From: Valence (valence10@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 18 2003 - 05:33:55 BST
Hey Matt, Ian and all,
I'm so busy that I was going to hold my responses on today's posts until the
weekend, but I just couldn't wait on this one...
> Ian said:
> So what is the connection between our favourite Holistic Detective,
Nietzsche and Pirsig / Phaedrus ?
>
> Matt:
> At their best, they are all pragmatists....
> The footnote to this last line reads:
> "You could also relate it to things other than numbers such as saying,
'the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.' This relates it
to Douglas Adams, and I take Adams’ answer to what the ultimate essence is
as a reductio ad absurdum for the question of essences (including what the
Ultimate Question actually is: 'What do you get if you multiply six by
nine?'). I also take this to be the point of his description of the
Universe, the Babel fish proof for the non-existence of God, and the fact
that there are five books in the Hitchhiker trilogy. In fact, read the
Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide from start to finish, from the introduction ('A
Guide to the Guide,' a very funny piece on how the various writings all
contradict each other) to Mostly Harmless, and you basically get the most
entertaining way I’ve ever read to suggest that we should stop looking for
essences i.e. to stop doing metaphysics. The world truly lost its funniest
pragmatist when Adams died prematurely at the age of 49 in 2001."
R
Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Douglas Adams was the ultimate pragmatist, a man
who genuinely knew how to attack metaphysics without practicing it. The
Hitchhiker's Guide is a grand send-up of the absurdities that flow from
looking for a single, ultimate answer to life (the universe, and
everything). Moreover, in that masterpiece, the ultimate weapon in the
universe was the ship "Heart of Gold" powered by an "improbability" drive
which could conjure random and unexpected events. The implication being
that in a universe ludicrously bent on searching for deterministic answers,
the unexpected is the most potent force there is.
take care
rick
"`If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught
and shot now.'" - Zaphod Beeblebrox (Douglas Adams)
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Jul 18 2003 - 05:35:36 BST