John had said: Mark raised the issue of the relationship of Static Quality to Dynamic Quality and how DQ gets changed to SQ. The speculative image I have is of static patterns coalescing within the flux of Dynamic Quality. I picture a flow of molten lava and solid formations cooling and coalescing out of it as it flows along. I picture the initial rush of energy immediately after the Big Bang and subatomic particles and then atoms forming in it as regions of it "cool". Ron: First off it is important to understand that Pirsigs MoQ subscribes to what is known as philosophic idealism, what we know about the world is formed by thoughts about experience, physical static quality is an idea about experience, as atoms their structures and their bonds. I think we begin to forget this when we begin to entertain the thought that Dynamic Quality is concieved as energy and static quality is concieved as particles atoms and molecules. When we begin to advance this notion confusion emerges when we begin to hit the social and intellectual levels because we are thinking about them in terms of an objective physical evolutionary explanation and tend to run into the same problems of mind/matter. Which is what you seem to be encountering. John: In the same way, I picture Dynamic Quality in and through that initial blast of absolute energy. Atoms coalesce within it and become sufficiently stable to participate in chemical reactions and form molecules. Through continued coalescence and aggregation stars, then planets and other less energetic physical entities form. I understand these stable patterns as "solidifying" out of the energetic flux of DQ. Then as soon as these physical patterns have formed, DQ continues to drive them to higher levels of organization and complexity. At each level static patterns coalesce out of the dynamic flux.
One could also invert the image and view the initial quantum of energy in the post-BB universe as a resistant medium which DQ drives toward higher levels of DQ expression. The medium is resistant because it tends to degenerate from higher levels of organization to lower levels of organization, opposite to the direction of the flow of DQ. The first achievement of DQ is the formation of the physical universe and inorganic patterns. Then against the resistance of the inorganic patterns DQ organizes the organic or biological level. I picture this as a "phase change" of a material substance. If you think of matter as a block of ice and DQ as a heat source, when you apply enough heat to the ice, it changes from solid to liquid phase. If you continue, it changes phase from liquid to vapor. Likewise, under the continuous pressure of DQ inorganic matter changes phase to the biological level, which then changes phase to the socio-intellectual level. At each level the Static Quality patterns are the stable formations that persist in the resistant medium at that level of organization. They are also the elements DQ organizes and energizes to advance to the next phase. If you view the relationship of DQ to SQ in this way, and if you view cosmic evolution as the history of the advance of Dynamic Quality, the levels of MOQ emerge naturally as sort of the critical points at which phase changes have occurred. The only place where the levels don't seem completely natural and obvious to me in this view is the social level and then the intellectual level. To me the obvious phase change is from the biological level to a "mental" level which subsumes both the social and the intellectual levels of MOQ. Social evolution and intellectual evolution both seem to me to be ways in which DQ continues to push forward and develop stable patterns of SQ, with intellectual being the more promising and fruitful avenue of advance. Ron: I believe as long as you see Pirsigs MoQ as an objective physical explanation there are going to be problems reconciling the social and intellectual levels with the lower levels. If you focus on the four levels as a division of experience, your own, the explanation begins to be one of theories and meanings and what of those are better and more accurate than others. DQ then is immediate experience and SQ is how meaning is carved from it via perception and reflection. So in simple terms the base of the four levels is the intellectual level and when we observe the inorganic and the organic patterns scientifically we do it through social and intellectual patterns of value. After all, the four levels are an intellectual pattern of value as well as evolution, they are high quality explanations of experience. I think our resident mad scientist, Mark, would do well to recognize this as well. The people at radio shack said he was mad but he'll show them, he'll show them ALL! .. 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/md/archives.html
