Platt Holden (pholden@worldnet.att.net)
Sat, 17 Jan 1998 16:14:41 +0100
Hi Diana and LS:
Doug said:
> One of the big reasons that Pirsig wrote ZMM and Lila is The Church of
> Reason: The SOM idea that we can know absolute truth. Pirsig's whole
> premise is that we need a new form of thought, a new philosophy which
> rejects and subsumes this archaic legacy.
I agree with Doug that truth, or rather "many truths" is an essential
principle of the MoQ. So I was stunned to see it missing from the published
edition. A metaphysics without a definition of truth is like an airplane
without wings.
Doug continued:
> If you read Pirsig very carefully he is saying that, "...we know what
> Quality is AND we don't know what Quality is..." For me, this is the
> MoQ Uncertainty Principle! This is a key concept to the evolutionary
> stability of MoQ, IMhO.
>
> Pirsig, I believe, is telling us that we can define Quality AND we
> cannot define Quality. In ZMM, he admits that this is a contradiction.
> But it is only a contradiction if you are loyal to SOM. In the new way
> of thinking, we admit the existence of uncertainty in everything. It is
> there. We cannot do anything about it. So we integrate it into our
> philosophy.
>
> For me, the Principles are almost there, except for this one thing.
Yes. This is the "immanent, transcendent" bit that I included in my first
principle. Only Doug says it much better. It's key to understanding the
MoQ. I'd like to see it added as a separate principle -- the MoQ
Uncertainty Principle -- to make sure it gets the attention it deserves.
Platt
Catch 24: Chaos is a pattern pointing to a pattern without a pattern. But
the possibility always remains that a patternless pattern contains a
pattern.
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