[Krimel] 1) Someone has to be first, but why and so what? [Arlo] At the risk of overstating the obvious, no one person here is "first". Each of these scientists worked not only in teams, depended on a division of labor, but likely drew their inspirations out of the rich dialogic interactions not only "in real time" but also historically. What you describe is the cultural tradition of assigning something to "a creator", but a closer examination shows this is never so. And, at the risk of knowing this will bring the tired old barrage of "herd mentality" and "neosocialist agenda", I posit that a more accurate examination of the collective activity from which these achievements derive reveals a systems ecology, where depending on your focus highlights certain individuals as "keystone species" but never loses sight of the larger context from which this activity derives.
A view similar to this (the naturalist in me prefers the ecology metaphor) is known as "Activity Theory", and derives from the work conducted by Lev Vygotsky and his colleagues. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_theory). This theory considers "socially-situated activity" and attempts to move beyond (what I would say is S/O) dualistic thinking. There are, of course, obvious parallels between this and Pirsig (who offers the idea that "intellect" emerges from "social patterns"). [Krimel] 2) The practice of science in terms of scientists understanding of what they are doing. Pursuing knowledge and or wisdom? By showing us two different styles of competition for advancement we get insight into how competition moves knowledge forward and how two very different styles of competition produce different outcomes. [Arlo] We are continually told in our culture that man is essentially selfish, and motivated only be self-interest and furthering self-capital. To this end, competition as so described is the natural product of two people rushing to "cash in" (either by reaping social status, praise, money or the idea of securing historical recognition). This, we are told, is the "right", natural state of things. Maybe it is. Apparently, pooling their resources and sharing their glory was an obscene thought for these scientists, as I'm sure the selfish-man crowd will applaud. Still, I wonder if this is a cultural phenomenon and not something innate or superior. I am struck by Pirsig's recognition of this in ZMM. "And now he began to see for the first time the unbelievable magnitude of what man, when he gained power to understand and rule the world in terms of dialectic truths, had lost. He had built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of his own dreams of power and wealth...but for this he had exchanged an empire of understanding of equal magnitude: an understanding of what it is to be a part of the world, and not an enemy of it." (ZMM) [Krimel] 3) The program provides some real insight into the nature of matter. Here the end goal is to place matter into an undifferentiated Absolute state and the results reveal some astonishing properties. [Arlo] Thanks for the link, looking forward to checking out the video. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
