dmb, Right more or less. The idea of holons or the idea that structures and forces might operate for no apparent reasons on apparently dissimilar scales is what I am getting at with branches.
A holon is not discrete from the structures above and below it. They are "integral" if you will. It has always been the claim that the levels are discrete that bothers me. Back in '96 I went to Lalapalooza. There was really too much body art to clean them up very well. But one woman did make a comment that stuck with me. It was summer in Ft. Lauderdale and she said "If it ain't all sweaty it really isn't sex now is it?" Now that you mention it a corset might have covered the holly wreath navel and the fern growing out of her butt. Case ------------------------------------------------ In the "Quantum computing" thread, Case said ...We are not really talking about "levels" at all. We are talking about "branches." "Level" is simply the wrong metaphor. It implies discreteness and independence where they clearly do not exist. "Branches" implies separation and continuation at the same time. ...One might even stretch this branching of patterns into the idea of holons where each thing is composed of smaller things and collects with like things to make bigger things. dmb says: Last night I was reading about structuralism in Piaget's developmental psychology, or rather Ken Wilber's examination of it, and it occurred to me that Wilber's holons and Pirsig's patterns are both versions of structuralism. Apparently, Piaget was among the first to discover that mental development was not simply gradual or accumulative but was marked by discrete cognitive stages, each with its own gestalt. And its interesting to note that each successive stage builds upon the previous stages, which are either taken for granted or even become unconscious. As the new stage unfolds it is refined and all the previous experience is reinterpreted in its terms. At some point this stage will reach some kind of old age, when its limits become visible and when it becomes inadequate to the point that it becomes a problem or incapable of dealing with problems, a new structure will emerge to overcome those limits or solve those problems. These cognitive stages are what we'd think of as internal structures but the same thing applies to more apparent structures in the natual world. The way bacteria retain their form and function despite the fact that its constituent parts are replaced entirely during its life. The molecules that are used for its very existence and structure are distinct from the bacteria themselves. Their structure does not exist at the level of molecules and yet totally depends on them to achieve bacterianess. There is coherent structure that keeps itself together even as molecules come and go. This is not just an analogy for structualism, it is structuarlism on the biological level. And it can be extended downward so that the molecules are seen as something over and above the atoms, the atoms include but transcend the particles in the same way. We can extend this upward from single cells, to organs, organisms, etc.. This, I think, reveals the similarities between Pirsig's patterns and Wilber's holons. And the levels are similar too in that both of them basically define their levels as a class or category of patterns or holons. We draw lines where those whole new gestalts kick in. In that sense, these are not just metaphors. I mean, these metaphors are ways of describing what is observed, of making distinctions about what is observed. Piaget, as I imagine you already know, derived his ideas from working with small kids and seeing a pattern to their so-called errors. Pirsig's levels aren't so different. They simply recognize that the forces that hold a society together are different from the forces that hold an atom together, by noticing that the forces that perpetuate life are the same forces that threaten society, etc.. That's why the lines between levels and the borders between patterns aren't necessarily the same sort of distinction. The levels represent distinct sets of patterns operate according to the same general laws; physical laws, the law of the jungle, the rules of society, the rules of logic each govern a range of patterns or structures, has a limited jurisdiction. And of course the heirarchical arrangement speaks to the developmental relationship wherein the early stages are prerequisites for the later stages. In both the case of collective evolution and individual development, we add rather than replace. I think the idea here is that development isn't just an upward movement so much as an increasingly deeper and broader perspective and wider range of freedom. The Freudian notion of repression seems like a good example here. If the Victorians were too sexually repressed and the hippy free love types weren't repressed enough, we can say they both failed to properly incorporate the lower levels. The Victorians forgot to include sex and the hippies forgot to transcend it. Somewhere in the middle there is a fully integrated human being. I try to stike that balance by crusing the music festivals for dirty hippy chicks and then take them home, clean them up and put them in tight corset. JUST a tight corset. dmb _________________________________________________________________ Watch free concerts with Pink, Rod Stewart, Oasis and more. 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