Hi Krim, 2009/3/25 Krimel <[email protected]>
....... Pirsig sees DQ as a drive toward betterness. > I think he really is at odds with evolutionary thinking on this point. I cant think of anything better than continued existence, so I dont see any contradiction. The story of evolution is written in the genes of survivors. Like most > history, > it is written by the winners. Winners always provide a rosy version of the > past they reflect. Rather than simply the nostalgic projections of > optimists > Pirsig sees this as some actualized future, drawing us hence. It's a while now since i opened ZAMM or Lila but i think i would have put the books down if i thought he was saying we were being drawn towards some actualised or definite future; he always left 'Quality' undefined and i think it is only through association and our tendency to anthropomorphise that such teleological ideas arise - thats probably the origin of the God idea also. > [K] > I think evolution means not merely change but change for the better > resulting in increased organisation. > > The question is, "Why?" > > [Krimel] > This makes the term "better" dissolve into absolute ambiguity. Yes - Pirsig's writings are crystal clear about the impossibility of defining Quality. > The Sage of Ecclesiastes says, "It is 'better' to be a live dog than a dead > lion." > "Better" is always a relative term. > > Why ask, "why?"? > When wielded by children, it simply breeds infinite regress. Again i agree - i would rather ask 'How?'. > [Krimel] > Here, I would point out that mutation played almost no role in Darwin's > account of finches. ... and, likewise, i said to Platt that as far as t i know Darwin never talked about chance with regard to evolution. > He speculated that there were once no finches in the > Galapagos. At some point a single species of finch arrived. They all had > beaks of a particular type common of finches in their original home. > > As the population grew, there were be minor variations in the size shape of > finch beaks. These will form a bell curve around the most common size and > shape of beak. There will also be outliers, some larger and some smaller > than average. > > The average size and shape shifts among the finches as they are distributed > throughout the different environmental condition found in the Galapagos > chain. He accounts for the differences in finch beaks as shifts in the > average size and shape over long spans of time. Yes, almost certainly a bell curve but would be very difficult to prove because some of the variations would not be selected - those lines being, as it were, discontinued! Thanks for your input Krimel. -KO 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/
