Bo, In reply, to your message: ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2008 6:16 AM Subject: Re: [MD] The Quest for Quality
> Hi Mel > > On 23 Sep. you wrote: > > Bo before: > > > What you write is the usual approach, the S/O is one tool in an > > > intellectual toolbox - or level - a good tool, but there may be > > > other other non-S/O tools in there. Isn't that how you reason? > > Mel answered: > > A Newtonian Model of Reasoning for Physics works to a certain point A > > Euclidean Model of Geometry works in certain conditions. Both fail > > outside of certain conditions...no longer useful tools. Musically the > > form of the Blues can work or Jazz or Baroque etc. but sometimes they > > don't work for a purpose or in combination. Visual or kinetic reasoning > > can lead to similar decision points. None are inherently Subjective or > > Objective any more than classifying Fungus as Vegetable or as its own > > Kindom makes it so. The Morel fruiting body does, unbothered. > > Assignment of what is Subjective and What is objective is a matter of > > training and not always obvious or applicable. The tool has limits and > > it is an illusion outside of those limits. ...Least ways, that's how > > the flat slimy thing dances in my head. > (Bo) I'm not sure what all this says, but - again - you said: (mel) This takes a little bit of effort to get past an "Anglo-American" style of language-analysis, and into the sense of things. Analogous to the difference of Letter-of-the-Law versus Spirit-of-the-Law. This is a difficult thing to do by e-mail or any asynchronous style of communication. This style of a discussion is so freighted with meaning and the risk of pivoting or equivocating, even on a single word, that we can misapprehend another's point. I don't see sophistry as entering into it. I apologize for putting too much density in play for this medium. My bad. ( I didn't like it when teachers in class ran eight implicit steps ahead at a time, I preferred the single-step explicit method, so I should do likewise. Maybe add some common background for readers with a different education to get us all on the same page and have a little fun 'at play in the fields of the Lord,' regardless of the existence of one.) The section that began" A Newtonian Model..." is where I put three intellectual modes or forms that are not limited to SOM. 1) When we were educated in the Subjective versus Objective we were given the sense that the Subjective was generally personal, while the Objective was Universal. taking that distinction let us move to: 2) A Newtonian Model of Reasoning for Physics. an amazing accomplishment. now we understand the universe, rave reviews, all that remains is to work out the details.etc. (no doubt similar simple sound-bytes would decorate the book cover today) and it worked out pretty well. for a while. an adjustment here and there. Then we get to late nineteenth, and early twentieth century and physicists brains are starting to itch inside their skulls. We find (they find) that more is needed than just a trim here and a polish there. The Olympus of Physics now holds many more gods than Newton. While Newtonian physics was indeed good enough to get man to leave behind footprints on the moon, it is the work of others at the micro-end of the scale and at the extreme macro-end that take departures from Isaac's apple-bound world. Maybe it was a lack of inerrancy on the part of my teachers, but I was taught that Newton's Physics described reality, the objective universe. Instead, it turns out that Newton created a model, an intellectual model that works at a scale and within certain conditions. The macro world is rather a more relative thing according to the secret lore of Swiss patent clerks--and it rhymes more closely with subjective than objective. .or maybe more exactly it is neither subjective nor objective. Maybe the identical twins thought experiment points out an instance of time as more static or dynamic, relative to each twin's experience. (One twin remains grounded the other leaves on a light-fast craft?) then we can move to: 3) Euclidean Geometry. marvelous intellectual accomplishment ( drawing from the work of prior thinkers, some predating the Greeks.) Let us take two pieces of what we learned in geometry class: Parallel Line never meet, and the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degrees. The two quick objections are of course; for the parallel lines cosmologists show that due to the best idea of the shape of the universe, all parallel lines do eventually meet, (and google non-Euclidean geometry for more examples) Were you standing next to a student at the Greek academy and he drew the triangle in the dirt he would seek to convince you of the 180 degrees of the internal angles, however we now know that is not exactly correct. Given the roughly spheroid shape of the earth any triange drawn upon it, to close, when truly measured is closer to 360degrees internally. Spherical geometry tells us that, although we conveniently forget that and assume flatness. Again, this is a model, an intellectual tool, but to call it objective is to miss the parametrical relativity then we can engage: 4) Music. (I do not know your experience with music, so apologies if I assume wrongly.) Paring it down to just one form: Jazz, in which we have a form that people can and have studied for whole career lifetimes. But the exercise of it is one of dynamic complexity and intellectual, physical, and mutual rigor. The competent practitioner of Jazz is typically someone who has so well mastered the music craft, that they could step into a symphony role, if needed and the audience would never hear any difference. But in the Jazz form, there is not perfectly 'described' execution of the composer's notes into the 'performance space'. In Jazz, each time the playing of even a well-known piece is different. Not from some mood of cussedness, or some ego need to do something new, but because the form is deliberately one of reactivity to input. The Jazz musician is listening intently to everything going on around. A waiter drops a tray and the musician playing will react to the input and improvise around the flow of sound. The front door of the club opens and an automobile horn sounds and you will hear an adjustment. The form requires the adjustment just as a surveyor adjusts the form of trigonometry to the real-world terrain of forest and canyon. It is an intellectual model, not an exercise in spasmodic sound...(This really is fascinating, explore the examples of this in the literature, better yet hang out in a jazz club where you can get to know the players.) Given a real-world dynamic problem the player finds a real-world dynamic solution. (mel - before) > I do, however believe that SOM is merely one of many > available tools, and we make more all the time, and not all of > quality is a 'fit' for the SOM socket. > (Bo) > and I must still conclude that this looks as if you envisage other non- > S/O intellectual patterns. And Pirsig (in "Lila's Child") says the same > and mentions mathematics as an example My "objection" to that was > that math in the calculation sense is something ancient people were > masters of, and these people (the Babylonians and pyramid building > Egyptians are "pre-intellect" level. However, when the Greeks created > academical discipline - mathematics and geometry - THAT meant the > coming of intellect. F.ex. constructing theorems to show how/why the > squares on the legs of a triangle ...etc (Pythagoras) and other > relationships are OBJECTIVELY true. > (mel) Now, given the continuous nature of history, we often decide by criteria when something is sufficient to "call it" or "name it" as something new. Pirsig, in my opinion, for his argument used criteria similar to 'critical mass' in effect telling us that the change in 'quantity' for the Greeks was sufficient to consider as a change in 'quality'. (Not capital Q, in my use here.) (Often Babylonians and Egyptians attributed discoveries to the supernatural. while the Greeks even named their approach Humanistic.) Maybe he would make the analogy that the occasional discoveries or creations of intellectual achievement were like the occasional Geiger Counter pop from a spec of U238, but compare those to the Greeks' determined effort in that regard you see something more closely approximating the Trinity test. (By the way, read a Rise and Fall of Alexandria ISBN-10: 0670037974 by Pollard, Justin for a look at an amazing example of just how far the Greeks came and most of us never realized it.) Or maybe another way to look at it is that Pirsig indicates where and when the occasional dynamic instance of reasoning, in the prior societies' culture, became emergent into a sustained evolutionary level. (The dark ages show us that the intellect is still dependant on the Social level and not "self-sustaining.") I thank you if you have stayed with this for this long and would like to conclude. It took many years as students for teachers to condition us to the intellectual model of Subject-Object. It also took them years to train us to think in terms of math and for others it took years of training to become competent in music. But each of these are simply intellectual patterns--three separate patterns. thanks--mel 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/
