Hi all, A quick response to Mark who asked "Where, in LILA, do you see Socrates re-enthroned, where does Pirsig claim that "truth stands independently of social opinion?" . These two quotes from Lila are the source:
"When the social climate changes from preposterous social restraint of all intellect to a relative abandonment of all social patterns, the result is a hurricane of social forces. That hurricane is the history of the twentieth century. There had been other comparable times, Phaedrus supposed. The day the first protozoans decided to get together to form a metazoan society. Or the day the first freak fish, or whatever-it-was, decided to leave the water. Or, within historical time, the day Socrates died to establish the independence of intellectual patterns from their social origins. Or the day Descartes decided to start with himself as an ultimate source of reality. These were days of evolutionary transformation. And like most days of transformation, no one at the time had any idea of what was being transformed." (beginning of chapter 22) "What the Metaphysics of Quality makes clear is that it is only social values and morals, particularly church values and morals, that science is unconcerned with. There are important historic reasons for this: The doctrine of scientific disconnection from social morals goes all the way back to the ancient Greek belief that thought is independent of society, that it stands alone, born without parents. Ancient Greeks such as Socrates and Pythagoras paved the way for the fundamental principle behind science: that truth stands independently of social opinion. It is to be determined by direct observation and experiment, not by hearsay. Religious authority always has attacked this principle as heresy. For its early believers, the idea of a science independent of society was a very dangerous notion to hold. People died for it. The defenders who fought to protect science from church control argued that science is not concerned with morals. Intellectuals would leave morals for the church to decide. But what the larger intellectual structure of the Metaphysics of Quality makes clear is that this political battle of science to free itself from domination by social moral codes was in fact a moral battle! It was the battle of a higher, intellectual level of evolution to keep itself from being devoured by a lower, social level of evolution." (chapter 24, about a page in). Regards Sam MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_focus/ MF Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_focus follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/mf/subscribe.html
