Hi Krim, If you want me to agree that Pirsig could have had a more up to date view of evolutionary theories by the time he wrote Lila. Obviously he could. (In fact key memetic co-evolution points are in the original Darwin, and similar concepts much earlier ... but hey)
Why didn't he ? Probably the same reason I was unaware of MoQ until about 2001/2. No seriously, the significance of paradigm shifting ideas generally takes 2 or 3 human generations to enter cultural consciousness anyway (a life's too short), but in Pirsig's specific case ... Pirsig has been well criticised for not linking his work to existing bodies of relevant work in critical ways. Guilty he pleads. But he was creating his own metaphysics. We here are doing that necessary linking. That job is only just begun - as I say, plan for another generation or two. Bizarre interpretations ? Interpetation is a matter of intent in the interpreter I find, and we have our fair share of bizarre intepreters here. No language is complete and consistent, "make of it what you will". The eco-organism ? is surely Gaya anyway. I didn't say anything original. Drawing any convenient boundary - like round a farm - is always arbitrary, for some deemed purpose - like property rights, or taxation, or public health. But any recognisable living pattern (however blurry or premeable its boundaries) could be thought of as "an" organism. Patterns within patterns. People tend to forget that even at the individual gene level, the boundaries ain't all that clear - the granularity is blurry even at that level. Yes there are tell-tale "marker" patterns that geneticist use to recognise individual genes, but there is a lot of (sic) "junk" within and between those. Who knows where the boundaries lie. And here we are talking at extended phenotype and organic cosmos level - massively complex patterns, upon patterns, upon ... Teleology - let's leave that for another day. (I was tempted earlier - Anthropics here we come .....) Ian On 5/15/08, Krimel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ian > That Ernst Mayr stuff and Pirsig's published take on evolution as > competitive pre-dates much "extended phenotype" thinking. > > The "organism" may be an ecologically interconnected complex set of > species, with co-evolution going on, rather than one one one > competition. > > I keep saying "red in tooth and claw" is old hat - for the rabid > free-marketeers to hang their hats on. But ideas evolve as Pirsig also > says and his description of evolution were OK historically. > > [Krimel] > That is a broad definition of "organism." I like it. We have hundreds of > symbiotic microbes that co-evolved inside us. If any one of them gets messed > up we are all goners. > > Would you say a farm qualifies as an organism? > > I would certainly give Pirsig a pass on Chapter 11 if it did not inspire > such bizarre interpretations. It is not as through history gives Pirsig a > pass either. Wilson and Dawkins both made lots of noise in the late '70s > with Selfish Gene and Biodiversity. The Blind Watchmaker was in 1986. > Wilson's Biodiversity was 1988. By the time Lila was published in 1992 Gould > had published half a dozen popular books on evolution dating from within a > few years of ZMM. "Nature" had been on PBS for 10 years by 1992; "Nova" for > almost 20. Teleological views of evolution were not current thinking when > Lila was written. > > 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/ > 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/
