Hello Glenn - Excuse me for jumping in here, but I have some thoughts on
this issue. I agree that it is difficult to imagine that gravity did not
exist before Newton, otherwise what holds the planets, solar systems, the
whole universe together. I believe that Pirsig's point is that all of that
stuff - planets, solar systems, gravity, are all static patterns, and those
patterns can (and probably will) change over time. The MOQ says that
Quality is the only reality, everything else that we define is our
interpretation of it.
Imagine that some time in the future we discover that what we call "light"
is really consciousness and that our definition of what constitutes a being
changes to include what we now call planets and stars. Or we discover that
what we now describe as objects are actually entities that exist on
different plains due to their density and vibration levels. I agree that
both of these propositions sound crazy today, because both are way outside
of science and what we now consider a true picture of reality.
If we insist on maintaining that science can never become supplanted by
something else, we will probably never agree that gravity didn't exist
before Newton. But if you can see that science, even thought it works and
is very useful, may only be a concept, you can begin to see that other
explanations (as static patterns) may surpass it and "change reality" in the
future.
marty j
-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2001 6:59 PM
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Subject: Re: MD Glenn, Platt, Ant and the creation of patterns
Hi Elephant, Roger,
ELEPHANT:
Er, Gravity *is* an idea. And that's the whole point. What newton added to
the transparent fact that apples fall was an idea expressed in
mathematics:
viz, gravity. That this idea expressed in mathematics should *correspond
to* real life is wonderful. But that it *is* real life is ficxticous:
apples do not perform mathematical calculations.
Er, gravity is a force. The idea you refer to is the one expressed
as a mathematical formula and is called the "law of gravity". But the law of
gravity is not just an intellectual idea expressed as a formula, because
it's
hard to imagine gravity as it is if this law were different. It seems
the law is bound up in the force. And no, it's not "the whole point".
This is really secondary to the thrust of my argument. The really startling
thing Pirsig says is that gravity *itself* is solely a human concept; Sir
Isaac created it, and gravity itself did not exist before that.
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