Hi Arlo See comments below…
[Arlo] I think the first point to make is that no one is, or has, claimed that 'patterns' are somehow eternal and forever fixed. DM: good, nor do I, but essentialist science often talks of laws, I think MOQ suggests a lighter approach to patterns, SQ is of great value, without it we could not enjoy the benefits of science, but I think MOQ places all SQ in a wider DQ background, it should embrace the ocean if change, and recognise the fragility of SQ, open to change at any moment, all attachment to SQ is too local, too short in time frame, in the long run it looks like change wins out, this agrees with experience, the endless overcoming of self and science, as branes clash. Arlo: of course things change, the evolve. of course the inorganic patterns my motorcycle sits on top of will rush, decay and disintegrate and then recombine into some future pattern (maybe an enhanced gravitron accelerator some future mid-bulk space transport ship).. which of course works as a speculation if we hold 'time' as a stable pattern of value. But static patterns 'change' because of Dynamic Quality. This is the force, or catalyst, or field, or whatever analogy you like that introduces what we see as 'change' in the landscape around us. DM: Quite, and we make a distinction between SQ and DQ, but how do they relate, how does process become SQ? We can speculate, is all SQ impure, is DQ always about to break out? Does all SQ contain DQ, and vice versa, it is what the yin yang symbol implies. So is saying something is patterned implying it is empty of all DQ or change? Black and white definitions sounds more like SOM to me than MOQ. Sure we use definitions that have a meaning, but do they have a purity or a usefulness? At bottom SQ and DQ are joined by quality. What is DQ and unique simply becomes SQ by repeating, but returns to DQ by ceasing to repeat and moving on to something new. SQ paints grey on grey, the distinctions blur and disappear from a wider perspective where even all pattern is fleeting change, but nonetheless from our local and finite experience SQ is crucial. Arlo: Static quality" by itself does not change. To say "static patterns are ever-changing" conflates both SQ and DQ into a misleading statement. If you say instead, "static patterns evolve ['change'/move/grow/disappear/appear] in response to Dynamic Quality", there would likely be little argument. But the statement "static patterns are ever-changing" implies that 'change' is a feature of 'stability', of 'static quality'. DM: obviously when a pattern repeats or 2 things are the same, change is absent, but they do not repeat for ever or stay the same for ever, so in some sense change is present as an ineliminable possibility, ready to burst forth, so any static pattern is ever-ready to change, but to remain static for a while it stays the same, repeats, or delays change, but change never sleeps for ever. Arlo: Lastly, I'd add that pragmatically holding patterns as 'unchanging' the source of their 'value-to-us'. We can say that 'oxygen values the proximity of two hydrogen atoms', but the value 'water' has to us is that it continues to be water. It exists to us, in other words, because of its stability. The 'static quality' of my 'motorcycle' (inorganically, biologically, socially and intellectually) is in the fact that it is 'stable', that as these various patterns respond to Dynamic Quality (i.e., 'change') they do so at levels that do not interfere with the pragmatic value I get out of it. Pragmatically and experientially, it is the stability, the predictiveness, the evaluativeness, the responsiveness that IS the value. DM: I entirely agree, SQ has value, we have to recognise and value it, we cannot make sense of independent reality without recognising it. Arlo: Take these away, accelerate 'instability' or 'change' to the point where the 'machine' disintegrates inorganically .01 seconds after being built, where the word 'motorcycle' and engine, and carburetor, and intake and transmission, and sparkplug (etc etc) all 'chang e' their meanings every millisecond, at that point it'd be safe to say that a 'motorcycle' does not even exist- and more importantly COULD NOT exist. DM: yes but nonetheless in part it keeps changing, some aspects are stable, but it exchanges heat with the environment, it lays down rubber on the road, it swaps electrons all over its surface with the air, yet still a motorcycle. All obvious stuff, we value its stability and its changes, it moves constantly in time, and on a moving planet in space too even when parked? So from a wider perspective it is always being SQ and DQ the word ever applies better to DQ than the SQ because in the end all SQ stops not changing, change only sleeps temporarily. Arlo: What I see here is a notion that if we don't affix 'ever-changing' to static quality then we are promoting an unchanging, unevolving, eternally fixed cosmos. DM: No, rather I think the point here is to recognise that SQ is always contingent and open to change, the atom is stable for a while but decay will come sooner or later and rather unpredictably. Of course SQ retains its meaning, stability can be experienced and has value, but in the end flux returns. Does chaos always breakdown so that SQ emerges? Maybe. Arlo: But this seems trapped in the very SOM Pirsig's ideas afforded us escape. 'Stability' only implies an unchanging world if one ignores 'Dynamic Quality'. Which is precisely what this phrase does. To use a mixed metaphor, a phrase like "static patterns are ever-changing" is applying a band-aid to a confusion. DM: sure, maybe SQ is always open to change would be better, where there is pattern there is something repeating or stable, but few things remain exactly the same, our bodies retain certain features but are in constant metabolic change, all things are getting either hotter or colder due to thermodynamics. MOQ to me suggests DQ and SQ oscillate with each other, think spot if yin in yang, yang in yin, advancing and receding. Sure stability says change has receded from view, but how does stability recede, perhaps change has already started, does all stability not contain the DQ seed of its disappearance? Sure the mixed metaphor can be seen as confusing, but does it point to the meaning I am suggesting? A matter of taste and semantics or metaphor perhaps, I don't think we really disagree over much more than that. Sure it is useful to see how SQ and DQ differ, but are they entirely separable? MOQ perhaps does better to avoid such SOM typical dualism I'd suggest, but this is not an easy tight rope to walk, and before you can see the connection between DQ and SQ you have to get clear about the distinction. 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
