Re: MD Evolution

[Matt the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat]

Oh, Reason give me faith.

Andrea, Clarke:

Andrea, what I think you're thinking of when you say,

>I recall that somewhere in Lila he
>equates evolution and DQ (at the biological level).

is in Ch. 11 when Pirsig says, "All life is a migration of static patterns of quality towards Dynamic Quality."

But I do think the statement implies (and is vital to the MoQ) that it is applied to all static patterns, not just biological ones.  This does not make evolution = Dynamic Quality.  Evolution is a process that takes place within the MoQ.  Naive evolution (which uses words like "progress" and "scale") pretty much died out in scientists years ago (though I'm sure it is still kicked around by a few out-spoken proponents and, unfortunately, still taught in schools).  It was a remenant of 19th-century thinking.  When Pirsig speaks of up-ending evolution, I believe he's talking about contemporary evolutionary thought, which does not allow words like "progress" and "scale" and "levels of evolution".  His up-ending happens to look like 19th-century-speak, but with a metaphysical platform to stand on.

Scientific evolution certainly says that "evolution is aimed at 'fitting the environment'".  I think, though, that "fitting the environment" is a spin-off of biological quality.  A biological goal that is good in-and-for itself, but for biological static patterns.  Much as the Victorians viewed the goals of societal static patterns as the greatest good.

So, everything you say, as far as I can tell, is essentially correct about evolution.  But I think the perspective is from a scientific subjects-objects point of view.  Pirsig changes the perspective and allows for a new interpretation, one that doesn't change any of the evidence or leave any of it out (I don't think it does, anyways).  It allows a scale, one based on the four static levels.  I don't know how far we can extend the scale, if at all. 

Your last question asks if the static levels are all about survival.  Well, I think the static levels, by themselves, are all about survival.  Each level is discretely independent of the others and they each have the maintenance of their own patterns to think about (so to speak).  Survival, in all of its incarnations, has been a useful pattern.  Kinda' like the protein in Pirsig's protein-DNA pairing (it was the static, tough one).  Survival is a static latch.  A latch that should not be taken as the goal in-and-of itself, else higher and higher levels of Dynamic Quality will be left ureachable.  The beetle proved a very good survival machine.  But not a very good Dynamic machine. 

In conclusion, I do think the myth of evolution as "progress towards man" had an influence on Pirsig.  But not really in a bad way.  Since man isn't a level by himself, I don't think we can say "progress towards man", but we can say "progress towards Dynamic Quality".  Man as a collection of static patterns, however, offers the greatest amount of Dynamic Quality.  Or at least a greater amount of Dynamic Quality.  (I think we can say that.)

Likes evolution,

Matt