) suggests that artists, by manipulating visual and
auditory symbols, and scientists, by manipulating intellectual symbols
(math), attempt to contact and contemplate Dynamic Quality directly.
Pirsig also describes the mystical experience as contemplating Dynamic
Quality by eliminating symbols altogether. These, as Pirsig says, are
"different aspects of the same human purpose."
So, while there’s more than one way to skin a cat, it's the same cat in all
cases. Or, to switch metaphors, the "glue" uniting the mystic, the artist
and the scientist is the pursuit of Dynamic Quality--the pursuit of
happiness if you will--the desire to grasp the Conceptually Unknown, the
"dim apprehension of things too obscure for existing language" that
science philosopher A.N. Whitehead spoke of, and the heroic quest to
reach a higher level (the Impossible Dream) that mythologist Joseph
Campbell talked about.
When a materialist like Richard C. Vitzthum says ". . . a single,
foundational, material reality, perhaps ultimately describable in the terms
of some future human science," he's admitting to the existence of the
Conceptually Unknown which has yet to be caged within the bounds of
intellect. Other scientists admit to the same shortcoming of their
discipline, as shown in the following quotes:
"Something unknown is doing we don’t know what--that is what our theory
amounts to. It does not sound a particularly illuminating theory. I have
read something like it elsewhere –-
The slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe." Eddington
"The progress of science has now reached a turning point. The stable
foundations of physics have broken up . . . The old foundations of
scientific thought are becoming unintelligible. Time, space, matter,
material, electricity, mechanism, organism, configuration, structure,
pattern, function, all require reinterpretation.” Whitehead
“Our conception of substance is only vivid so long as we do not face it. It
begins to fade when we analyze it . . . the solid substance of things is
another illusion . . . We have chased the solid substance from the
continuous liquid to the atom, from the atom to the electron, and there we
have lost it” Russell
"From the very start we are involved in the argument between nature and
man in which science plays only a part, so that the common division of
the world into subject and object, inner world and outer world, body and
soul, is no longer adequate and leads us into difficulties." Heisenberg
"As the new physics has shown, all earlier systems of physics, from the
Newtonian mechanics down to the old quantum theory, fell into the error
of identifying appearances with reality; they confined their attention to the
walls of the cave, without even being conscious of a deeper reality
beyond." Sir James Jeans
This longing for truth, this reaching out for Dynamic Quality, has, of
course, been expressed by poets throughout the ages. My favorite are
these lines by Edgar Allen Poe which connect with Pirsig’s "aesthetic
nature" of the unknown:
"An immortal instinct, deep within the human spirit, is a sense of the
beautiful. This is what administers our delight in life. But there is still
something in the distance which we know of, but are unable to fully attain.
This thirst belongs to our immortality, a consequence and indication of
our perennial existence. It is no mere appreciate of the beauty before us,
but a wild effort to reach the beauty above, to attain a portion of that
loveliness whose very elements appertain to eternity alone."
I submit to the Squad that this is what unites science, art, religion and
humanity--the unquenchable desire to totally experience Dynamic Quality
in all its infallible, ineffable beauty.
Platt
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