DM You keep banging this teleological drum, are there some key Pirsig quotes to back this up? Ithink you over state what are only some questioning by Pirsig of the non-animist position. But I may be wrong if you can show me?
[Krimel] Pretty much all of Chapter 11 is just a tragic mistake. If taken as a kind of trade off of precision to achieve clarity is not overtly offensive but when people like Platt take it as an authoritative guide to evolutionary theory it is down right corrosive. Without repeating details I have been long winded about in the past here are some of the low lights: [Pirsig] Either life is with physical nature or it's against it. If it's with nature there's nothing to survive. If it's against physical nature then there must be something apart from the physical and chemical forces of nature that is motivating it to be against physical nature. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems 'run down' like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only 'runs up,' converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep 'running up' faster and faster. [Krimel] The idea that life opposes the laws of physic and thermodynamics is just flatly absurd. This idea is still popular in fundamentalist circles but has been so obviously discredited it is hard to see why Pirsig brings it up. He does go on to talk about the properties of carbon. It is like he gets it but then he says: [Pirsig] If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something else. What is it? [Krimel] Everyone knows that evolution on earth is fueled by the constant input of sunlight. All life and most of the energy on this planet derive from photons trying to bounce out into space. If you put a chemistry professor on a rock in the sun it is not sunlight that reduces him to chemical compounds. It is lack of food, water and sex. Give him lots of supplies and a Playboy bunny and he will get a tan and raise a family on the rock. Give him plenty of food water and sex but take away sunlight and he will be reduced to a prof-sicle in minutes. [Pirsig] If life is to be explained on the basis of physical laws, then the overwhelming evidence that life deliberately works around these laws cannot be ignored. The reason atoms become chemistry professors has got to be that something in nature does not like laws of chemical equilibrium or the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics or any other law that restricts the molecules' freedom. They only go along with laws of any kind because they have to, preferring an existence that does not follow any laws whatsoever. [Krimel] This is part of a whole section where he is trying to resurrect teleology. He mentions Teilhard de Chardin even. It is a beautiful example of the kind of flawed reasoning that results from personification and anthropomorphism. Dennett argues that the intentional stance can help us achieve clarity. Here Pirsig shows us how it destroys precision. [Pirsig] 'Survival of the fittest' is meaningful only when 'fittest' is equated with 'best,' which is to say, 'Quality.' And the Darwinians don't mean just any old quality, they mean undefined Quality! As Mayr's article makes clear, they are absolutely certain there is no way to define what that 'fittest' is. Good! The 'undefined fittest" they are defending is identical to Dynamic Quality. Natural selection is Dynamic Quality at work. There is no quarrel whatsoever between the Metaphysics of Quality and the Darwinian Theory of Evolution. Neither is there a quarrel between the Metaphysics of Quality and the 'teleological' theories which insist that life has some purpose. What the Metaphysics of Quality has done is unite these opposed doctrines within a larger metaphysical structure that accommodates both of them without contradiction. [Krimel] He is quite correct that the MoQ in many ways restates Darwin. It can help provide some clarity on the role of DQ in creating and developing static patterns in Nature. But we can only resurrect teleology by ignoring the fact that DQ is Shiva, creator and destroyer. What survives in evolution is not necessarily the 'fittest' but what is not annihilated. Big rocks falling out of the sky, glaciers, climate change, volcanoes and disease are all agents of DQ. His insistence that DQ is a driving force towards "betterness" salvages teleology at the expense of the power and precision of the ideas he uses. [Pirsig] It seems clear that no mechanistic pattern exists toward which life is heading, but has the question been taken up of whether life is heading away from mechanistic patterns? [Krimel] This ignores the fact that as often as not, what evolution is running way from is DQ itself. Does this answer your question? I could go on but the whole chapter is like this and it just disappoints me to read it again. 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/
