On Jun 11, 2009, at 9:20 PM, William Conger wrote:
I think the mountain is a quantity, not a quality of matter.
But as Stalin once said, "Quantity has a quality all of its own." <g>
A quality is a valuing of some sort (chosen by humans).
Perhaps this is how Boris meant it in his comment about how artworks "contribute to changing the quality of life," but generally in a conversation with philosophical dimensions, like this, "quality" is used to designate an essential property of the subject at hand. I believe your elastic use of this term unnecessarily clouds the issue.
Thus a mountain may have one quality for the miner, another for the photographer, another for the landowner, etc., etc. But it has no quality independent of a person defining it. The mountain is just there -- as stuff.
You make a reasonable point, which, however, may be a misdirection to the less acute among us. The mountain may, *among its qualities (i.e., essential properties)*, present one that is of particular importance or relevance to the miner, and another that is important for the photographer, etc. In other words, the mountain exhibits (manifests, embodies--not "has," which suggests some sort of acquiring) many qualities simultaneously, and the importance given to one quality by one group of observers does not negate or eliminate the other qualities.
Even the laws of nature are human distinctions for the sake of utility, measuring, and valuing nature.
I can go as far as your first two purposes, but "valuing nature" is not what I would regard as one of the purposes or final causes of studying (or promulgating) the laws of nature. Valuing nature, like appreciating it (a related term), designates the degree of relevance or importance we place on something, not on whether we can understand it clearly or whether that understanding is complete or satisfactory.
Perception, interpretation, categorization, and similar matters of studying and analyzing things are not--or need not be--completely utilitarian or exclusively instrumental. We can feel a proper sense of satisfaction and completion in just learning about and grasping the laws of nature--perhaps because the explanations conform to our direct experience of nature, similar to what Plato (I think) identified as the moment when our learning a fact became an act of re-cognizing (reknowing).
Some years ago, I read "Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory" (a PhD dissertation later published as a book), which traced the history of the perception and evaluation of mountains, from barriers that had to be laboriously traversed to places that contained sacred precincts, to vast natural marvels that gave us a gateway to the ineffable and sublime. An interesting book.
Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite. By Marjorie Hope Nicolson. Reprint of the 1959 edition published by Cornell University Press. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. xix + 4o3 pp. Notes, index. Paper $17.95.
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