Andre quoted Pirsig:
> 'Poincare then hyposthesized that this selection is made by what he called
> the 'subliminal self',
> an entity that corresponds exactly with what Phaedrus called pre-intellectual
> awareness.
> The subliminal self, Poincarre said,looks at a large number of solutions to
> a problem, but only the
> INTERESTING ones break into the domain of consciousness. Mathematical
> solutions are selected by the
> subliminal self on the basis of 'mathematical beauty', of the harmony of
> numbers and forms, of
> geometric elegance. 'This is a true esthetic feeling which all mathematicians
> know',Poincare said...
> It is this harmony, this beauty that is at the center of it all'.
>
> Poincare made it clear that he was not speaking of romantic beauty, the
> beauty of appearances which
> strike the senses. He meant classic beauty, which comes from the harmonious
> order of the parts, AND
> WHICH A PURE INTELLIGENCE CAN GRASP, which gives structure to romantic beauty
> and without which life
> would be only vague and fleeting...'. My emphasis.(ZMM, p261)
dmb says:
This quote couldn't be more relevant. This felt beauty and harmony is what
guides the formation of new scientific hypotheses. Pirsig says essentially the
same thing at the end of chapter 29 of Lila, where Pirsig says, "Dynamic value
is an integral part of science. It is the cutting edge of science itself."
These quotes from ZAMM about Poincare are preceded by the notion of multiple
truths. (This is another area where Marsha badly misunderstands the basic
idea.) In the first quarter of the 19th century, he explains, Bolyai and
Lobachevski "established irrefutably that a proof of Euclid's fifth postulate
is impossible".
"Mathematic, the cornerstone of scientific certainty, was suddenly uncertain.
We now had TWO contradictory visions of unshakable scientific truth, true for
all men of all ages, regardless of the individual preferences. This was the
basis of the profound crisis that shattered the scientific complacency of the
Gilded Age. HOW DO WE KNOW WHICH ONE OF THESE GEOMETRIES IS RIGHT? ...And of
course once that door was opened one could hardly expect the number of
contradictory systems of unshakable scientific truth to be limited to two. A
German named Riemann appeared with another unshakable system of geometry which
throws overboard not only Euclid's postulate, but also the first axiom..."
The idea that there can be three different kinds of internally consistent and
scientifically valid geometries is parallel to the Art Gallery analogy in
chapter ten of Lila, where SOM and the MOQ are compared to two equally valid
maps, one with rectangular coordinates and one with polar coordinates. So here
Pirsig is giving us examples of multiple truths in geometry, geography and
metaphysics. In all these cases, the truth isn't just our own personal truth.
It's not true just because we want it to be true and of course there are lots
and lots of ways to be wrong about geometry, geography and metaphysics. These
various systems aren't true in the sense of being objectively true, they are
pragmatically true. They work. They are convenient and useful to anyone capable
of grasping their meaning and putting them to work. Unlike SOM, the MOQ does
not insist on a single, exclusive truth. But that certainly doesn't mean there
is no such thing as laborious, confusing, or inconclusive id
ea. That doesn't mean any old thing is right. It has to make sense. It has to
work. It has to fit the context, agree with experience and function in future
experience.
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