Hi elephant, Platt, Roger, Marty and all,
The thread about atomic awareness has resurfaced in response to Platt's
references to two mainstream scientists:
Freeman Dyson, Princeton physicist
David Darling, astronomy and science writer.
PLATT:
Those who have been on this site for awhile will recall the "Are atoms
aware?" discussions. It seemed to some of us that it was essential
that the answer be "Yes" if the MOQ was to hang together as a viable
explanation of reality. You can imagine my pleasure in finding a notable
physicist agreeing with the "Yes" answer as well as a number of
biologists (mentioned in previous posts) who support the "mind
everywhere" (panexperientialism) theory.
ELEPHANT asked:
Why is it essential to the MOQ that atoms be aware?
Platt is probably referring do discussions from June 1998,
archived at http://www.moq.org/old_lilasquad/9806/
At that time, I made some offhand comment about the chlorophyll molecule
"recognising" certain wavelengths of light, and was accused of ethnocentricity
in my choice of words. As a mainstream scientist myself, let me reiterate that
it is common and acceptable to refer to molecules "recognising", "sensing",
"preferring" etc. However, Roger has chosen other words with different
connotations.
ROGER:
Sorry, but I sense something wrong with this argument. To presuppose that
atoms have "choice" and "awareness" and a "vague sense of betterness"
overstates the issue to the point of absurdity, or at least to the point of
making the terms "choice," "awareness," and "sense" meaningless.
Perhaps the real nemesis here is a philosopher trying to reduce the entire
universe into one oversimplified principle that they can fit onto a Tee shirt.
But Roger, Pirsig is indeed trying to get it down to T-shirt dimensions - the
essence of the quality idea is placing the concept of value/evaluation at the
heart of all patterns at all levels. I think it is useful to take Pirsig's
lead in recognising the interactions between atoms and molecules as one of
evaluation.
To paraphrase: A values B and B values A.
In physics, this is plain attraction, be it electrostatic, magnetic, nuclear
or gravitational (as per Newton).
The discomfort that Elephant and Roger seem to feel over "atomic awareness"
is, IMHO linked to the whole subject/object dichotomy and the issue of
CAUSALITY. As I have said before, the word "cause" sees to have two meanings,
one subjective and on objective.
Subjective cause is something very human - "living/fighting/dying for the
cause . . ."
Objective cause is something very mechanistic - what CAUSES objects to
behave the way they do.
The subject/object dichotomy causes us to regard all events as the results of
(objective) causes external to, but acting on objects. e.g. A is attracted to
B beCAUSE of gravity. The trouble with this is that the apparent attraction
between A and B *is* gravity, not because of gravity. We can unite objective
cause and subjective cause by simply saying "A and B *want* to be together -
it is their cause". It only sounds funny because we are not used to it.
What is notable is that modern science seems to come up with these strange
sounding expressions all the time (as illustrated in Platt's quotes). When
scientific ideas surface that are compliant with the data, testable
(falsifiable) and explanatory, but yet they still sound strange, we can take
one of three paths:
1. Claim that the data are wrong (the resort of the Ostrich)
2. Claim that the science is wrong (the resort of the Mediaeval church)
3. Claim that the problem is in our system of understanding.
I think Pirsig's biggest contribution is to show that 3 is a viable option.
When things get lost in a hiss of irrational babble, we must never forget to
consider the possibility that it is our own rationality that is out of tune.
Jonathan
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