DM: These are questions, sure Pirsig does not talk about the local non-equlibrium processes that Prigogine gives us, but that's a feature
of when he wrote. Even given this, there is a need to think about how and why life 'exploits' such available enerrgy resources, the biologists say fail to unpack this notion of 'exploit' too readily. Questioning this seems important to me. [Krimel] There is more than just ignorance of Prigogine here. Although both Prigogine's popular book and Gliek's book on Chaos both came out well before Lila so that is not a pro-Pirsig excuse. Pirsig seems to be using the thermodynamic argument against evolution. It is wrong. If you wore that argument to school, the other children should laugh at you and say your mother dresses you funny. DM: Again it is a question worth asking. Clearly energy can support SQ to build levels or to reduce higher levels to lower ones. Good question to ask how we understand this difference. [Krimel] Evolution is about how dynamic and static forces achieve and sustain balance. If Pirsig had understood and applied this properly the MoQ would be in much better shape today. His insistence that life is in violation of natural principles leads only to questions about the rest of what he says when this part is so out of touch. > [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. DM: Yes, but this opportunity could be ignored, yet it is not? We can ask with Pirisig: Why and how? [Krimel] Ignored? Again with the anthropomorphism. If conditions were different something different would happen but there was no 'opportunity' and there was nothing to 'ignore' it. Answers to why and how are to be found in physic and biology not psychoanalysis of the constituent particles. > [Krimel] > Give him plenty of food water and sex but take away sunlight and he will > be reduced to a prof-sicle in minutes. DM: Or he could sit there and die. Two different possibilities. Of course you can argue that actions that lead to survival are more likely to be selected to create hungry and horny professors, but this is a bit glib, how do we get this variety to select from? Is de-selection the only factor? Is there any more direct feedback going on? Is quality a factor that drives a positive form of selection? Again, worth asking. [Krimel] So you are saying that if we select a clinically depress or suicidal chemistry professor Pirsig's argument works? There is no mystery to where the variety comes from and the explanation for how evolution proceeds is neither circular nor glib. Seriously, David these questions may have been worth asking 100 years ago but not today. DM: The language & science is a bit dated. But the question of selecting options that get us from lower to higher levels (i.e. out of chaos and slime) is a good question, it goes beyond evolutionary theory as it looks at this problem more broadly than just biology. I think it is less about teleology that about saying that in our experience selection occurs due to activity and activity seems to act by valuing good quality over bad. [Krimel] But my point is that Pirsig almost gets us to the point of seeing how evolutionary thinking can be expanded into other areas. His finger points to a moon where the principles of evolution are metaphysical principles but he botches the job by using teleology and anthropomorphism. > [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. DM: Agree that DQ has a destructive aspect, but I think Pirsig is trying to suggest that life acts and acts to choose good qualities over bad, this can alter evolution in the way an organism makes use of the potential its genes provides, or may even feedback into the genetic selection/reproduction e.g. gene switches. [Krimel] Again the problem arise from terms like 'good' and 'bad' which really can only be analyzed post hoc. Survival is good; death is bad. There is a sense in which this might be regarded as aesthetic judgments but the further down the phylogenic chain we try to make this aesthetic sense work the more fanciful our assessments become. DM: I think the point is that the development from plants to animals to humans to social-intellectual individuals creates organisms with increased freedom and potential which arises from the ability to employ an increasing repertoire of SQ. [Krimel] That seems to be the case but this is one of the problems of being confined to a particular place and time. It is difficult to generalize from a single observation. But even from our single vantage point it is not difficult to see that the drift toward betterness and life would not be difficult to reverse. DM: I'd suggest you are ignoring basics here like talk of 'law' came from theology & divine law and deism and led to the sort of science we have. Could be other god talk could open new forms of science if we hit on the right concepts or metaphors. Science is very dependent on concepts and metaphors from other areas. Robert Young the historian unoicks all of Darwin's & Herbert Spencer's concepts and shows how they came out of Victorian capitalism for example. That origin does not of course undermine their use but Darwinism could not have easily appeared in the same way in a different period. It would have used a different language. [Krimel] This is just an example of evolution applied to the realm of ideas. Memetics, if you will. The idea of law and the use of god-talk certainly predates Newton and Darwin and the fact that they used such terms, expanded them, modified them, built upon them is hardly surprising. Whatever comes always grows out of a response to what precedes it. This is hardly an argument in favor of reverting to old usage. Nor is it an argument that we owe any particular allegiance to ancient vocabularies which for all we know may have actively inhibited progress and may have resulted in Newtonian and Darwinian statements that are less clear than they might have been. One can certainly argue the Christianity in the middle ages retarded the progress of knowledge and science. Frankly this argument over what might have been or how grateful we should be about previous linguistic convenience is just speculation and not really worth the effort. DM: I'd suggest actuality only has meaning in the context of what it excludes: anything/everything is possible. Scientists, mathematicians and thinkers surely explore in imagination the vast realms of potentia, hence they can take what is actual and unlock new possibilities and technologies. As you know we dreamed of cars and flying along time before we actualised them, the dreaming and exploring of the possible is what culture is all about, alot less effort is spent on what is merely given/actual. [Krimel] I would be the last one to say that art and science do not influence each other. The design of my cell phone is an obvious copy of a Star Trek communicator both in its form and its function. In fact nearly everything in our lives in the modern world is an example of fantasy becoming real. But this is not to say that anything is possible or that we should take potentiality to have causal agency. 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